K Punk: classic or dud?

Thanks Ogmor

dare I ask for an explanation of wtf is going on with Nina Power?

Sebald is best read as migrant literature, with all the mythologizing – both positive and negative – of host cultures that experience of estrangement entails. His take on Suffolk is bound to be different from Fisher's, and to speak of 'mittelbrow' strikes me as an unnecessary dig at Sebald's German roots. Anyhow, I have nothing but respect for Fisher, I'm just not sold on the Sebald-as-reactionary trope – there are plenty of other factors to consider, including the generational one.

As for Nina Power:

https://write.as/7v8fbjq9ekoaxl3z

That letter is kind of barmy. Here's NP's response https://ninapower.net/2019/03/14/248/

Oh right, so I guess that's cleared everything up.

Hmmm, can't say I'm reassured by her using the "trans activists" dogwhistle or unapologetically attending a Women's Place meeting.

"Sebald is best read as migrant literature, with all the mythologizing – both positive and negative – of host cultures that experience of estrangement entails. His take on Suffolk is bound to be different from Fisher's, and to speak of 'mittelbrow' strikes me as an unnecessary dig at Sebald's German roots"

Agree the pun is weak but I think he has point on Sebald's lack of attention.

a weird argument i remember with MF -- on a vanished iteration of the k-punk blog in maybe 2005-ish, in the comments, and so i think doubly long-lost to web-rot -- was cheerfully throwing at him the criticism that he was terrible at dialectics. i forget even why -- it was probably a pop-cultural discussion, i never engaged him abt politics

anyway he came back (disarmingly in the sense that i had no comeback, and memorably in the sense that i knew there and then that this was a big thing to say, and never forgot it): "i'm glad i'm not -- dialectical thinking is a bad thing!"

well, it turns out -- i didn't find this out for years -- that nick land loathed dialectics, and he was still involved with CCRU at that time (and i don't think land had made his break for the grimmer neo-reactionary shores yet) (accelrationism was also a few years off). but the funny thing is -- as i realised when i was reading this book to review it, and as jenny t has much more space to say nore about it, he *is* a dialectical thinker, in the sense that he has two contradictory sides to his thought which he uses to work on one another. the gentle attention to small intimate subtleties and the world-bestriding cyber-amplified world of implacable historical momentum. he spoke both languages -- and they did operate on one another -- but i'm not sure how much he consciously decided to explore this as it was happening, or even (actally) how much he was aware of it as a forked tendency in him. war and scission were modes he chose, i think knowingly submitting to the flawed perceptions that come with them -- and they gave him his reach, but i don't actually think they were the best of him.

Is yr review online anywhere mark?

it's in the wire, so i guess yes if yr a subscriber and can access their archive but basically no

did zero get up to some more bullshit?

Could all those who continue to confuse @RepeaterBooks with Z*ro please read this note of clarification, and also share as widely as possible pic.twitter.com/7h5aNCYbRI

— Alex Niven (@Alex_Niven) June 5, 2018

(that tweet is old but was just retweeted by Niven)

I work in further education, like k-punk did, and I once printed a quote from one of his blogs and stuck it on all the noticeboards at work, because it described exactly our situation:
" lecturers are conscripted into performing endless bureaucratic procedures which and have nothing to do with their ostensible function (to improve teaching and learning) and everything to do with the concealed function of improving the representation of the college through the abstract mechanisms of paperwork and statistics. This has served to create a virtual college, which is prioritised over the real college in every conceivable way."

https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/24137

Since Mark Fisher's death in 2017, his acolytes have cemented his legacy in philosophy, literature and music. They've done so through anthology books, public talks and now, with the release of On Vanishing Land, vinyl records. The album comes courtesy of Hyperdub's Kode9, who has launched a spoken-word sub-label called Flatlines. The label's first release is this audiovisual essay, made in 2006 and exhibited in 2013, which Fisher worked on with the philosopher, writer and sound artist Justin Barton.

