Now that Modernity is dead – the process of thinking and creating is contaminated with the process of technological automatizations, turning creators into machine-operators, mere automatons set on channeling the appropriate amount of voltage, trend sensitivity and maximizing the degree of incoming links in order to better masturbate the ego – suddenly, everyone is calling themselves curators.

In the Old World, a curator was, according to the collectivist automatons at Wikipedia:

“… a keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or archive) is a content specialist responsible for an institution’s collections. The object of a traditional curator’s concern necessarily involves tangible objects of some sort, whether it be inter alia artwork, collectibles, historic items or scientific collections. More recently, new kinds of curators are emerging: curators of digital data objects, and biocurators.”

Curators. Critics. Or both. In the post-post-Modern, everyone is a critic. Countless are the sites that have rebranded their effort from “blogger” to “curator”. A marketing ploy in keeping with the destruction of High Art concepts. The street is the Institution and the Institution no longer a boundary with requisites. A morally and ethically corrupt venue, slave to cultural cowardice, a deranged Dr. Frankenstein bringing to life the hastily re-stitched monster of multiculturalism on a seething bed of false narrative.

The digital world is suffering from attention deficit disorder. A state where posting pictures and random texts, snippets of music and other binary bric-a-brac at a hysterical rate, creating an over-consumption of narrative and in doing so all but destroying form and meaning. The digital is a flawed museum, amplifying the structural failure of Museums – a catalogue of ideologies in a world that no longer heeds ideology.

Digital curators are the henchmen of content psychosis, a delirious state where narrative and concept are separated from meaning and orthographic structure. “Nothing is as vast as empty things”, Francis Bacon wrote – but perhaps JG Ballard stated it better in his short story, “Studio 5, The Stars”, a beautiful metaphor musing on the death of the Muse and subsequent fall of the Artist – and how it may be awakened once more:

“I suppose its principally a matter of inspiration. I used to write a fair amount myself years ago, but the impulse faded as soon as I could afford a VT set. In the old days a poet had to sacrifice himself in order to master his medium. Now that technical mastery is simply a question of pushing a button, selecting metre, rhyme, assonance on a dial, there’s no need for sacrifice, no ideal to invent to make the sacrifice worthwhile -”

Dial a button, select some one else’s picture, post it on a blog and eagerly await acclaim. The creation replaced with selection. A gladiators arena of taste, not skill.

In Ballard’s story, Aurora Day, the Muse, by deception, threat and outright violence restores the order of inspiration and effort.

We eagerly await Aurora and the crusade against coin-operated-art. The possibility of her intervening remains the hope of Artists. In the mean time, there is much headway to be made simply be realizing that technology is not going to lead to what it once promised: The Dream of Superior Automated Content.

However, the immobilising period of infancy is what ensures our survival. For the most part, being born as a blank slate (disregarding personality and genetic traits as ultimately, these are of very little consequence to man kind in general) is an excellent opportunity for the caretakers to imprint the individual with lessons learned from previous generations, in the hope of said individual reaching maturity, adulthood and being able to compose coherent, interesting thoughts and processes of its own to further aid its community – or himself. This is, again, where humans differ from animals, as the latter have no significant process of transmitting or retaining knowledge to their young.

In theory, this works and ensures man kind to evolve, in spite of being an imperfect and wasteful process as most individuals to reach adulthood never really transcend a state beyond that of an imprinted clone; their thoughts actions and indeed entire lives, are inconsequential and from a strictly ecological point of view – a rather poor use of scarce resources.

Nevertheless, at a time when technology has improved human life expectancy and enabled man kind a historical breather, as it were – the cult of infancy, man’s way of celebrating our prolonged lives – has become the status quo for the modern, evolved homo sapien. We are, and long to be, children in all but physiology (even if there are trends, mainly in fashion, to revert to these states, too) well into what used to be considered mid-life.

The technological landscape of the past, twenty, thirty years, has laid ground for what is today popularly called social media. A global, interconnected market of opinions and user generated content instead of proprietary, individually produced matter. The main trouble with this new model is that it is by and large an un-paid effort of the masses that in exchange for free software consent to being spied upon. Disregarding the fact that the software in questions is poorly built and rather demeaning to humans, the main point is that originality has for all intents and purpose ceased to exist – both online but rather more worryingly, also in society.

Culture has ground to a resounding halt online. Mashups, remixes, debates about cultural icons of the last fifty odd years and regurgitated, stolen content (called “open”) is routinely spun in the online blender to the extent of becoming one of the major bandwidth sources. Looking at modern music is like looking into often skillful, but very unoriginal, copies of material from the 70′s and onwards. Something similar is taking place in photography (with applications mimicking the flaws of old camera lenses, for instance), literature, art and just about every major cultural branch. For the first time in decades – there is nothing modern and nothing truly challenging in culture, save the drone of the ever-debasing, ever-dropping standards of dignity and integrity.

Enter the Modern Child. As many are aware of, children demand attention and if unchecked, will develop fatal egocentricity. Social media is the perfect tool for the modern child. A way of notifying the entire world, at the speed of routing packets to online servers – of one’s needs, tastes and other generally dull information. Social media is a success partly because it is a near-perfect tool of human regression. It is also the perfect cover for the obvious fact modern humans seem to be less capable of focus and social evolution. This prolonged state of adult infancy, or digital neonatality is also, rather ironically, what prevents the young from exploring new ideas. If the parent is still online, pushing their stale tastes to the world – how is the child ever to truly debut its mind to the public? Some re-use is fair game, that goes for all culture – we all build on the shoulders of giants, but what happens if nothing significantly new is introduced into the system?

In rejecting the individual and his way of bringing into the world, original content – and rewarding him for it – we have also rejected any meaningful evolution.

Social media is imbecile media because it does not embrace the quality of the individual thinker but rather embraces the tastes and motives of the unthinking collective.

Social media proponents often speak of empowering the individual, yet inspected closely – the success stories of this new format, scale badly or not at all. One idea will work for a single person, or website – and thousands will follow in the very same track – with no yield at all. This is proof of a failed communication model. Social media proponents grasp at straws to prove the usefulness of the channel but the rhetoric is murky. The real winners of social media are the few that can aggregate data streams (or, “the cloud”), not those who remix the content of those streams. In the long run, such a model is untenable for the users who are not only actively stripped of individuality (while being convinced of the opposite) but also of any means or expectations of receiving monetary rewards for their efforts. Rewards online come in the form of traffic sources and digital badges, much like the rewards given to children in kindergartens.

It is worrisome, for instance, to witness the state of journalism after the effects of the social media. Few are prepared to pay for content, so the quality of the content has become terribly low. This is particularly true in smaller, even if on the surface labelled “democratic” countries, like Sweden, where the media has never really had a honest, analytical mind of its own but has rather been a vehicle for political manipulation pretty much since the beginning of the printed word.

While there certainly exist a small number of assertive individuals who can manipulate the vast online network to their own ends, the bulk of the Internet citizens face a losing proposition. The Internet, much like many countries in the middle east – lacks a stable and comfortingly situational aware, middle class.

On the Internet, nearly everyone is a pawn: an unpaid, unskilled apparatchik.

Societies work and operate on the premise that everyone, or nearly everyone, agrees that they should. Laws and rules are laid out and for the most part, people stick to them, simply because they recognise that everyone has the most to gain from following them rather then breaking them. A lock is easily picked. Yet most do not pick it because they wish to have their own property untouched, as well. The Internet, however, has become a zone where these rules are dictated by a precious few, and changed at will. Property isn’t property, and few, if any, boundaries exist. It is a free fire zone that humans are quite incapable of managing. Or at least haven’t yet learned to manage.

