But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.
Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity]
This is a soundtrack to "Lipstick Traces: A Secret History
of the 20th Century," (1989); by Greil Marcus, originally
published in the US by Harvard University Press.
I'd love to hear this collection condensed into a six minute
rap tune, or a twelve minute techno mantra, but in the meantime
we begin, with a giggle...Jon Savage, 1993
Track #1 : SLITS: "A Boring Life."
Track #2 : ORIOLES: "It's Too Soon To Know."
Track #3 : TRISTAN TZARA, MARCEL JANCO, RICHARD HUELSENBECK: "L
'Amiral cherche une maison a louer."
Track #4 : JONATHAN RICHMAN: "Road Runner."
Track #5 : GUY DEBORD: Excerpt from soundtrack to Hurlements
en faveur de Sade. Track #6 : THE ROXY, LONDON: Ambience.
Track #7 : JEAN-LOUIS BRAU: "Instrumentation Verbale (Face
2)."
Track #8 : BUZZCOCKS: "Boredom."
Track #9 : ADVERTS: "One Chord Wonders."
Track #10: RAOUL HAUSMANN: "phoneme bbbb."
Track #11: GANG OF FOUR: "At Home He's A Tourist."
Track #12: ADVERTS: "Gary Gilmore's Eyes."
Track #13: KLEENEX: "U (angry side)."
Track #14: GUY DEBORD: Excerpt from soundtrack to Critique
de la separation (Dansk-Fransk Experimentalfilmskompagni,
1961).
Track #15: CLASH: Stage talke, Roundhouse, London, 23 September
1976.
Track #16: MEKONS: "Never Been In A Riot."
Track #17: LILIPUT: "Split."
Track #18: PETER BLEGVAD, et al: "rohrenhose-rokoko-neger-rhythmus."
Track #19: ESSENTIAL LOGIC: "Wake Up."
Track #20: KLEENEX: "You (friendly side)."
Track #21: GIL J. WOLMAN: "Megapneumies, 24 Mars 1963 (Face
1)."
Track #22: RAINCOATS: "In Love."
Track #23: GUY DEBORD: Excerpt from soundtrack to Hurlements
en faveur de Sade.
Track #24: MARIE OSMOND: "Karawane." Track #25: BASCAM LAMAR LUNSFORD:
"I wish I was A mole In The Ground."
Track #26: MEKONS: "The Building."
Track #27: BENNY SPELLMAN: "Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette)."
Society of Spectacle - Guy Debord [Amazon US]Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative as Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960s up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism and everyday life in the late twentieth cenlury. Now finally available in a superb English translation approved by the author, Debord's text remains as crucial as ever for understanding the contemporary effects of power, which are increasingly inseparable from the new virtual worlds of our rapidly changing image/information culture. 2002, Aug 21; 23:53:
Greil Marcus - Lipstick Traces, a Secret History of 20th Century [1 book, Amazon US] ... In the 1989 ‘Lipstick Traces - A Secret History of the Twentieth Century’ Greil Marcus traces a subliminal trajectory where nearly-invisible connections arc across punk, the Situationists of 1968, Dada in 1916, the Enrages of the French Revolution and heretical millenarianism in medieval times. He isn’t describing the direct causal link of past and present but suggesting a more opaque entanglement. “Is history simply a matter of events that leave behind those things that can be weighed and measured - new institutions, new maps, new rulers - or is it also the result of moments that seem to leave nothing behind, nothing but the mystery of spectral connections between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language?....If the language they are speaking, the impulse they are voicing, has it’s own history, might it not tell a very different story from the one we’ve been hearing all our lives?”
2002, Sep 02; 23:19:
Sadie Plant - The Most Radical Gesture[1 book, Amazon US]
Here to help is a book which retraces the history of the radical fringe movements which sprung up in Europe from the horrid experience of WWI (and its antecedents) and continued through the century. The Most Radical Gesture starts with DADA, concerned with what we would call déconstruction* today. deconstruction of language, thought processes, images, art, literature, etc...Next, this book takes us on a magical history tour of surrealism, structuralism and finally the Situationist International which is the core of the book, both because of its roots in the preceding movements and its influences on postmodernism