On Vanishing Land is a 40-minute narration of a walk Barton and Fisher took along the Suffolk coast. It also includes snippets from interviews they conducted that introduce themes of long-lost societies and the machinations of capital to the piece's main subject: the idea of the eerie. These voices accompany an ambient score that features contemporary experimental musicians such as Gazelle Twin, Raime, Skjølbrot, Baron Mordant and Ekoplekz. But unless you're familiar with the artists' hallmarks, it won't likely be clear whose music is playing when.

In W.G. Sebald's footsteps? Either way, I'm very curious to hear this, thanks for the link.

KP deeply disliked sebald, so no (but yes)

unless you're familiar with the artists' hallmarks, it won't likely be clear whose music is playing when

as a way of glossing "it all sounds exactly the same" this made me lol a bit

You're right, I hadn't remembered that. From the Wire:

Rob Turner writes of Mark and his hauntological partner-in-crime Justin Barton:

The pair’s wonky tour guide, shifting from nerdy digressions on Brian Eno to enthusiastic riffs on TV horror shows, is a reply to WG Sebald’s celebrated study of the same coastline The Rings of Saturn. In a 2011 essay for Sight & Sound, Fisher described that book as a trudge through Suffolk that entirely failed to look at the place, offering instead “mittel-brow miserabilism, a stock disdain, in which the human settlements are routinely dismissed as shabby”. Here, in apparent solidarity with the humans trapped in this realm, the narrator is gripped by the features of the landscape, reading lost poems of late capitalism in the stacked iron containers of Felixstowe terminal.

I agree that Sebald's Suffolk 'trudge' wasn't about Suffolk or that coast per se, but that wasn't really Sebald's point to begin with. Either way, I'm looking forward to this.

He is kinda right. Austerlitz > Rings of Saturn in my book. Though I must say, after spending a few days in Great Yarmouth this summer, it was kinda funny reading his description of Lowestoft. But also really harsh.

Harsh is ok, though.

Just listened to the record. It wasn't off putting - it was rather special to hear Mark's voice in this way - but as a spoken word album, well, it is what it is, and nothing more: you hear it once, enjoy it, but probably will never listen to it again. I hate that this is how it goes, but it is how it goes.

I've been really enjoying On Vanishing Land and have listened to it repeatedly. It reminded me a bit of Patrick Keiller's films, Robinson in Space particularly.

RIP Mark Fisher on the anniversary of his death. I taught Capitalist Realism this fall, and was pleasantly surprised how much students connected with Fisher's ability to connect the ongoing crisis of capitalism with depression and anxiety. He saw something.https://t.co/vONLSBLuSA

— Jason Read (@Unemployedneg) January 13, 2020

I liked him as a lecturer.

https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essay/mark-fisher-blogosphere/

:(

man, really feels like these trajectories have sped right up pic.twitter.com/j2ZV0G2ESf

— michael (@Sisyphusa) July 6, 2020

nina power is now writing in the telegraph about cancel culture

lol, didn't click yr link before posting

honestly fisher would have been on her side

this isnt a big development, nina has been on youtube with some very dodgy people over the last couple of years, she always has that look on her face where she's just said something a bit naughty,

only a finite amount of books you can read in a lifetime, and an infinite amount of tedious and horrible writers!

^^^ truth.

Still working my way through “Capitalist Realism,” so grateful for his provocations. https://t.co/N19DxsR7Dp

— Zoé (@ztsamudzi) July 12, 2020

https://crackmagazine.net/2023/01/kode9-releases-previously-unheard-conversation-with-mark-fisher/

Kode9 has shared a previously unheard recording of a conversation between himself and the late Mark Fisher, 6 years after his passing. The recording is from a conversation between the producer and theorist from 1998.

According to a note shared on Kode9’s Instagram, the conversation “was the first of a series of recorded conversations whose aim was to explicate/clarify/transmit the embryonic mythos.”

He continued: “Due to the mnemonic fade and/or nonrecovery of other minidiscs, it is unclear whether subsequent recordings existed”.