In the mean time, we have millions of adult children playing and remixing culture, much like toddlers that rip pages from books and stuff them in their mouths. Presumably, some day, at least some of these children might grow up, rather than be stuck in the sorry state of perpetual childhood. In what state will our jointly remixed-to-dead-culture be by then? And how long will this take? The owners of the cloud, the Google’s and the Facebook’s are more than happy to play the part of the buddy-parent and throw ever-more faux-advanced software toys to their digital kindergarten – and few seem to be able to ever graduate from that macabre place of smelly diapers and nonsensical drool.

Perhaps hope lies in the fact that we have it from reliable sources that childhood isn’t only about bullying other children but also about boundless, unrestricted vision, high altitudes and magical worlds?

But if so – where are these worlds to be found?

Bruce Sterling calls it Atemporality. A feeling of being disconnected with the past, a loss of personal direction in the time stream. William Gibson, ever a prophet of our times, discusses the same peculiarity in terms of the concept of “Zero History” (also, the title of his latest work). Zero History is when the contemporary is happening so fast and is so ubiquitous that it all but erases any significance or presence of its own history. In short, the vector of time that is now has accelerated to the point of becoming the future, rendering “future” a meaningless intellection, used only by those severely out of fashion.

Naturally, we’ll still have some sort of future, for lack of a better word. One might of course even accuse the above mentioned statement of being an intellectual game, a worthless play on words and the useless musings of science fiction writers. Perhaps. But it has been a long time since Gibson left the field of science fiction and instead taken a keen interest in the present world. Likewise, there are few writers that have a better birds eye view of the general direction of humanity than Bruce Sterling does. And besides, they’re far from alone in voicing their concerns. A particular reference that seems to be so precise in its prophecy as to become almost disturbing is Canadian poet and songwriter, Leonard Cohen’s, “The Future”:

“There’ll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There’ll be phantoms
There’ll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You’ll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin’ to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin’”

(Source: Leonard Cohen, “The Future”, 1992)

Pop culture references aside, there’s no denying the fact that for the first time in recorded history, the technology around us has ceased to make us more cerebral, but is threatening to be an acute, detrimental enemy of our minds. Up until now, whatever technology we’ve come up with, has freed our time and eased our labor so that we might put it to better use. While physical drudgery will take a species far enough, it is the intellectual effort that will set them free. Before the global accident of everything crashing into everything else – simultaneously – things were indeed looking bright.

However, as the song goes, something happened on the way to heaven,  The web, instead of setting us free, has locked us, its protagonists, champions and users – into a self-consuming, impossible, sadistic dialectic – and if nothing changes, it may hold us there for generations to come. In order to understand what has happened, or more to the point, what is happening in this very moment, we need to understand exactly what piece of technology we’re discussing.

Underneath the layer of information that is the Web, things are working brilliant. Millions of networks, interconnected servers and units are working near flawlessly to bring us a steady drone of information, a ready-state of alertness and knowledge at our very fingertips. As far as IT-mechanics go, it couldn’t be a smoother ride. Storage capacity increases every year. So does computational power.

The problem arises not from the technology itself, but from the content. Or rather, the staggering lack thereof and the lack of control we have of what content there is. In 1985, Neil Postman, a long time professor, critic and brilliant scholar at NYU voiced concerns of this kind in his much-debated book, “Amusing ourselves to death”. In later works, (most notably in “Technopoly”, from 1992) Postman would return time and time again to how human kind is surrendering culture to technology.

More importantly; that the deluge of information is increasingly disassociating itself from the solution of problems.

In a way it’s surprising that the danger Postman tried to warn of took almost twenty years to fully surface. In 2010, eighteen years after the publication of “Technopoly”, content is no longer the prerogative for technology – but technology itself is. Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, 4Chan, Tumblr, MySpace and countless, limitless, others are filled with users that all scream at the top of their voices, drowning out logic in favor of replicating information rather than creating it. The golden calf of the ambassadors of “social collaboration” has been all about “sharing content”. The supposition is that something that is shared, is enriched by the crowd, the collective hands and thoughts of others.

Countless web sites, corporations and start-ups have seen the light of day based on the principle of crowd collaboration. The benefits, the return on intellectual investment of this joint effort, the fruits of this gigantic pan-global hive mind – are however curiously lacking.

Whatever information feeds into the hive; disjointed images, words, ideas, thoughts and concepts usually end up not made into something grander, better, but are rather recycled, replicated, stolen or mashed up into trivial snippets of information (remixed videos, re-blogged images, etc.) that are somehow less coherent and practical than they were before the ride on the global roller coaster of crowd collaboration. Not to mention the fact that most of what is being recycled existed long before the means to remix it. It begs that question of how long before we realize that nothing worthwhile returns from such a particular journey? How long shall we wait before we see a socially online-spawned Chopin, Darwin, Hawking, or Postman, even? Given the mass, availability and accelerating vector of information it would not be out of place to theorize that the hive should breed geniuses at an increased rate. In the mean time, there is precious little proof of such a development. Each effort of asking the crowd for help seems to return something dull – or worse. The only “proof”, as it were, is that popular online culture, as it stands today, is a sickness intent on regurgitating content, devoid of context and meaning.

What’s worse, the process of recycling endless, and atemporally simultaneous data is as harmful as it has proved itself curiously antisocial. The sheer amounts of negative comments on any of the popular social networks seem to point to the fact that not only has social technology turned us into data-replicating machines, it has opened previously untapped sources of dysfunctionality and unreason. There’s an overwhelming, almost ritualistic need among the online population to debase others, themselves – and content. Laptop lynch mobs inspire violent flash mobs that in turn spark online rebellions of remixed videos of the actions of the former, as was the case in Philadelphia earlier this year. Nothing new is created, but ample opportunity is created where online paranoia can, and does, breed freely.

Another selling point of the ambassadors of the crowds (employed mainly in the PR and IT-industries) is that the social web facilitates the meetings between people. A critical look on the structure of any social network will reveal precisely the opposite. Individuals seek out like minded individuals, creating global villages of homogenous mind and intent (message boards, topical web sites, etc.). It’s a case of sociopaths finally receiving the means to group up with other sociopaths, effectively barring the way for newcomers and fresh members that might have given them a chance for more than forming a tighter fraternity. If humans develop, it is because they are confronted with things unknown to them. Learning is not about amassing and sorting information, but rather about the lust for the discovery of the unknown. Exactly how one is to achieve this in the digital social prison where one is much more likely to have one’s views confirmed rather than challenged – is a mystery.

However, there aren’t only losers in this deranged, rampant, global cesspool of information. The mass of statistical data generated by the hive is carefully collected and harvested by the purveyors and owners of the “free” web services used; Google and Facebook (to name the largest two) are companies built on the gathering of unintelligible snippets of data that make up a formidable source of information on behavioral, and more importantly, economical patterns of its users. Facebook is a machine that turns the user into something that is ripened and harvested under the pretext of providing it with a meta-service it really doesn’t need. A human toy.

