Monday, September 20, 2010

Interrogation Machine

I read the forward: They Moved the Underground from the Interrogation Machine by Laibach and NSK.
My understanding is that it is about the relationship between social means, the social means being the underground/virtual state and the reality/explicit state.
So for example in music we have pop culture (eg. Yellowcard, Sum 41) on the top in the explicit state, this state is considered to be the reality. and then we have the underground like alternative music (eg. no body knows what these are).
Just because something is happening and you can't see that it's happening doesn't mean that it's not happening.
In Robert Schuman's "Humoresque" piano accompaniment he creates a structured absence by taking out the main melodic line which then needs a virtual supplement to complete the song.
"Modern subject emerges when its objectal counterpart dissapears" - this means that the virtual "inner voice" Schuman created comes from the pianist. For every person playing the song, they will create their own virtual supplement to complete the song.
The virtual reality of the song has a subculture in it, and the subculture is able to be manipulated very easily and therefore the outcome is a completely different explicit state than what was originially written in the song.
This relates to reality like in example of the relationship between homophobia in the army.
Soldiers who are identified as being gay are beaten for being explicitly gay, but there is an implicit subculture which supports a homosexual culture. - in this culture soldiers play practical jokes about being gay and it is socially accepted.
The contrast between this sub homosexual culture and the homophobic culture which the public sees on the explicit level are two completely different things.
The title, "they moved the underground" basically sums up how if you want to influence something into reality you have to bring it to the subculture, the virtual state.

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