When Will We Leave the 20th Century? An Interview with Kafka’s Ape.
Written into life by Franz Kafka, nowadays the legendary primate has had enough with impersonating humans. Oscar Mole caught up with the hairy recluse.
OM: So what about that famous report you gave to an Academy? Captured on the Gold Coast and imprisoned in a cage, you had been taken to Europe where your only route of escape was to become a walking, talking, spitting, hard-drinking member of the human race.
APE: Recall that when my report was given in 1917, the first world war was raging. Millions of human beings had been coerced into an orgy of killing and proving Homo sapiens to be vastly superior to gorillas and chimps when it comes to mass murder. Even then I felt ambivalent about becoming human.
At the time, I had no other way out, yet I had to come up with one, because I could not go on living without it. That was the point of the report. I was worried that the Academy would not fully understand what I meant by a ‘way out’. I used the phrase in its most ordinary and fullest sense. I deliberately did not say freedom. As I said in the report: ‘freedom is something that men all too often dupe themselves with’.
What I had discovered was that my jailors needed to see me as non-human in order to justify locking me up. They had to believe I was inferior, so my way out was to become their equal. I mimicked my guards, studied their mannerisms and behaviour. How could they keep something locked up that looked and acted just like they did?
I mastered their language. After I was out I was able to move between different roles I encountered in human society with ease. I knew I could go anywhere, do anything, just by impersonating the right person. Even the Academy wanted to let me in.
[Read more →]
As we did a year ago we look at which articles were the most read ones of the past year (online):
2012 was the best year for datacide online so far with the most views/reads and November 2012 was the best month in the history of the site since it was launched at the beginning of 2009 (replacing the old archive site and the temporary blog). Considering that datacide 11 came out in February 2011 and the next issue only in October 2012 and, connected to that, the fact that only very little material was posted during 2012 (19 posts) this is a really good result. It shows that more people find out about the magazine and the rich archive of articles besides the new additions. It’s not surprising that most articles read online in 2012 were from issue 11 or earlier as the majority of texts from number 12 are not even online yet and the ones that are were posted in November or December.
1. Dance before the Police come by Neil Transpontine (from Datacide 11). This one shot up in the statistics when a Guardian article by Dan Hancox from last July linked to it. But it was much read before then, having already been at number 6 of the most read articles of 2011, obviously touching on one of the key themes of datacide.
2. You’re too Young to Remember the Eighties – Dancing in a different time by DJ Controlled Weirdness (from Datacide 10) A slow burner that has attracted a lot of readers over the last year, becoming one of the most read articles on the site, despite – as far as we can tell – not being linked to from any “prominent” sites. Nice.
3. Dope smuggling, LSD manufacture, organised crime & the law in 1960s London by Stewart Home (from Datacide 11), up from number 9 of the previous year’s most read. This is also the article version of Stewart’s talk at the 2008 datacide conference in Berlin.
4. COIL – Interview from 1986 plus Introduction by Christoph Fringeli/John Balance. Being linked to from Wikipedia and the official Coil site this is the most read post on datacide attracting a steady readership. Somewhat ironic considering the interview was done over a decade before datacide started before it was re-published in issue 9 (incidentally the issue with the lowest print run of datacide).
5. From Subculture to Hegemony: Transversal Strategies of the New Right in Neofolk and Martial Industrial by Christoph Fringeli, which was the most read piece in 2011 (from Datacide 11). Of course we are wondering who reads this and related articles – Anti-Fascists? Fans of industrial music? Fans of Evola or Jünger?
6. WE MEAN IT MAN: Punk Rock and Anti-Racism – or: Death In June not Mysterious. Stewart Home’s article on Death In June from Datacide 7.
7. What the Fuck? – Operation Spanner by Jo Burzynska from Datacide 2 – and thus the oldest article originally published in Datacide in this list. Was already number 7 in the 2011 chart. Many visitors seem to be coming from Clarisse Thorn’s blog.
8. The Brain of Ulrike Meinhof by Christoph Fringeli from Datacide 9, last year’s number 8 as well.
9. Shaking The Foundations: Reggae soundsystem meets ‘Big Ben British values’ downtown by John Eden from Datacide 11, the second most read article of 2011 still receiving a fair amount of hits.
10. “LONG LIVE DEATH” – on Pasolini’s Salo by Howard Slater from Datacide 6 and one of his brilliant film reviews which also include an article about John Carpenter, the Western and others.
11. Communisation theory and the question of fascism by Cherry Angioma, already a much discussed and re-blogged post from the latest issue, Datacide 12, addressing important issues of the current debates in the communist movement.