Indeed, social networks of all kinds have proved an outstanding channel to revitalize the advertising and PR-industry – two particular branches of economy that before the explosion of the social now, were both trapped in archaic and generally mistrusted constructs. Quite, due to the terrific work of say, Naomi Klein, no one trusted an ad-man in the nineties, much less his counterpart in PR. In 2010, by turning everyone into a data-gathering-replicating toy, PR (and advertising) is suddenly once more – all the rage. No wonder that particular industry has been amongst the first the recognize social networks as a brilliant, revenue-hoarding, channel. Never mind that the actual men of the industry are still looked upon with some suspicion. As long as the revenue keeps lining bank accounts and making mortgage payments for ridiculously expensive condos – no one employed in those branches of media is likely to fuss about credit to the actual work. Particularly when it’s being done for free by trans-human drones, reprocessing information that is less original with each frightful spin in the global remix centrifuge.

It is indeed, a terrible racket, slowly eating the seed of its own creation.

Web services, and software – almost seems to be conspiratorially designed with the intent to crush any chance of for- or afterthought. Users are forced to react, rather than think (Google Wave was one such effort – where what had been written could be edited by your conversational partner – in real time. While that particular experiment failed, we haven’t seen the last such assault yet. Supposedly, Facebook will aim at something similar in the future if Zuckerberg’s statement of youth not being “content with the slow process e-mailing” is to be taken seriously). Countless signals of software input (computers, billboards, televisions, mobile phones, etc.) are thrown at the user and each of them, even if some are indeed possible to filter, push him or her further away from thought and analysis and deeper into reaction; a base stimuli one could perhaps expect from some lab animal in a distant past, not humans in front of state of the art PC’s. This is transhumanism in effect – and if the famous Singularity of Vernor Vinge is ever to occur (a form of post-human event when a supposed superintelligence sponges up  man kind into technology), it will occur in precisely this quiet, lecherous way and not by some apocalyptic, Hollywood-tinted war with sentient machines in titanium and chrome. In that scenario you might imagine that the final sound you will ever hear will be that of a robot firing a gun – but in reality (if such still will be permitted to exist) it is much more likely to be the clicking sound of your mouse as it accepts your new Facebook status.

The solution, or at least partly so, would seem to be the construction of data-free zones – a sort of thinking cubes, devoid of stimuli. Or at least zones that encourage afterthought. Zones that somehow create blank spaces for us to fill with meaning, without the constant interruptions that crazed, frantic machines impose on us. Before you “share it to the net”, you need to make sure that you are sharing something worthwhile. Not something rehashed, bent out of shape and context. Or perhaps, you shouldn’t be sharing it at all – not while the odds are not in your favor and not while all of the evidence still seems to point to the fact that creation is an individual, not a collective, procedure.

Nothing in the world is more difficult, there is no tougher creative process than that of filling a blank piece of paper with meaningful, original, content.

Nothing will taunt the creator more as an unwritten page – a work of originality will pose questions, it will ridicule its author, it will be fickle and elusive. It will make you hate yourself and you will fall wildly in love with it, probably at the same time. Ask any scientist or truly gifted writer, they’ll say that the process of creation is a leap of faith and an intrinsically human enterprise. To err is the way of the world, but to create, is human. To recycle – is the work of a machine.

Originality itself is in something of a crisis. One of the most popular of the aspects of the web is that a lot of the content is “free”. In fact, the lure of free content is what helped attract the crowds onto it in the first place. Veterans of the Internet will remember file sharing networks such as Napster where anyone could download a decent collection of music within hours and days. The recording industry responded in the only way it knew how, by threat and litigation. In time, the conflict spread to other media as it made its transition from analogue to digital and as archaic laws of intellectual property were left unamended, not reflecting the opportunities and pitfalls of the new, digital channel.

While business models have been painfully slow in adapting to the demands of the new market, a comfortable number of them have now surfaced and creators of content and businesses alike have achieved a shaky, but budding, platform from which to elicit pay for their content.  However, most of the online crowds have so gotten used to the idea that all content is free that managing to charge even miniscule amounts for content causes, and in most likelihood will continue to cause, near-riots. The pink elephant in the room being the unvoiced threat of theft on the part of the users – and that of judicial process from the creators. The situation is not a fortunate one – and this at a time when content creation has indeed never been easier or more affordable. Proponents of intellectual property rights have yet a substantial battle to fight before the feud between creator and consumer can be placed aside. Jaron Lanier, cyberspace pioneer and co-inventor of Virtual Reality, has called this imbalance digital Maoism, since, as he claims – the Maoist movement is the only one apart from its digital counterpart that would blatantly ask the artist to either give up the rights to his work – or just plainly cease to exist.

Much has been written about the plight of free content versus that of the holders of rights to intellectual property and while the latter certainly needs a major overhaul in concept and structure – the behavior of the former is in part culpable for the machine-like replication process of the content of today. In any case, it is certainly a factor.

While true that there is no immediate correlation between paid content and brilliant content, the free counterpart doesn’t really generate anything worthwhile, or lasting. The biggest success stories of the social web are those of personal marketing, not of scientific or say philosophical reward. The trouble with “free” is that it holds up true to puppetry, not creativity.

We’re, collectively, breeding a culture of digital sadism – and increasingly becoming tone deaf to what it truly means to be human.

If we’re to escape the social bog of the web and once more focus on creation and not become mere transpersonal data collecting units, driven by a passive-sadistic desire to negate concepts and thoughts not originating from within the grid – we need to re-introduce ourselves to the horrifying, but astonishingly simple idea of the blank, original, page. We need to challenge ourselves with the task of creating, not stealing or replicating.

In other words: we need to delete the whole thing and start again – perhaps then, looking back on today – a decade from now will have made some sense – after all.

Cullbergbaletten’s autumnal offering, “Ekman’s Triptych”, under the creative wand of choreographer Alexander Ekman is one brainy, luminous, sizzling piece of work. Rather than proceed onto the obvious route of contemporary artists and gun for either shock value or political correctness, Ekman utilizes the gifted members of the dance company to visually challenge his audience with the question: “What is entertainment?”.

As it happens, the answer, aided by Ekman’s aesthetics, conceptualization, choreography – and overall piece execution is as near flawless as the acutely postulated riddle.

However, this is not a review of Ekman’s work. Rather, it is a review of his reviews. Yes. The reviews that are best unread. Yet, should you read them – you might, if you are adept at interpreting art, find that they are lackluster, half-hearted – or just rushing the subject (doubtlessly on their way to the journalist’s favorite pastime – the coffee break, or after work beer – which ever is closer). I’ve written on the subject of backsliding art critics before, and not much seems to improve in the way of performance review or analysis since. Not that I envisioned it changing for the better.

Still. What is art and media critique? In the end – it is a conduit between audience and apprehension. The role of a critic is to interpret whether your money will be well spent on this, or that, art show, film, or other performance (in the piece, Ekman keeps returning to this very subject – the fact that the exchange of money facilitates entertainment – a not so subtle hint obviously lost on the analytical faculty of his critics).

There are a number of ways a critic will try to achieve the relay of information. What method will the critic use to convey the general lie of the land to the (potential) spectator? Well, some might bid at constructing an impossibly sly insult, or string insults together as to form a near-coherent text. This kind of critic is usually young, inexperienced, and has not learned (or refuses to learn) to separate the role of critic-conduit, his ego, from the work that’s being reviewed.

Others, will inadvertently struggle to circumvent the task by more or less relevant name-dropping. A third category will be either rushed, uninterested or just plain and simple – rude. Most critics belong to this latter league of lazy journalists.

But on occasion, however seldom, a critic will in fact do the job. Job being; a careful, considerate and analytical argument that politely will suggest to the reader what he, or she is getting into. Nothing more, nothing less.

