lost in the hall of mirrors; is self awareness the beginning of the end?

[version]

“Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time,” she says. “Money is talking to itself.”

Is the game up once the gaze turns inward? Can it ever be diverted once something catches sight of itself? A genre which takes to mining its own past seems to be on the downward trajectory to becoming a spent force. You can see it in the endless refixes of eski stuff scattered across YouTube. A stationary figure starving to death in a labyrinth of its own reflection.

The same happened to fiction. It became aware of itself and now it can't think of anything but itself. The same is happening to film and the same will probably happen to video games, if it hasn't already.

Is there any way out of the hall of mirrors?

 

[version]

Brexit is nothing if not a nation trapped by its own image.

 

[version]

I guess the two immediate options are 1) shut your eyes and 2) smash the mirrors.

 

[sadmanbarty]

to what degree is musical potency coupled with the ability to distill and project a culture outwards?

pharoah sanders is godly and that may in some respect be because he's the purest distillation of pattycakes people.

drill perfectly encapsulates going to school in the 2010's.

jungle's like in power rangers when they all come together to make one massive power ranger. it's all these culture's combining to make a mega culture.

maybe all the best music is brimming with culture.

art that acts as a vessel for wider culture immunises itself from this hall of mirrors effect. it's innately outward-looking.

people talk about art that's about itself as 'self-indulgent' or 'mastabatory'; metaphors about the self rather than the world.

 

[sadmanbarty]

how does the hall of mirrors manifest itself?:

irony, pastiche, self-reference, breaking the forth wall, tongue in cheek exaggeration (the DRAMATIC)


all ways in which art becomes emotionally non-committal. also all defence mechanisms, ways to avoid being embarrassed. the creators of the art situate themselves as the audience; able to critique the work and as such not alienate or humiliate themselves.

it's an armour against the vulnerability of authenticity. beyond soul.

 

[pattycakes_]

Turn to focus outward and grab a djembe. It's drum circle time, boyyyyyys!

 

[pattycakes_]

 

[luka]

Patty has won a convert!

 

[luka]

It's very difficult to talk about this stuff without turning into patty. Quoting Bob Marley. Who feels it knows it. Toke on the spliff.

 

[pattycakes_]

Resistance is futile, mon

 

[pattycakes_]

But

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

 

[luka]

Once you cross that threshold pf culture there is no turning back. You can't recapture a pre-modern consciousness. That game is up. All these intermittent appeals to a 'new sincerity, new earnestness' is just so much hot air. It's an appeal to dininished consciousness when there's only one viable direction, and that's onward. This is just a temporary impasse. A cultural Da'ath, soon superceded.

 

[pattycakes_]

According to Hawthorne - in the context of clinical trials, the subject's behaviour changes when it's aware it's being monitored.

So irl, does our own behaviour change when we are monitoring ourselves?

And each other?

Obviously it does, but how? And is there a way out?

The century of the self. Individualism. Who planted those seeds, and what for? Have the following decades all been an inevitable evolution of a self based collective mentality?

iWonder..

 

[pattycakes_]

Onward yes, but can we at least sprinkle a little humanity in there or has post modernism doomed us all?

 

[luka]

Fiction becomes aware of itself very early. Already by the 16th century. Quixote is a self aware book about a man who mistakes books for reality. Hamlet contains a play within a play. This is a fairly radical moment. We catch ourselves in the mirror for the first time. It's a psychedelic breakthrough.

 

[luka]

Onward yes, but can we at least sprinkle a little humanity in there or has post modernism doomed us all?

Depends what you mean by humanity.

 

[luka]

We're not going back Patty. Nothing will be recaptured. We won't sing the blues again.

 

[pattycakes_]

Basically freeing ourselves at least a little bit from the cage and opening up some form of new sincerity. Human beings vs human doings

 

[pattycakes_]

We're not going back Patty. Nothing will be recaptured. We won't sing the blues again.

We've been over this plenty and yes, I get it. But are there possible paths for new forms of old ways? Or is it always going to be a facsimile of what was?

We know there's a market for it. But so far none of the offerings are really hitting the spot

Vinyl resurgence, artisan cheese shops etc etc. Flailing against the grain.

Maybe if it wasn't all based around lifestyle image and consumption?

 

[pattycakes_]

Let me ask you this though, does any part of you wish for a brighter day?