New article on Metamute

No More Poodles (Dumitrescu/Avram: Rebirth of Avant Garde)

By Ben Watson

http://www.metamute.org/en/content/no_more_poodles_dumitrescu_avram_rebirth_of_avant_garde

Kicking off our collectively composed music column, Ben Watson explodes the integrity of cookie-cutter modern music, dynamites the shameless posturing of other critics (Po-Mo or otherwise) and makes those who listen to Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram without an open copy of Negative Dialectics in their lap look like utter, utter fools

New article on Metamute!

Invisible Politics an Introduction to Contemporary Communisation

By John Cunningham

http://www.metamute.org/en/content/invisible_politics_an_introduction_to_contemporary_communisation

In the wake of the organised left and the demise of working class self-identity, communisation offers a paradoxical means of superseding capitalism in the here and now whilst abandoning orthodox theories of revolution. John Cunningham reports from the picket line of the ‘human strike’

MUTE Vol 2 #13 OUT NOW

In this issue of Mute there is a generalised refusal to have our selves, in the widest sense of the word, put to work. As we start to see the real repercussions of the financial crisis bite, the Bretton Woods ideological state apparatus is looking rather threadbare. The strategy to placate social desires through cheap credit, property acquisition and the decoration of domestic surfaces continues against a muted backdrop of factory occupations, boss-nappings, foreclosures, and the dregs of what looks to be Big Brother’s last season. It is tempting to imagine that the mass tutelage in narcissism which has helped pacify the social body for so long might collapse under the weight of its own vacuity and unsustainable cruelty. As capitalism falters in its corralling of desires, writers in this issue think about how such energies might escape from their official channels.

Read more, buy, and oogle at: http://www.metamute.org/pod/mute_vol_2_13