It is with a deep sigh of regret that I read the reviews of Ekman in the two largest Swedish daily newspapers. Both have over the years been bled dry of quality and talent, and whatever has remained is certainly not up to decent standard. While giving Alexander Ekman some encouraging words, and furnishing the rest of the text with the standard issue chewy tittle tattle – none of them actually seem have been awake during the performance. The texts are superficial and devoid of insight.

This is disheartening indeed, especially given the context. During these last two or three years, social media has all but destroyed analytical thought. It has put reason way in the back of the proverbial school bus. The omnipresent “Like”-button of Facebook parturition has in the eyes of the audience substituted thought for a simple press, or non-press of a thumbs up button. The critics, follow suit with the sheep herd of the digital population. People seem to be furnishing their minds with “Like”-buttons where there are none. The immediate, unmitigated response of “liking” something, whatever it may be, is like a knee-jerk reflex. As empty and complacent as the broadcaster needs the audience to be in order to tube feed them with the following piece of prêt-a-porter culture.

“Ekman’s Triptych” is, or at least should theoretically be, the perfect starting point for a discourse on popular culture. Countless are the times and hints, where Ekman almost seems to be chastising the audience with the effects of entertainment – and their relation to it. The three-piece-show, where each part carefully examines modern attitudes towards entertainment is as balanced as it is nominal in setting the stage in the mind of the audience, never for a second letting go of vision or excellence of performance. The minimalistic, deconstructivist portrayal of near-Lynchian ruination in the third act, offsetting the unadulterated ecstasy of the first, should be studied in detail. It is as much a foreboding as it is a factual warning.

In essence, art and culture is one tough mistress. Once you get past the universal lie society tells the limited of mind: that everything is relative (nothing is relative, there are only badly stated premises) and that they may safely rest upon their taste as the sole judge of “good”, “mediocre” or “bad” – we’re left with the fact that the more you know, the more diverse your disciplines, the better your tools for understanding the world will be. To the educated, the world speaks in a different, more fulfilling way. As it does to those who are brave enough to un-zone themselves from the everyday necessity of tunnel vision.

Even if the fundamental function of a critic is flawed, and on top of that we’re left with critics who seem to lack tools with which to do the actual critique, the truth about art is brutally simple: You need to learn about it yourself, and you will need to take a long, winding and wonderful journey to be able to catch its signals and subtleties.

A eager viewer, a traveler of art, will transcend taste. He will leave it at the door in favor of experience.

Ekman’s Triptych is a wonderful place to discover upon that journey. Regardless of where the traveler might be in his personal odyssey of the discovery of art.

The 18th century Dandies – history and literature will tell you, were, amongst other things, very much about cultivating equal parts extravagant fashion, an air of careless richesse (inherited, stolen or simulated), a flair for intellectual jousting, a taste for more or less refined melancholy (often dangerously perching on downright whining) and an Balzacian, self-reproaching, emotional detachment. Being dandy was about being rebellious in style. And one chose whatever “style” said rebellion would be best expressed in. A proper Dandy seemed not to care how many people he offended, but at the same time could not exist without the scandalised crowd – so a sly eye on the effects was vital. The paradox between the two is what allowed the Dandy his substance.

Much like the hipsters of today then, right? The ones we see carefully leading their fixed gear bicycles (no proper hipster would ever try riding it in public – imagine the shame and loss of prestige would it be formally known that said person actually hasn’t understood the physics of it) to the ecologically correct grocery store – certainly by way of just-right-dirty-cafe (of the not-so-franchise-variety) and wearing the Ultimate Ironic T-shirt.

They’re also about fashion, in an unsavoury, unfashion-i-dont-care-way. They’re also about cultivating the detached emotion while outwardly exhibiting “happiness”, or “irony” or some other, easily simulated emotion that in no way has to be explained save the fact that it exists. I’m sure you know the kind. At least if you live in a fairly large city. Large enough to allow bike lanes and several cafes.

How come then that absolutely nothing – a big, dry hollow zero – seems to come out of the Hipster Movement whereas its 18th century counterpart managed to produce a very interesting body of work? No great literature, no amazing poetry, no worthwhile music, no agenda except for the adopted one, no formal stance on the Arts, no material that analyses anything save itself?

Worse still – an intellectual vacuum is created where the modern hipster will leave behind him (or her, though hipster females tend to teeter on the fine edge between salope and chienne thus placing them in another category altogether – that of the unpaid sex worker) – a seemingly endless wake of “ironic” photography portraying their disdain for everyone and everything, huge bar bills, flavourless and egocentric blog posts and just about any other thing that will record how it is to be young and carefree.

Apart from the lack of acumen, there is also one other distinct difference between the dandy of today and of yore: The modern variety suffers from an almost hostile view towards truth and reason. The fake is better than the real, the imagined and invented is valued above the honest. There were tendencies towards this with the 18th century crowd as well – but never due to what I presume are the modern reasons of lack of effort, discipline and perhaps even something more unflattering: the simple fact that, frankly, most modern hipster-dandies have in their lifetimes achieved the sum total of a staggering nothing. No wonder that they prefer the fluffy comfort of imagined, pink clouds. Learning, doing, and achieving things is after all rather hard work. And that is not a modern concept at all.

A Swedish blog, Highbrow (sic!) portrays this beautifully in a (presumably) meta-ironic post. A picture of a typical hipster nobody taken somewhere in a public place (is it a bar?) – along with the caption: “What are you?”, followed by the laconic answer, “I’m young”.

On the money. You’re young. And nothing else. At all. Presumably ever – as young doesn’t really denote an actual age anymore. Though I’d agree that by and large, that’s a good thing – if you’re prepared to look past the sad fact that people are likely to live longer and thus cause far more nuisance that they would had their lives ended sooner.

Aforementioned blog also makes elegantly crude fun of the hipster tendency to associate himself with anything with even the smallest whiff of vintage academia, preferably of Ivy League variety. This is where the real comedy starts for people witnessing the movement and have any kind of decent education: The hollowed out shell of the modern dandy has taken every external attribute and matched it to no form of content except the recycling of one-liners, stolen ideas and a very brief understanding of what someone who in fact has an education should have a grasp of. In other words, purchasing a fixed gear bike and and a (ironic) tweed suit is likely to do a lot for your image – but next to nothing for your education. Yet, in our modern world – they are virtually interchangeable.

At least as long as the impostor is not challenged with having to display the knowledge of the air he pretends. Which, in turn, is not likely to happen since modern dandies are (much like their historical counterparts) a rather unsociable lot and prefer to rub backs with like minded, nay, like-looking, individuals.

True comedy indeed, then: The text book equivalent of the Imbecile (or courtly Fool), walking in the clothes of the Scholar. And it is as (involuntarily) funny, as it is inevitable.

Branding – the branch of marketing concerned with creating an image – is constantly looking for new areas to exploit and new victims on which to re-package and furnish ready-wear and other such, very important consumer trinkets. While certainly healthy for the GNP – assumably highly detrimental to both mind and (actual) academia alike. Point illustrated in one of more misled campaigns of the Swedish advertising year: The (ehum) – rowing race between two of the more expensive Swedish private schools that for lack of actual academic merit shall stay nameless (a state probably constant until the inevitable collapse of the solar system) – sponsored by the Swedish impostor brand: Gant.

