K Punk: classic or dud?

i was at uni with Mark, and tho i don't remember us crossing paths i think it's likely that i did and i've just lost it along with most of the rest of my memories. which is apt i guess.

Fuck. Just read on Twitter. RIP.

Really sad about this. I used to enjoy being challenged by his blog posts, when I cared about such things. And I really did. And he was really unique.

Never got around to reading capitalist realism but I liked the Michael Jackson book he put together

I was debating the other day on whether to preorder his new book that comes out at the end of the month. I remember when Google Reader still existed and checking for updates on a handful of blogs was part of my daily routine, it was a good day when he'd posted something new. I'd usually put it to the side until I had the time to sit and give his writing my full attention.

Yeah I read his blog pretty religiously for some time. This is just terrible news.

RIP. Used to read his blog religiously, even if I didn't always follow/agree.

http://www.factmag.com/2017/01/14/mark-fisher-k-punk-capitalist-realism-has-died/

His wife, Zoë Fisher, confirmed his death on her personal Facebook page, saying he had taken his own life.

Excellent interview from 2014. http://www.neromagazine.it/n/?p=20620

Ahh fuck, so terrible to hear this. RIP

Oh no.

RIP, this is awful news. I always got a lot out of his writing.

that nero interview is good. if there are any other good interview links post them here. he was swell in conversation.

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2017/01/rip-mark-fisher_14.html

http://www.dissensus.com/showthread.php?t=13999

https://itself.blog/2017/01/14/mark-fisher/

http://rougesfoam.blogspot.com/2017/01/negativity-not-pessimism-rip-mark-fisher.html

https://www.facebook.com/johnfoxxandthemaths/posts/1708297872529197

it's really striking how many people there are saying that reading his blog was a formative experience for them

Through twitter I have been surprised at the range of people saying he was a big deal for them. Capitalist Realism has made quite an impact.

I just read capitalist realism over the break. Good read, rip

xp it's apparently sold an obscene number of copies for what it is, into the 10,000s.

his writing on mental health in recent years was really remarkable.

This is a big blow. His blog was formative and inspiring for me as well, for both theory and his ability to weave (pop) culture into his ideas and writing.

Had just ordered his latest book.

David Stubbs remembrance in combination with a previously unpublished interview with Agata Pyzik:

http://thequietus.com/articles/21572-mark-fisher-rip-obituary-interview

owen hatherley:

http://nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/imet-mark-for-first-time-in-pub-in.html

It's not really the right time, but I wonder if he knew what effect his work had had/was having? What would that knowing have looked like, by which I mean, how do any of us measure what we've achieved? Ah, christ. It's such a damn shame.

That Hatherley piece is excellent, as is Adam Harper's.

http://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.com/2017/01/vale-mark-fisher.html

I am grateful to Mark for being one of the very first people to take an interest in my writing. By this time I had already started blogging, but it made me feel like it was something worth doing, that it could be made to matter. I am far from the only person who felt this way. Douglas Murphy: ‘Without him and the other theory bloggers, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to even begin writing’. Evan Calder Williams: ‘Reading k-punk was formative to me, to why I wanted to write online, in hopes that other people who I didn't know would stumble onto something I wrote and feel like there was a shared world that could be understood and fought.’ Owen again: ‘Speaking to Mark made me a writer who took seriously what I did, as he did.’ Comments like these are the constant of the tributes, in long-form or social media, that have followed the news of Mark’s death, and speak not only of his influence but also of an incredibly generous mind. As Juliet Jacques noted in another lovely tribute: ‘He introduced many of us to each other, and gave us the confidence to combine the cultural, personal, and political in ways that felt thrilling and liberating.’ I can certainly say that, while I never met Mark in person, it was through Mark that I met a number of people whose friendship and comradeship I treasure.

http://www.thewire.co.uk/news/45139/mark-fisher-1968-2017

owen hatherley's tribute is very moving.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/16/mental-health-political-issue here's an example of that mental health writing i mentioned, difficult tho it is to read right now

Repeater Books have tweeted this link to a page where people can donate to a memorial fund to support Fisher's wife and son

https://twitter.com/RepeaterBooks/status/821697398833553408

I missed this thread bump until this morning. This news has broken my heart. Ghosts of my Life was great and his blog pieces on the Fall were unparalleled.

