The Art of Insolence
— Montgomery Cantsin
The Obscene Excesses of Capitalism
— Andrew Wilson
Grandpa
— Bill Daniel
Who Stole the Soul?
— David Cox
Dr. Yes and the Mystery of the Mission, Part Five
— David Cox
24 Sep 2008
FADE UP TITLE
Who Stole the Soul?
FADE OUT
FADE IN, Shots of houses along Shotwell, shops on Valencia – super8 film from early 1990s.
Voice Over – girl's voice:
"A filmmaker visitor to the Bay Area's Mission District in the early 1990s was met with a vibrant scene. Every other house and apartment on Shotwell, Treat, Alabama, and Valencia seemed to have a comic book being made in it. Or a movie. Or a band rehearsing. Everyone you met it seemed was making art, lots of people were excited by the possibilities of a shared vibrant scene. Micro-cinemas popped up overnight. A room and a projector turned a warehouse or a back room or a basement into an oasis of underground spontaneous word-of-mouth film culture. There was drink, there was fun. There was desire…."
SHOTS OF COMICS, PAINTINGS, LOVERS IN ACTION ON BEDS OF MARIACHI JOUISSANCE, BURRITOS AND BURGERS, MALT LIQUOR AND RETRO 1960s CARS.
"No one managed this chaos. Nothing would have turned off the average filmmaker, band member, skate-punk or bike messenger than the idea that economic imperatives should or even might one day take precedence over the central point – the will to create. To live life as if one's desires were reality. "
SKATE PUNKS IN TATTOOS AND LEATHER WALLETS ON CHAINS, NO T-SHIRTS, DO JUMPS AND FALL ON CONCRETE…. BIKE MESSENGERS AROUND UNION SQUARE, BAGS ON SHOULDERS, SMOKING, USING RADIOS, READING PROCESSED WORLD MAGAZINE.
TRACKING SHOT AS GIRL WALKS ALONG SHOTWELL, HANDS IN POCKET, SHE TALKS AS SHE CROSSES 22ND.
"It was affordable to live here. Artists walked freely in the streets. Art was made. Films were made. Love was made and all was good. When the Rodney King riots set the place ablaze, many a slacker, it can be said, philosophically at least, brought some of the gasoline and watched the fire from a perch, beer in one hand, and joint in the other. Our poverty as artists was akin to that of the alienated minorities, if not as desperate. When the riot cops encircled us, we knew we were within their sights as much as those doing the looting and the burning…."
RODNEY KING ERA RIOTS, AFRICAN-AMERICANS LOOTING SHOPS ALONG MARKET STREET, NIKE SHOPS, SHOPPING CART ON FIRE, RIOT COPS ON TRAIL BIKES, WIELDING BILLY CLUBS, 24TH STREET AND MISSION MASSIVE CROWDS OUTSIDE CAFÉ BOHEMIA.
Now we live in a time when digital networks, digital tools have in a way brought with them the logic of the Silicon Valley software campus into the locus of what were formerly only semi-regulated creative non-profit organizations. We have google-ized our arts bodies. We have facebooked our social networks, and we have you-tubed our microcinemas. And with these social-in-the-service-of-capital structures, we have handed over the keys to our utopia to those who see only in bohemia another way to promote a lifestyle product. Where there was soul and the warm smile of a collaborator, there is now only a bored part-time staffer handing out grant application forms.
SLEEK LAWNS OF GOOGLE, YAHOO, EBAY, AROUND SUNNYVALE, MOUNTAIN VIEW, RADAR DISHES OF NASA, AIRSHIP HANGAR AT MOFFET FIELD, ATARI BUILDING, CLOSE-UPS OF OF E.T. GAMES IN LANDFILL – SIX MILLION CARTRIDGES – A VIDEOGAME HOLOCAUST.
CLIP FROM BIT-PLANE OF LAWNS WITH SPRINKLERS WITH I.P. ADDRESSES.
Where there was community, there are now 'stakeholders'. Where there were once drop-in workshops on a sliding scale, there are now official programs with city money to further patronize and tokenize minorities and only further their alienation in the whitewashed world of digital media.
FIT, ATHLETIC YOUNG SOFTWARE ENGINEERS AT RESTAURANTS ALONG VALENCIA STREET, DRESSED SHARPLY, HOMELESS MAN WITH OUTSTRETCHED HAND IGNORED BY SAME YUPPIES AS THEY HELP EACH OTHER OUT OF TAXIS, MAN SELLING OLD BOOKS AND TAPES AND STUFF ON A BLANKET ON CORNER OF 16TH AND VALENCIA, COCKTAIL DRESSES AND SMART CASUAL TYPES WITH CELLPHONES, LAUGHING.
GANG MEMBERS SMOKING, KICKING CANS ON STREET CORNERS. ASK ME DON'T TELL ME SEQUENCE.