True meta-comedy indeed: Two sets of teams, as furnished economically as lacking in talent and wit – sponsored by a brand who’s marketing directors are presumably wetting their chinos by the prospect of upmarketing stale apparel previously favoured by 80-something’s to a younger, more discerning crowd. All neatly coloured in the shades of English rowing teams of former times.

It has, incidentally, previously been argued that Gant’s wear is ideal for older men since the hues in which the clothes are produced are second to none in hiding the consequences of a prostate problem. Spelling it out: Pee yourself in a pair of Gant chinos and your mates are none the wiser.

Though one really can’t blame Gant. With a dying demographic, what is one to do? Apart from trying to peddle the stuff to someone else, of course. And as previously noted; it’s a charm for the Swedish GNP.

And so we come full circle. The market, being the market, catches a trend and fuels the already hollow hipster movement, throwing it a spin or two in the barrel of fashion and in turn producing a second generation of hipster, those that did not catch on in the first place – ending up with an even more colourless gang of sad customers, likely to reproduce the chain reaction even further down the economical food chain.

Brilliant!

So, for the purpose of readability in this brief article, I will refrain from quoting philosophers, prominent marketing professionals, media gurus, notable PR-people and postmodern academics whos views, theories and joint knowledge I could have deliberately inserted in whatever I am about to present in an effort to further my own opinion. I’ll simply not do it this time and you’re going to have to trust me in not doing so.

Setting the scene

Last week a tragedy occured in central Stockholm. A young boy of a mere thirteen years plunged to his own death while “touristing” in one of the cities many underground canals. He had payed a small amount to another boy who, acting as guide, took the former on a stroll through the forbidden (and forbidding) grounds. In the process something went wrong, the young boy slipped to his death and the older, the guide – simply took off, presumably fearful of facing the consequences (a lead motife it will turn out, as it were in this moral tale). He still hasn’t surfaced to this date and the police have little hope of him ever doing so. The dead boy was somehow found and hauled out of the deep drop. I’m not familiar with the exact details of the scene, but there you go. These are the irreputable facts.

Now – media, being media, quickly caught up with the story and it was indeed front page news for a couple of days. Bereft parents were interviewed while concerned city officials and other major players presented their views on the tragic situation – police waving the forbidding stick and the men in charge of security shaking their heads, calling urban exploration a global problem. You get the idea.

Though, what at first glance looked like a freak accident quickly found another avenue for investigation. The setting, a closed off underground canal of some sort, also happened to be a hotspot for the many Urban Explorers that, as a pasttime and passion – visit places just like this particular site. A swift, but not necessarily fair – connecting of the dots all but blamed the UE-movement for inspiring the boy to head off on this fatal adventure.

Somehow, the reporter covering the story for one the tabloids, presumably after some online research, found an internet forum, 28dagarsenare.se (a reflection and play on the name of the english UE-site, 28dayslater.co.uk), where one of the Swedish authorities on Urban Exploration presides as moderator. Jan Jörnmark has written a number of excellent and hugely entertaining books on the subject and is more or less associated with the phenomenon of UE in Sweden.

Furthermore, his view are held in high regard by both readers and probably a great many practitioners of Urban Exploration. Mr. Jörnmark was interviewed in connection to the event and gave off a concerned and very correct and admirably presented statement. Kudos to him.

Pre-emptive strike opportunity lost

In spite of my many other more urgent interests, I’ve always kept a keen, boyish in truth – I suppose, interest on Urban Exploration and, so naturally, this piece of news immediately caught my eye. I concluded that if Mr. Jörnmark was interviewed, chances are that the forum, mentioned in the article – was more or less being raided by media and public alike.

Being a part of the all-pervasive communications industry, its my day-to-day job to navigate my clients through the murky and dangerous waters of public affairs, media exposure and press management – on and more often then not, offline.

In short, and against better judgement, I decided to openly write down a few suggestions to the management of the forum on how to deal with the media. Simple things like arranging a decent FAQ on how to practice UE safely, pulling together a special page for the press with edited details regarding UE and its practitioners, including some useful facts; and the like. The basic stuff for making the job of understanding easy for hard-pressed journalists. While in no way claiming that my advice is a panaceum for all media ills, or even the one rightful path, I did honestly believe that I pitched in an effort to help the forum out of an ill-boding situation.

Because as far as casual advice goes, it is a fact of our overexposed society that there is no better place to hide than in plain view. If you want to disappear your colors have to blend in. You need to inform the press properly if you want them off your back – and you have to do this in a prearranged pattern that they’re likely to understand the contents of without pressing you further for what might not even be a story. This is not selling out and it is not an invasion in any way. Its an informational hygiene that you either adapt to, or stand the risk of misinterpretation. It is the way the game is played if the game is to be played successfully. A pre-emptive strike, as it were.

The response

Not surprisingly, reactions to my suggestions were rather on the negative side. Some members acknowledged the need to communicate with the media and at least partly concurred, but the response from the majority quickly depreciated into less eloquent and at times even unpleasant personal attacks on me (and not my case) followed by a torrent of denials dismissing the  necessity of communication.

A heated debated followed shorty after, with members adding input in the neighbourhood of: “we’re not responsible for the actions of others, all you need is common sense”, “how can we be blamed for something that happens outside of the forum”, “we’re not an official club, we don’t need a spokesperson”, “let’s turn off the Google indexing so that visitors won’t find us again”, “lets close the forum to the public”, “go f*ck yourself and wave your credentials elsewhere”, “lets forget the whole thing, it will blow over, stay calm”, “this isn’t a problem, we all know how media works”, etc.

In all fairness there were moderating voices but these quickly drowned in the deluge of members sticking their heads in the sand or worse, shooting them off in ignorance.

What then, can be learned from this – aside from acknowledging the fact that dishing out unsolicited public relations-advice on the net is not the best pasttime for communication professionals on extended lunchhour breaks?

I began to think through the turns my simple and straightforwardly put suggestion had sparked and found, what I believe to be nothing less than a subculture on the skids.

Dragging subcultures into the open

Urban Explorers, as a demographic, are an industrious, creative, charmingly rebellious – and usually; utterly irresponsible lot. Incidentally, much like any denizens of just about any internet forum out there. But perhaps in this case, even more dangerously so.

Urban exploring is by no means a new phenomena, and while it is not this articles place to examine it in any scienfic manner (moreover, I promised in the beginning that I would refrain from quoting outside sources) – it can be useful to know that sometime during the industrial age man found enough time to reflect on his past, and indeed, become nostalgic of it. Nostalgia, in its purest form – is a ridiculous, cloying and unworthy pasttime for thinking individuals. It is often worsened yet and preceded by its irrational little sister: sentimentalism – the cheapest of human emotions.

Curiosly, Urban Exploring has dubious roots in para-urban exploring – but without said sentimentalism. Romantics have since the dawn of time reveled in the reminiscing of old ages by means of visiting ruins and other man-made relics – more often than not, situated outside settlements.

It is not until fairly recently that UE has exploded onto the scene as the number of relics have grown exponentially. Abandoned factories, sanatariums, powerplants and other colorful, rusty remnants of a rampant globalisation have for years littered both urban and rural landscapes as the ever-advancing armies of trade and capital changed the parameters of survival faster than society could adapt to them.

