MAY DAY PROCLAMATION

Alienist Broadsheet #5 (May 2018) download PDF

TO LIVE (& DIE) AT A DISTANCE FROM THE WORLD

Like a pre-packaged frozen lunch, “society” has come to such a pass that anything in its general proximity that isn’t utterly cretinised simply wants to be left alone. Meanwhile, social democracy, having met with unheard-of humiliations, discovers no other recourse than to demand more. Art, too, has gone the way of this ballot-box-which-is-really-a-lunchbox, while pretending it can see plainly what’s naked at the end of its fork. Except that it is what’s at the end of the fork, which it calls a critique of commodification. But it’s not that “society” doesn’t accomplish what it desires in democracy. Suspended in an open-ended teleology of the present, instant gratification is the one thing there’s no shortage of. All “society” has to do is reach out & touch the screen (to cast as many ballots as it wishes). Art is the endless replay potential of this mise-en-scene.