The zine Boing Boing, the official online voice of the Gen-X hipster, as entertaining as it is, is part of the global officialdom of hip-in-the-service-of-advertising-and-PR. The cool get hunted and recycled into the marketing plans of products, fashion, even food and drink. Make magazine and its annual Maker Faire give voice to the once spontaneous industrial punk culture of SOMA and south-eastern Mission (in happening places like The Farm) but do so through slick, polished, national-appeal mainstream design. The full-time desire to build a new society from scraps has morphed into a 'cool' electronics project for the weekend. The forty-something guy with a goatee and three-quarter board-shorts making his compressed air rocket, or installing a camera on his kite might once have been interested in a totally transformed society, and might even have been willing to sacrifice something for that new society. But today he pays off the mortgage on his live-work, reads Salon.com, and hangs out with advertising and public relations types at the Atlas café. He will vote for Obama, he will help a starving child in Africa by buying a latte at Starbucks. He is all but conservative in that he can no longer imagine the possibilities of a utopian lived present that was the defining characteristic of Mission culture in the early 1990s.
FORTY-SOMETHING HIPSTER WITH LATTE AND CIGARETTE AND DOG AT CORNER CAFÉ TALKING WITH OTHERS LIKE HIMSELF, FLICKS ASHES, COPIES OF WIRED AND MAKE MAGAZINES ON TABLE.
And I'm not just dishing up my sour grapes here, though bitter they are. I live in the hope they may ferment into something more palatable.
SHOTS OF RECEPTION DESKS AT LOCAL NON-PROFIT FILM ORGANIZATIONS.
Increased managerialism now finds expression in every sector of culture and society. As property values have supernaturally skyrocketed in the Mission District, so too has the willingness of its arts organizations to subordinate themselves, genuflect even, before corporate models. These slick, remodeled, shiny institutions are replete with the trappings of the officially sanctioned, the NGO alongside the for-profit. And who can tell the difference? It’s as if Mountain View and Sunnyvale brought the yuppie ideology up to the Bay Area and turned the 'hood into just another boring 'Wired' suburb.
CLOSE-UP OF TIMETABLE OF DUTIES FOR STAFF, WEBSITES FOR SAME ORGANIZATIONS, COMPUTER LABS, EDITING SUITES, PEOPLE WRITING CHECKS AND GIVING TO RECEPTIONISTS, HANDS SHAKING, SOFTWARE PASSING HANDS, PEOPLE AT HOME WITH VERY ADVANCED COMPUTERS DOING EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE DOING AT THE NON-PROFIT, THEN SAME PEOPLE IN OFFICE AT WORK USING SAME SOFTWARE – ONE SEAMLESS CONTINUUM – NON-PROFIT-HOME-WORK.
This conservative hipster culture has made the manager the central idea behind our once way more anarchic scene. If Kevin Keating's Yuppie Eradication Project were in operation today (a once lively poster campaign in 2000 sending a simple 'fuck you' message to the new cashed-up yuppie contingent in the Mission) he'd most likely have Homeland Security show up in black SUVs ready to throw him in an orange jumpsuit and a nice cage in Cuba!
SHOTS OF GUANTANAMO BAY PRISONERS, CLOSE UP OF 'YUPPIE ERADICATION PROJECT' POSTERS FROM YEAR 2000.
GIRL FACES CAMERA AND HER WHOLE MOUTH DOMINATE THE FRAME.
I have the sneaking suspicion that many in the arts today have embraced the whole dripping-tap ideology of the neo-cons in ways they cannot articulate in public. The anti-rest-of-the-world xenophobia, the resistance to ideas which do not easily fit within the dominant corporate culture, the unwillingness to fathom a world beyond the confines of the USA and its borders are no longer the narrow characteristics of right wing bigots. They are mainstream values, espoused by Left-liberals as well as Republicans.
SHE STANDS OUTSIDE BAVC ON MARIPOSA.
San Francisco's formerly more community-minded organizations (those who see the entire city's population as the community) are today it would seem increasingly subordinate to the interests and working methodologies of corporate power.
They focus more on meeting the increasingly specialized software training needs of industrial clients than on what could be described as that group it was initially intended to service – the broader video production community, and beyond it, the general community. You know, ordinary, regular people. Expensive classes in software that only big spenders can afford, taught by industry-vetted 'certified' instructors, who usually have to pay for their own ordainment by those software companies gracious enough to permit them to teach, do not meet my idea of the community.
SHE HAS A SHOPPING CART FULL OF HI-8 CAMERAS, SHE HANDS THEM OUT TO PASSERS-BY WITH INSTRUCTION-SHEET MANIFESTOS WHICH READ “MAKE YOUR OWN FILM, MAKE YOUR OWN CINEMA!!! DOWN WITH PHONY COMMUNITY ACCESS ORGANIZATIONS!!!”
In the early to mid 1990s our BAVCs, our Film Arts Foundations, our Artists’ Television Accesses, our Canyon Cinemas were just…. cooler, more democratic. More in tune with the vibe on the street.