Over the years – rusty, decaying buildings have attracted both the casual onlooker as well as the amateur photographer. But there have been those that were not satisfied with a perpetual look on the subject matter: Urban Explorers often probe these old sites and buildings for motives of their own. Why? Well – for one, the sheer joy of it. In this shrinking world where borders fall in onto themselves and any place is reachable (in some manner) with a few clicks, it is refreshing to find a place where few set their foot. A simpler explanation would be that humans like to explore. For joy and for discovery alone. Or perhaps for the sheer, rebellious hell of it. After all, any place with restriced access is as much a provocation to trespass as it is a deterrant against trespassing. Great many of these places are, in spite of often being locked into legal battles, owned by someone or something and not legal grounds for anyone save any (mostly absent) caretakers.

No matter the motive and the pattern of discovery – with the arrival of the internet, urban exploring changed in nature. From a solo, almost boyish adventure, on occasion accompanied by a camera – to a form of sport where the actual discovery goes hand in hand with the documentation of it. A not so unimportant factor in the game of UE-credibility is the attitude and relationship of the discoverer to the object that has been discovered. A “virgin” site, hitherto undiscovered (or at least, documented) is worth a lot more attention from the UE crowd than one that has been visited on numerous occasions. Most practitioners of UE would probably deny the fact if you asked them, but there you go, that’s the game of attitudes. Oft visited sites tend to decay inasmuch as they bear evidence of recent trespasses and their popularity vanes over the time on display.

In time, an entire self-fuelling subculture has spawned around these abandoned, fascinating and often mysterious sites. A subculture like any other, save for one small detail. The whole thing hinges on the fact that publicity, while coveted by our modern explorers – just as fast kills the cat. The more prominent the sites, the faster they drop in popularity.

There are other problems, one of which I’ve already mentioned. Trespassing on these sites is often forbidden by law. While seemingly a small crime, I wonder what sort of complicated stories Urban Explorers tell their insurance companies when they fall through floors in places they should not have been in, incapacitating themselves in the process. One mans personal tragedy becomes anothers financial risk. Or perhaps there are insurances to cover this?

And so we’ve involuntarily arrived at the third factor: safety. Safety, as one can imagine is troublesome at best in these circumstances.

From one aspect, what is dangerous is also interesting and so an intrinsic part of the game, but often the risk just cannot be calculated justly and while there are no official statistics (to my knowledge at least) as to how many of our spirited adventurers actually injure themselves in this cumbersome task of documenting the past – it would be a safe bet to say that it would be quite a few more than had they chosen to cast a glance for afar. Of those personally known to me, all have some sort of painful story to tell in that respect.

The young boy that plunged to his death a few days ago certainly underscores the dangers of urban exploration. Moreover, his death might point to the fact that Urban Exploration has grown itself past the point of the favoured pasttime of a daring few, to the joint responsibility of many. I shall try to explain why.

The fall of  Urban Exploration by way of ignorance

Urban Exploration has become all but an institution. Numerous websites, discussion groups, books, magazine features and all the media coverage your run-of-the-mill cult can carry, coupled with overexploitation of digital technology kills trends quicker than you can say URL. And that is certainly the case with UE. It is no longer an elite wink between a select club but something that is overinformationalised, categorised and pegged down to the last Googled, iPhoned coordinate.

UE needs the limelight so that the members can display their findings, but at the same time, that very same light kills the sport as it is not only based on exclusivity (partly because some of the acts are criminal) but also on exposure of the sites that have been visited and documented. Put simply, when you drag a this said subculture into the light, it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

And a great deal of the responses I got when posting my advice on how to handle this unexpected limelight confirmed this. In fact, some of the responses were not only outrageous but even borderline juvenile. To debunk some of then: Stating that one bears no responsibility as group or individual for publishing information on a forum that could lead to the endangering of others is a blatant declaration of incapacity. Furthermore, referring to the “common sense” of a thirteen year old in the same sentence is a rather serious mistake, especially since it in this case lead to a young mans death. No adult can count on the “common sense” of a child. No one.

A note on the usage of the term “common sense” in debates. “Common sense” is not an indivisable, lucid term and it is only with some difficulty that a group of people can agree on what common sense actually means. While not claiming to have the absolute answer for this, I’ve noticed a sliding scale of the usage of said term in debates and in particular, online debates. Worse yet is the fact that whenever someone refers to “common sense” it is usually to cover up a rather muddy agenda, as if waving the wand of “common sense” would explain and do away with any unpleasant arguments. This, to me at least, represents a form of “magical thinking”, akin to that used by small children and people suffering serious illnesses. Thats why I always prick my ears a bit further whenever I hear the term being used.

As for the argument of waiting for the whole thing to blow over: again, irresponsibility. The problem of accepting that whenever you publish information about a site that could lead to others visiting it, and injuring themselves in the process – you have a moral and ethical (not yet legal, but this can and in most likely probability will change some time in the future) responsibility. It’s the devils prerogative; he can’t push you to commit the crime, but he sure can instill the desire in you to do so yourself. Afterwards, the devil will of course, rid himself of any lingering guilt. After all, it was you who tread those stairs, was it not?

The members of the forum claim, almost in unisom, that they do not need a spokesperson that the media could talk to (I also read that they don’t need help as they already “know” the media, which is not only untrue but shows an apalling lack of judgment. Just because someone is the recipient of media does not make him anything more that just that. A passive recipient. It is a bit like saying that you know how to pilot a plane based on the fact that you fly regularly – as passenger).

Yet again, a mistake and miscalculation. Media has already selected a spokesperson. The only thing that actually mitigates the whole sad, miserable, affair is that the spokesperson is unusually gifted and apt in handling media attention. For the time being it sufficed. Next time – and there most certainly will be a next time (there have already been other cases, but none involving deaths – again, to my knowledge – I have not duly researched this), the UE community might not be so lucky. Already borderline associated with thugs, graffiti-artists and shady activities of less savoury citizens, UE is nothing short of a media-disaster waiting to happen.

The press, being the press, have  jumbled any fringe cultures, subcultures, trends and groupings and made their own interpretation of UE. And a very unfavourable one as thing stand now. Pinning graffiti artists and Urban Explorers in the same group is just not good research – these are almost opposing factions – but in the public eye, they are one and the same.

In the long run, this unwanted and unmitigated attention, coupled with misinterpretations like the one above – might lead to a lobbying for the passing of certain laws (i’m sure you can imagine the nature of those laws), making the blatant displaying of borderline accepted activities a case for the courts, not admiration. Or worse. Any unwanted, unregulated attention calls for greater scrutiny, particularly in our modern society obsessed with the concept of “security”, “fear” and a systematic eradication of “the unknown”. UE as a concept, group or trend, not ready to accept the outcome of its presence in the limelight, and even already crippled by internal disorder amongst members of opposing factions – will suffer the penalty of any quarrelling group: splintering into fractures, each fracture conviced out their right to exist and promote (or not) their own views.

In short, the fall of public UE as they know it.

Lost opportunities

Which is, all in all – rather a shame, really. What makes Swedish UE so interesting (and about the only thing that makes it interesting – our sites are to say the least – not near as impressive as those over in the U.S.A or the European continent even), is its spokesperson: Mr. Jörnmark. He wasn’t the first Urban Explorer to document the decay. He was, however, the first to put them into a real and vivid context. Explaining the process in words (as it happens, by way of his area of expertise, economics) and captivating it in well-taken pictures turned out to be a public success, spawning three volumes of well-recieved books.

For the first time in a long while – modern history came alive in a way that had hitherto not been explored. In succint, wonderfully crafted text Mr. Jörnmark explains the Swedish, and indeed, global history in a captivating and unrelenting fashion.