I wish he had been able to continue.

reynolds

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/18/mark-fisher-k-punk-blogs-did-48-politics?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Waiting for what Fisher had to say is a sensation I recall only too vividly. I remember the electric anticipation of those early-to-mid 2000s mornings when the first thing I would do after making some tea was check whether K-punk had posted. K-punk, Fisher’s online alter-ego, was the hub of a blog circuit in which I took part, and which for a glorious moment brought back the intellectual fervour of the postpunk music press.

“It wasn’t only about music and music wasn’t only about music,” Fisher once said of weekly papers such as the NME. “It was a medium that made demands on you.” More than any other blog of that time, K-punk reanimated the polymath, autodidact spirit of the golden-age rock press, where music held a privileged status – but film, TV, fiction and politics were in the mix too.

Reading through these donations has got me tearful for someone I never met but wish I had. Some people have given hundreds others two or three pounds. Amazingly, it's at £18,000 as I write this. That's just incredible.

over £24,000 now, fantastic. considering how it had only been in the last couple of years that he'd managed to get full-time work teaching there's no doubt this was necessary and will be invaluable

I'm going to buy the new book ASAP

looks like the US release is Jan 31

amazon just sent me a message saying it's eligible for day-of-release delivery

alex niven:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/mark-fisher-capitalist-realism-vampire-castle/

xpost it's already in the kindle store so i'm getting that

Man, I would love to have seen where he was going with the whole 'Acid Communism' concept...

Man, I would love to have seen where he was going with the whole 'Acid Communism' concept...

Some hints here perhaps:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deZgzw0YHQI

Albeit operating at a pretty generalised level.

I feel like the 'negativity not pessimism' phrase from Adam Harper's blog post is really key to understanding Fisher's whole enterprise - it's certainly the aspect that took the longest time to 'click' for me personally.

I don't remember starting this thread but I do remember reading a lot of K Punk about a decade ago and I exchanged a few emails with Mark. A lot of his cultural obsessions were mine too and I was intrigued by the hauntology concept.

Capitalist Realism was really good although perhaps a bit overtaken by events now. We longed for the end of ne-capitalism but little did we know that it would be replaced with something even worse.

Very sad to hear of his death, and with his insistence that personalising depression is capitalism's way of absolving itself of the blame, it's hard not to see a kind of world despair in his suicide, regardless of his personal circumstances.

RIP Mark Fisher, we need more thinkers like him

neoliberalism I meant

This was beautiful

http://siobhanmckeown.com/goodbye-dear-friend/

Didn't see this posted yet, but here's Fisher speaking about designer communism at Digital Bauhaus last year: https://vimeo.com/171577013

http://lareviewofbooks.org/article/in-memoriam-mark-fisher/

In fact, I think it’s that effort to establish a new radical public that will be remembered as Mark’s animating objective, and his successes in doing so which will be remembered as his greatest and most important achievement. It’s a common thread in his endeavors from the days of the CCRU, through his curatorship of the “Dissensus” internet forum (an early incubator of the blog scene, which I think was launched in the early 2000s), up to his last activities of recent years. His books were as much as anything adverts for the very idea of critical thought, aimed mainly at an audience that had no prior access to cultural studies or radical philosophy — invitations to a mass of often isolated and oppressed individuals to come and join a great community of liberated thought.

longer version of LARB's jeremy gilbert entry here: https://jeremygilbertwriting.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/my-friend-mark33.pdf

at least i think it's longer, i only checked very quickly: i don't agree with all of it but as well as being very personal and affectionate it's good on some of the flaws in MF's thinking and approach as it evolved

(tho much too uncritical, as everything i've read has been, on his music-writing and thinking, which is absolutely his weakest work -- tho of course also the area i am going to be most territorial about) (one day i might write this up, but not without a lot of thought and self-examination)

we'd kind of fallen out, not bitterly but it felt a bit irreparably, for reasons it seems otiose to rehearse here and now… i've thought about him every day since he died

i should read (and reread part) of that when home from work

on a related note, i was especially queasy at the idea of a need for "left accelerationism" someone was arguing for on twitter the other day. just, no

http://blissout.blogspot.com/2017/10/leaving-some-signs-now-legend.html

In a way, it's a shame Burial stopped doing the interviews - he was almost born to do them, even more than make music! He's better at describing his own music and motives than any of his critics, except K-punk himself. I remember Mark telling me after he'd done the interview that he couldn't believe his own ears - the stuff that Burial was coming out with was so poetic and evocative, too good to be true almost. A dream of an interview. Anwen Crawford told me of a similar experience: as I recall it, it was like she was hypnotized, sent into a trance by his voice over the phone. But at same time he was completely real and genuine - somehow down to earth and an ethereal being floating out there at the same time....