12. The Dog’s Bollocks – Vagina Dentata Organ and The Valls Brothers (Interview) by John Eden. Exclusive interview with Jordi Valls that comes second in the only recently posted articles from the latest paper issue, and will no doubt be a contender along with “Communisation Theory…” for the 2013 charts…
Of course we know that by posting this list there will be a tendency that those article will be read again while others that would also be worth a read might be overlooked. Hence here some more or less random links to other articles with the explicit invitation to investigate further by browsing the site:
E.g. the classic Post-Media Operators by Howard Slater/Eddie Miller/Flint Michigan from Datacide 2, or its follow-up text Post-Media Operators – Sovereign & Vague from Datacide 7. Or what about Matthew Hyland’s New Age Policing – Biology is Ideology from the same issue, or maybe The World Made Flesh by Matt Fuller from Datacide 8…?
There are now nearly 300 articles on this site, and the next print issue is being prepared. We have a lot of plans for the future. You can help us realising them sooner rather than later by making a donation or taking out a subscription for 3 issues for 10 euro. Write to (or paypal funds to) datacide(at)c8.com
The passing of time has not been kind to many of the “stars” of industrial music or “extreme culture”. Sought after limited editions often seem limp when finally downloaded, or ossified in expensive box sets. The futile attempts at commercial crossover look embarrassing rather than courageous in retrospect. And I’ve lost count of the people whose revolutionary ideas and references inspired me as a teenager now seem like pantomime versions of themselves.
Over exposure seems to be the main pitfall, and it’s surely no coincidence that the least prolific veteran of the extreme noise/art scenes of the early eighties remains the most interesting.
Jordi Valls worked extensively with both Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse in their earliest incarnations, organising live events for both acts in London and Barcelona.iii
In 1983 he released the first of a series of remarkable albums under the name of “Vagina Dentata Organ”. From the outset VDO’s work was characterised by a minimalistic and surreal approach to field recordings. His debut “Music For The Hashishins: In Memoriam Of Hasan Sabbah” evolved out of the recording sessions for Psychic TV’s classic “Dreams Less Sweet” album. [Read more →]
… And more charts: these were the 10 most read articles on this web site during 2011:
1. From Subculture to Hegemony: Transversal Strategies of the New Right in Neofolk and Martial Industrial by Christoph Fringeli
2. Shaking The Foundations: Reggae soundsystem meets ‘Big Ben British values’ downtown by John Eden
3. Tortugan tower blocks? Pirate signals from the margins by Alexis Wolton
4. We Mean It Man: Punk Rock and Anti-Racism – or, Death In June Not Mysterious by Stewart Home
5.COIL – Interview from 1986 plus Introduction by Christoph Fringeli/John Balance
6. Dance Before The Police Come by Neil Transpontine
7. What The Fuck – Operation Spanner by Jo Burzynska
8. The Brain of Ulrike Meinhof by Christoph Fringeli
9. Dope smuggling, LSD manufacture, organised crime & the law in 1960s London by Stewart Home
10. Battlenoise! Review by Christoph Fringeli
Datacide Eleven
release date: February 2011. 64 pages.
Datacide events, page 3
Nemeton: Political news, page 4
Features
Christoph Fringeli: Hedonism and Revolution: The Barricade and the Dancefloor, page 6
Stewart Home: Dope smuggling, LSD manufacture, organized crime & the law in 1960s London, page 8
John Eden: Shaking the Foundations: Reggae soundsystem meets ‘Big Ben British values’ downtown, page 12
Alexis Wolton: Tortugan tower blocks? Pirate signals from the margins, page 16
Neil Transpontine: Dance before the police come, page 21
Christoph Fringeli: From Subculture to Hegemony: Transversal Strategies of the New Right in Neofolk and Industrial, page 24
Christoph Fringeli: Appendix to “From Subculture to Hegemony”: Metapolitical Strategies of the Nouvelle Droite, page 26
Christoph Fringeli: Appendix to “From Subculture to Hegemony”: Ernst Jünger’s “Waldgang”, page 27
Nemeton: From Conspiracy Theories to Attempted Assassinations: The American Radical Right and the Rise of the Tea Party Movement, page 28
R. C.: How to start with the subject. Notes on Burroughs and the ‘combination of all forms of struggle’, page 37
Fiction
Riccardo Balli: Sonic Fictions, page 40
Dan Hekate: Digital Disease, page 45
Howard Slater: Infra-Noir. 23 Untitled Poems, page 46
Matthew Fuller: Office Work, page 48
Record Reviews, page 52
Matthew Fuller and Steve Goodman: Beat Blasted Planet. An interview with Steve Goodman on ‘Sonic Warfare’, page 58
Terra Audio: “Free Parties”, page 60
Gorki Plubakter: “This is the end… the official ending”, page 61
The Lives and TImes of Bloor Schleppy (11), page 62
Charts, page 63
With 64 pages, this is the biggest issue of datacide yet!
Available now for EUR 4.00 incl. postage – order now by sending this amount via paypal to praxis(at)c8.com, or send EUR 10 for 3 issues (note that currently only issues 10 and 11 are available), but you can also pre-order future issues.