Apart from being a terrific read, the works of Mr. Jörnmark are followed by a large group of more or less dedicated fans. And so, the phenomena has been outed in a fashion that in hindsight seems unfit considering its main characteristic: being clandestine.

My effort, to show the UE-practictioners of the forum then under pressure, was not aimed at making them more known or forcing them into institutionalisation (that part they’ve managed all too well themselves as I’m sure they are going to realise in the near future) – but was an effort to hide them in plain sight. We do not ask any deeper questions we can easily find the answers to, the modern, popular, mind is simply to… simple for that. This is in particular true of journalists (yes, that was a jibe). It is an unfavourable situation: Exceedingly few members of society have the power to play such sinister havoc with our passion, lives and indeed; secret groupings – as journalists do. Lately, the social media prophets have unsuccessfully tried to claim this crown-and-staff, but as of yet come off as nothing short of loudmouthed clowns. Much to the leering smiles of professional journalists.

The point – was to make sure that UE would attain the status it deserves and once and for all free itself of its murky past. UE can teach us a great deal of things about our recent past that we need to know in order to attain a decent future. Generalising the matter a bit, but only a bit; around the world, the UE culture is nothing more than a uninteresting and unending display of corrosion. Ironically tragic, when speaking of hiding in plain view – the words behind the very visible corrosion, the explanation behind the entropy is almost always much more interesting, crucial even – than most of the substandard Photoshop-damaged, formulaic photography. It almost makes you long for the times when photography and imaging were not a concern for the general public. That however, is a different gripe altogether.

In conclusion, refusing to take responsibility when in public view is both dangerous and naive. When picked up by the media radar you have a choice to play well or to play badly. Not playing is simply not an option. The idea of the format is visibility. And there are simple, almost selfexplanatory rules how to play this game well. Deluding oneself that one can display something, anything, on the public stage and then wash ones hands of any consequence is a failing strategy, and an attitude that the media loves to tear apart. In full view, of course.

The only other, logical, consequence would be to disappear from the public eye once media attention subsides. It will certainly not undo the bad press, but it will not provide such ample opportunities to make mistakes next time something like the aforementioned tragedy occurs (and it will happen, accidents are patient in nature – much more so than their prey). For all intents and purposes, there are those in the UE community that probably wouldn’t mind slipping back under the radar of media society. Perhaps, that would be for the best. That is however not my case to pass any further judgement upon.

And so, instead of taking a step forward and claiming a rightful place – UE has, as a movement, subculture, hobby – or whatever its dubious, capricious, practitioners would like to call it; proved itself naive, uncapable and to be quite honest, rather uninteresting in their ritualistic narcissicm. There is no standing on the stage and not performing to the rules of the house. Not with the media involved. Try as you might, there is no escaping the laws governing the value of visibility – a value much more liquid and volatile than can be spotted at a glance. Especially so by sticking the proverbial head in the sand.

There is, however, a more troubling and a far more complex issue at hand. The fear that we as a modern civilisation have lost our historical anchor, our historical narrative is affecting us in many, often adverse, ways. If we settle on the fact that the Bible used to be (in the west) our cultural framework, our narrative and that this narrative has over the centuries been supplemented and amended as humanity reached conclusions that were in effect contradictory to it; it can also be concluded that our sum of knowledge is the sum of our findings. Be it from philosophy to history and over to the natural sciences. Every culture needs a book of creation and every culture, be it east or west, has one. Note that it doesn’t need to be an issue of religion, which is essentially a mediator between you and the narrative (and as you reach higher levels of knowledge in history and science, usually a useless one at that). Do not make the mistake of confusing the practice of the narrative with its task, i.e explaining why we’re here in the first place.

In the west, we have demolished our faith in the narrative without ever really replacing it with a sound alternative. Quite simply, we as people are far less sure about who we are and where we came from – then we ever used to be. Couple this with the (often faulty) onslaught of information that the Internet (amongst others) brings us and we are truly at risk of severing all ties to whatever history and science could teach us. For lack of a joint belief or consensus, we create our own stories, our own narrative. Even if the results are nothing short of catastrophic. See, for example, of how media has drained what used to be the symbols of our civilisation of any real meaning. Everything can and will be a joke in AD-land. Satan being used to sell soft drinks? No problem. Newton on a pack of chewing gum? Hey, why not, maybe someone actually heard of the guy?

What has in essence happened is that we no longer live in a culture, we live in an economy. It is evident in the way that we percieve values and transmit them. Just about anything has an economical value and if it hasn’t it is either inconsequential or worse, threatening. Culture is looked upon with much suspicion and what everyone seems to know about it is that it usually “does’nt pay off much”, sneering at its practitioners that at best can hope to perform like dancing bears in the pinnacle of Economys own translation of culture: TV (and, the Net).

When reviving culture – or practising it classically, one is often assaulted with the clever, but essentially faulty argument of: “Why should we listen to dead white males?”, thus putting a gender and class obfuscation on the whole matter. It is a rethoric of the masses and quite alarming as it puts the core of the matter out of focus. Why? Because, class and gender aside (there are ways to explain it, naturally, but that is not the aim of this short text) – we used to have a civilisation built on the best minds that mankind could muster (never mind how these minds were selected!). The fact that these minds are no longer interesting or worse, labeled as “boring” (because a well brought up citizen consumes and wishes to be amused, not taught) has tipped the whole discussion into a sidestreet where those  Judeo-Christian symbols have lost the power to unite.

And thus, each person, each cluster of people, each clan in fact, has to find their own symbols and icons. Sometimes in faux religion, sometimes in pop culture and sometimes in nothing at all. The ball is out there for grabs and it’s up to anyone’s prowess as salesperson to convince the audience as to their particular brand of “truth”.

This, however, is nothing new and we’ve been living with the effects of this ever since Mcluhan first wrote his groundbreaking work. The process has been further described by Postman. The latter also offered a sort of solution for the modern mind.

What IS new, is that the explosion of social media has transferred from being a simple buzz to becoming an accepted form of learning. Social media is educative media in as much as it is a new way of learning: Tribal learning. We trust our tribe to tell us the truth, however vague, unresearched and bland this truth might be. And however cultureless.

This is what happens when you cut a civilisation adrift, far from any narrative that could hold it together or perhaps explain matters more clearly. We, citizens of the Net, find our symbols or make them up from haphazard and superficial result from a search engine. We believe what others say and purchase goods that others believe in. It is a vicious circle that erodes away on the foundation of why and what a little each time we choose to believe (or purchase) something “new”. Economical growth is what defines our existence and the illuminati are those that purchase and consume in the finest of ways.

There is essentially, nothing wrong in consumption. There is essentially nothing wrong with (true) freedom or financial growth for that matter either. It enables us wonderful things. There is however, something terribly wrong with not bothering to understand, on a deep, human level, what it is we are consuming, for what purpose and better still: That we did not come from buying things, we came from a line of ancestors who carried with them the idea of humanity. Not humanity as a function of economy alone, but as a product of history, science, culture AND economy.

I recently visited Rome, Italy. Having high hopes for the Italians as the cradle of European (however bloodthirsty) industry and civilisation both historically and thereafter, I was much disappointed of the state of affairs in old Rome. I recall that after WWII, the Italians, however poor, drew on the fact that they were, historically, a rich country. Culture, again. They knew that they had the works of Raphael in the Sistine chapel and they knew that they were from a country that gave birth to both Da Vinci and Vasari as well as countless other giants of that calibre. It did not matter much that poverty was everywhere because they had a form a dignity that allowed them a slow rebuild without lament.