The local film non-profit was where ideas took form, where filmmakers swapped stories, war stories. It was an experimental zone of free play and free expression. I know the rent in the Mission has gone up double in the last ten years. But guess what? I don't care! Communities which matter get the rent paid one way or the other, and care more about the broader aims and objectives of their organizations than simple economic viability.
SHE TUNES AN OLD TV TO A CHANNEL WHERE A TALKING HEAD SHOUTS TO THE CAMERA OPERATOR FROM A MOPED SCREAMING DOWN MISSION STREET AT FORTY MILES AN HOUR.
MOPED GUY:
"It's a commonplace to argue that the widespread uptake of ever-lower cost digital tools and methods have rendered the idea of a centralized community workshop culture in video education a less pressing prospect. "People have their own equipment and a computer and so do not need workshops in video production!!"
MOPED GUY GETS OFF HIS MOPED AND WALKS TO THE CAMERA. HE HAS A DIGITAL CAMERA ON HIS HELMET.
“This argument fails to take into consideration that there is more to understanding video production than simply how to technically use the tools. Workshops can teach a broader range of skills such as lighting, scriptwriting, how to get films made, distributed and so on. Alongside the how is the why and where.!!!”
SHOTS OF ENRON SIGN, SUITS IN CUFFS, FANNY MAE, FREDDY MAC LOGOS, MAP OF WORLD, IRAQ, IRAN, RUSSIA, GEORGIA, AFGHANISTAN, HOMELAND SECURITY, HALLIBURTON, BLACKWATER, GITMO.
DIGITAL VOICE COMING FROM A TOY G.I. JOE:
"We live in a terrifying global climate in which the very largest titans fall, the corrupt lead the corrupt into the abyss, and appear to want to take everyone along with them. Having opened up a moral and economic black hole, the ever-rabid right wing Christian neo-cons and their poster children in the boardrooms and situation rooms of large-scale international finance and foreign policy threaten to take us into hell with them. Rather than encourage a climate in which these forces can be confronted with the tools available, most institutions seem more willing to hunker down and wait for the winds of change to die down rather than risk the wrath of the Right in all its forms. The non-profit huddles behind the apron strings of any nearby large corporation who is willing to pimp itself out for a piece of the ever-dwindling 'cool' quotient on the streets.
We thus police ourselves, and manage ourselves to sleep."
WHITE TEXT ON A BLACK SCREEN. HOWLS IN FAVOR OF SADE AND ALL THAT:
New Age spirituality, as Slavoj Zizek argues, is today the dominant ideology of global capital. We are encouraged to view ourselves as having 'inner lives' whose needs are increasingly mediated, Zen-like, by commodities. The rise of Zen Buddhism, the preoccupation with 'tolerance' (what meaningful political group ever talked about 'tolerance'? – certainly not Martin Luther King, definitely not Malcolm X); even feminist and gay/lesbian discourse is often highly coded as predominantly middle to upper-middle class. In other words, difference is okay, as long as the broad cultural model on offer remains safely within the limits of acceptability. Left wing culture is fine as long as it can be downloaded, installed on an iPod, paid for with PayPal, viewed on YouTube, and made in a million other ways to fit within the dominant culture’s categories which have the effect of rendering everything homogenized. It is this set of qualities which differentiate our times from those of 16 years ago. Even our most secret desires are assailable within an official doctrine of personal pleasure. Any pleasure can be had and enjoyed, because the dominant system is impervious, having framed the terms of the debate in advance, and having supplied every means for their public expression.
GUY DEBORD SITS WITH A REVOLVER IN ONE HAND AND A BEER IN THE OTHER. HE IS SURFING THE WEB. HIS COMPUTER MOUSE IS IN THE FORM OF A HAND GRENADE. NEAR HIM IS A BOARD GAME – HIS OWN.
DEBORD CLICKS ON AN MP3 AT ARCHIVE.ORG, IT IS A GRAINY 320 X 240 PIXEL MOVIE WHOSE VOICE OVER IS:
"The standard arts organization today is firmly middle class in its orientation, assuming its clientele are generally white, well educated and upwardly mobile.
This set of facts is assumed to be self-evident, beyond question, and inherently
'the case'. Even Burning Man, that neo-pagan provisional 'utopia' in the desert is little more today than another paid-for, packaged holiday destination for the Google class, who regard it as something close to a legitimate religious pilgrimage. Would that this sense of obligation find expression in the desire to transform the society and economy as a whole, rather than simply scratch the itch of a boring life whose regulation is virtually complete. Why limit the free exchange model to several days of the week, once a year? Why not install it as the model, as we were once more than willing to do back in the day? Could it be that those SUVs have turned the corner again and, by just sitting there, foreclosed on anything other than that which can be paid for via credit, debit or check?"
DEBORD SHOOTS HIMSELF, THEN TURNS THE CAMERA ON US.
David Cox
San Francisco September 15th 2008.
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