Futurism
Luigi Russolo’s ‘Futurist Manifesto’, may be viewed as optimistic in the context of a hypothetical post-racial, post-colonial, apolitical society, however, given the dominant culture that surrounded it – fascism. The ever alluring promise of advancement echoes the present day technoimperalist obsession with delusions of transcending human nature and the ephemeral body, conceptions of hyper-optimized beings with access to complex knowledge, creating intellectual hierarchies, a new upper class distinct from the general public. Those who are resistant to the so-called “avant-garde” and embrace the “archaic” are subject to social segregation, but who decides what is “archaic”. Considering the use of futurist (schools of) thought to uphold and perpetuate fascist ideologies, I am sceptical about the liberatory potential of futurism as a movement.
Having said this, I do believe there is potential for us to use futurist thought to critique societal structures. In this instance, I would like to make the case for afrofuturism. In the text Russolo claims that “from the beginning, musical art sought out and obtained purity and sweetness of sound”. Russolo’s desire to subvert this standard and shred the sonic veil of “purity” that obscures the violence that society is built upon. In my interpretation, this calls into question society’s fixation on harmony, whether or not it truly exists, and what it may be distracting us from seeing/hearing.
If the “evolution of music is comparable to the multiplication of machines”, an afrofuturist sonic practice might seek to highlight the discordant nature of modern life – how African flesh is inseparable from technology, and through capitalism has become technology itself. What sounds are produced by this so-called body-machine? Here might lie possibility for dissolution of Western conceptions of rhythm, melody and tone, the dissolution of “normativity”.
In a discussion on ‘sonic cyberfeminism’ recorded at Wysing Arts Centre, one of the speakers is critical of the “post-identity dreams of cyberspace, the racist histories of techno-modernity and the invisible labour that props up techno cultures”. When analysed through an afropessimist cyberfeminist lens one can see that there is an inextricable link between critiques of modernist/colonialist/futurist thought
In ‘The Soundscapes of Modernity’, Emily Ann Thompson states that “clear, direct and non-reverberant sound, this modern sound was easy to understand, but had little to say about the places in which it was produced and consumed“.
Q; Is there a point at which tradition and evolution can coexist and relieve each other of their limitations?