It turns out however, that culture, has lost its meaning when finally wrung through the mill of television. And what’s even more apalling, Berlusconi-controlled television. Their icons and symbols have been replaced by cheap, mindnumbing propaganda and TV-shows with lightly clad women in place of debate and insight. Geographically, dead centre in that once proud capital, stands a fascist monstrosity called the parliament building. Drawing on the power and repute of old Rome it looks like something Walt Disney would have designed in spiteful caricature of an ancient culture. Berlusconi continues – applauded, and unhindered whatever tradition any fascist ever came up with.

Italy, and the Italians of today struggle with the same societal myopia that pervades much of the west. Once again, cut adrift from a cultural, narrative framework – we’re left with nothing but economy and no means to interpret it properly. Or go beyond the simple transaction of sale and purchase.

And so, it seems that the benefits of an updated, albeit classical education, are once again important. Perhaps more important than ever. In order to consume, citizen, you should really take it upon yourself to answer the question: “Where did you come from?”

The effect is that  cut adrift from richer, intercultural and deeper interpretations crowds will like anything, listen to anything and in fact do anything. Art, in turn, is banalised by either catering to the critic (and thus, public) mind by construcing sub-par work on the pre-approved themes of Gender, Race and Class – or, in puerile denial of fact will tend to gravitate towards easy answers such as chock value, aeasthetics of transfer, or worse.

The critics, and the hive mind of the media (much fuelled by… well, the so called online social revolution) undermine the aesthetic value of art, killing the first impressions of the audience by superimposing petty political interpretations on it. In turn, this turns art into a meaningless, heritage-free babble (remember the renaissance? no? neither do the artists…). This is true in much of the current output of theatre, film, music, drama, literature. Cut adrift from a native structure, art becomes an orphan. A sitting duck waiting for orders. This is a much more useful tool than say, censorship. The latter at least is honest in its intents. Political correctness for its own sake is a clandestine tactic aiming at a far worse outcome – namely, self-censorship.

Piecemeal, art critics, commentators and modern intellectuals are deconstructing our carefully and painstakingly collected cultural heritage, paving the road forward with unreason. I shiver whenever I hear our old masters reinterpreted through this modern narrow prism. A renaissance painting becomes racist (or serves other purposes, depending on the agenda. It might be pro-sexual, for instance), a 18th-century play is turned into a social class commentary and in just about on every occasion, the fairer sex is for some reason of course violated.

What is not said is that some of art is open to interpretation. Sure. Some of it, however – is not. You need to know your culture and you need to know your background. This is your passport to the world of critique. In order to have an opinion you need a solid foundation of knowledge. Personal taste should be a function of knowledge, not the other way around!

By viewing art, and culture, through a narrow, politically set agenda – you are led to believe that taste, just pure taste, is enough. And certainly. When you’ve arrived at all the wrong conclusions to begin with, it doesn’t really matter what you think. Therefore you are allowed to say it. Encouraged, in fact. I’m sure that future artists will have a online commentary of their works, hardwired to the very clay they sometimes work in.

Good art is seldom self-referential. The same is true for critique. Good art is seldom “relative”. The term of relativity is fairly new in both art and conceptual theory. You need to know at least this before making any lofty claims of interpretation. Any pompous form of obfuscation then filtered through the modern trinity of Gender-Race-Class is a dead giveaway that you are witnessing a hoax.

Furthermore, note the way critics and media are imposing the superiority of emotions over intelligence and reason. How one feels is advocated over how one reasons. Once the audience is firmly set in this belief, they will swallow just about anything, because should one critisise anything there is always emotion to fall back on. X is valid because Y feels that it is valid. Looking back on two thousand years of cultural theory just 50 or 60 years ago, a statement like that would be laughable. Today, it is the given truth.

Feelings are important as guides towards reason, not the sole tool of it. Sometimes, feelings are the end result of reason, yet, still not the sole tool of the process of forming an opinion. Western civilisation is on a slipperly slope of intellectual incompetence; perhaps, for geopolitical reasons if no others,  just when we need it the most. Obscurity gets away with nonsense, and the public holds it for truth.

A feature of the modern critic (by now you understand that “critic” means just about any politician, media profile, etc) is the shameless and selfabsorbed reference to science. Making claims that sound researched, or are only superficially researched is often given in abscence of proper evidence (amuse yourself by counting references such as, “the study said”, “in the poll”, etc). Long established rules of what counts for scientifically valid  results become the function of any PR-firm memo or would-be critic online commentary – all the while having nothing at all to do with any real findings, or properly researched issues.

Finally, these mechanics of unreasonable thought enable would-be neo-dandy art critics (no names, this is not the evening press) to dish out hollow, superficial advice to artists and their curators – and get away with it. A crime, if there ever was one. And  far more serious than meets the audience at a passing glance. What goes on in art, is only a sideshow to the heavy damage sustained to western culture.

We need to be level-headed and careful in our judgments – and not give in to feelings as sole means of interpretation.

I was quickly proven wrong. Public Enemies is Michael Mann at his mature best. No one can portray a manhunt quite the way Mann does. That much became obvious with Heat and later on in Collateral. To name but two. Heedful of aesthetics, precise camera timing and hard-as-nails dialogue, Mann can put together a modern noir and give the american antihero a heart and face like few directors before him.

However, what left the most lasting impression after having watched Public Enemies is that Mann has succeeded in portraying John Dillinger as a sort of premodern romantic gangster; while almost completely draining the spectacular firefights and carchases out of any… spectacularity. They’re certainly beautifully filmed, but they drip of tragedy from the very beginning to the very end. We know Dillinger and his gang are doomed from scene one. There are no happy endings.

Given Manns talent, it would have been very easy to portray Dillinger as a sort of joker went criminal mastermind and leave it at that (or add the standard plottwisting antics of overhyped hacks like Joel Coen). Mann goes further. He takes away all of the joy and gloating out of watching longcoated men double-wield Tommyguns out of black, polished cars (the critics called this movie, “cold”, without understanding what they were watching). He doesn’t celebrate the gangster, thus both managing to instill a number of sides of human nature we seldom see in Hollywood type crooks and simultaneously subtly underplay the popularity wielded by Dillinger, even prior to his being shot down by FBI agents.

A number of directors have tried to pull this off before, including Coen; “Millers Crossing” and Sam Mendes pathetic rendition of a very well written graphic novel, “Road to Perdition”. It would be Mann, however, who would finally succeed. And he did it on the unlikely theme that if America turned Dillinger into a rock star myth (the way that historyless and myth-starved America is so very prone to) – Mann turned him back into a human.

And that may well be because Michael Mann is so much more of an artist-auteur than he is film director. And John Dillinger, for his part, was far more a modern day PR-man than he was criminal (oh yes).

The ending of the film would deserve a chapter of its own, given both the excellent buildup and Manns decision to switch to 35mm film. The way in which Mann explores the closing minutes of Dillingers life, as the latter examines and comes to terms with his own life through art (he watches Manhattan Melodrama, a film at that time already loosely based on Dillingers story) – and then finalises it as it ends, petering out on the sidewalk outside of the theatre, should be revered for its precise cultural commentary. Again, only an arist can put it so succintly.

“Pack up all my care and woe,
Here I go,
Singing low,
Bye bye blackbird,
Where somebody waits for me,
Sugar’s sweet, so is she,
Bye bye
Blackbird!”