Image from Godard’s film One Plus One, also released as Sympathy For The Devil (1968 ). A woman who has been doused with fake blood - by the director himself - is placed under the camera by the stage crew, as the crane shot rises into the sky, and the credits begin to roll. The End. Our view is like innocent bystanders watching on the beach. ( A trailer to watch is in footnotes at bottom ).
“There’s really not much hope to grasp current events without examining it as a series of toxic media specimens under a ‘psychomedia’ microscope !” - XLterrestrial analyst 1
“"Ok, admittedly this is a wild theory... we wont use the word *Conspiracy*, b/c given the ubiquitousness of well-orchestrated treachery, deceit and *Spectacle* that riddles the daily mediated shitstew, the big C-word just seems like a quaint and innocuous term that hasn't scaled adequately for decades. So just hear us out: The XLt would submit the odds are around 100 MILLION to 1 that D. Trump would face an assassination attempt which fails, but simultaneously manages to graze an ear, and produce the perfect blood-trickling photo-op for a perfect escalation of sympathies and a precise + timely campaign boost for a total deluxe con-artist + fascist douchebag! " - XLt analyst 2
“Or… let’s imagine taking the gooey remnants of two or more politicians’ spent condoms from whatever latest brothel-propaganda crime scene, and doing some kind of combined DNA forensics, Data analysis and infertility testing. Then feeding it to some lab rats and measuring the amount of time before it gets regurgitated as an undigestible and wholly artificial substance. “ - XLt analyst 3
THE PHANTASMAGORIA OF ELECTIONS
There’s so many hilarious and sharp memes out there on this shitshow we could entertain and distract ourselves for months. No matter how accurate they are, a good percentage of them get far closer to the truth than the complicit corporate media will ever be !
Was the Trump assassination attempt real ?! Some serious independent investigations ( that are not stenographers for oligarchs, campaign managers and secret service +/or FBI accounts ) would be nice !! But more importantly we should be asking are these motherfuckin’ ELECTIONS real ?!!
Sure, we think it IS interesting to ask more questions, investigate the scene of the crime beyond the anemic and corporate-fed and ‘deep-slate’ conclusions.
BUT for us, it’s far more important to grapple with the fact that the general public has been so pre-conditioned to accept this nauseating spectacle race to embrace these TWO DEMENTIA-RIDDEN CANDIDATES for President ! One should ask how did the planet get so far down the rabbit hole of thinking we just need to accept one of these oh-so- *Presi-dement-ial* fascists to lead us into the grimmest possible future !
And keep in mind, we are not just thinking about US (s)elections.
Today the EU Parliament will decide whether the very un-elected Ursula von Der Leyen will continue for another term. This would surely drag us along the dripping rosy-red path of the Military Industrial Complex, a corporate garden full of psychopathicly hung fruits.
Update: her selection was in fact renewed !
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Sympathy for The Demented
This is all is just a preface, with interwoven kultur clickbait for trying to analyze the Permanent Phantasmagoria these days, and what the hell is happening in our incapacitated states to properly react to all the insidiousness unfolding around us.
As an arts and praxis collective, the XLterrestrials would say the SNIPER on the rooftops and the WEAPON aimed at the viewer, the citizen… the individual spirit and the masses ... is the 24/7 flow of MEDIATED + NETWORKED ENVIRONMENTS, which are deployed by the techno-krapitalist class.
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Below are some sketched notes that are perhaps useful for understanding the ever-expanding ‘Spectacle Soup’ we live in now. Perhaps we will have to try and come back with a Part 2 to consider how we can undo these pre-conditioned states.
We have not been inclined to believe in a technological liberation. We imagine that coming back down to earth ( from the malevolent corporate technosphere ) is our most immediate, tangible and accessible route for restoring a collective social organism. That’s a bit poetic and cryptic, but we will have to try to elaborate more of a gameplan, or rather a *de-gamed* plan.
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( Godard on the shoot with the ‘revolutionary guerillas’ in a UK scrapyard )
Notes on The Spectacles
There’s a pretty wild anecdote about Godard punching his one-time producer for re-editing his film One Plus One, also later released as a more commerically-drinkable + marketable Sympathy For the Devil. Hilarious, because he was furious that Iain Quarrier ( also an actor ) inserted the full track by the Stones, rather than leaving it in dissected fragments … as the artist’s Nouvelle Vague collage + culture jamming fodder.
Godard had stated that his first-ever film project in the UK had to include either The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. Beatles said no. The Stones said yes, and probably had no idea what they were going to be used for ( ie. Marxist art and critical interventionism ).
Not going to pretend to be any kind of Godard expert, and haven’t watched this film for ages. It’s quite a distant vague memory watching it so long ago in a now gentri-purged Berlin Haus Project Kino in Schoeneberg ( KOB - to be specific ). The young XLt analysts back then were both mesmerized and deeply puzzled by it!
For years we’ve interpreted the film ( in-addition to its radical inquiries ) as a bold piss-take on Rock-n-Roll-industry + its guns-for-hire. We are no The Rolling Stones fans, and our perceptions evolved over time to see them as ultimately the commercialized ‘Luciferian cool’, the zeitgeist manufacturers and “distractuers” … The “Coca-Cola of Rock” in the midst of volatile times and more serious revolutionary matters… which were getting devoured and/or drowned out by … Spectacle !
From a primary forger of media analysis and the new situationist tools, Guy Debord ( La société du spectacle - 1967 ) himself found it pretty flatulent and very bourgeoise. It’s incredibly groundbreaking film-making, but one can imagine why this film flopped in France, as it followed on the heels of the cathartic + visceral student-led 68 uprisings ! And even now, it’s more just a fun arty artefact to analyze for our purposes of rethinking arts + culture … either as a weapon, or a far-too-removed intellectual exercise. ??
“ For all of its heavy use of leftist Sixties iconography, its anarchic attempt to fuse “art, power and revolution,” and its fascinating portraiture of rock and roll genius at work, the film crash landed in France, earning the contempt of arch Situationist theorist Debord, who called it “the work of cretins.” - From a review in Openculture ( 2013 ). A quick informative take, but definitely not pulling out any scalpels where necessary. And pretty funny to see comments just debating shit about their rock heroes, rather than getting into any gist of Godard’s intended saboteur attacks !
This original? trailer IS a pretty juicy art+praxis specimen ! Perhaps we will have to use it in one of our future CiTIZEN KiNO events… to discuss the current crises … and how to combat getting lost in all our screens !
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Footnotes:
Odd Trailer w/ (spoiler) final scene
Sympathy for the Devil 50th Anniversary (4K Trailer) | ABKCO Films
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As we were fishing for juxatposed themes to illuminate the challenges and crises of our current times… We were looking at fotos from the reactions to other political times and coups and assassinations that occurred. For example the images from the riots after MLK was killed.
Would anyone really give a shit if Trump had been eliminated from the Selection Equation by an assassin, or would the masses have been relieved that they had been spared from the next levels of idiocracy + spectacle overdose ?!
As many respected journalists have pointed out the violence of an “attempted assassination” is par for the course. Four sitting US presidents have been killed in the past, and a few others shot and wounded. But more on that in another chapter, perhaps.
For now we will leave you with a few images of the real responses after a real leader that fought for real liberation, was murdered by state force ! People who didnt sit around watching the screens, and waiting for faux revolutions +/or spouting populists to appear on their corporate drip-feeds !
The Fire This Time ! ( J. Baldwin )
to be cont.