The New Sublime

Something about the strangely underpopulated Docklands area of London unsettles me. When I was recently on the DLR, gliding into the shadow of One Canada Square, this manifested itself as a more definite sensation, one that I have become increasingly aware of in the last couple of years; a combination of horror, exhilaration, alienation and fear. It could be that this is the reaction to being confronted with certain images and sounds that act as paradigms of the culture of global and technological Capitalism, particularly those characterised by being somehow inhuman, or post-human.

Whilst this sensation sets my teeth on edge, I have found anything that can produce it to be unavoidably compelling. 18th and 19th Century philosophers such as Emmanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer describe something similar in the notion of the Sublime which was the frisson of awe and terror induced by the asymmetry, fluctuation and destructive qualities of nature and art. This could only have emerged at a time when innovations in science, industry and technology were making the world safer, smaller and more easily understood, enabling people could to take pleasure, not just from the beautiful (which Schopenhauer argued stemmed only from the benign object), but from the frightening and even the painful. Technology has now begun to reverse this effect. The unknown domains have become, not wildly natural, but artificial and digital. Shanghai's skyscrapers - glittering, startlingly upward cliffs, or the endless and totally unaccountable arena of the internet, invite comparison with violent cascades or the sheer-sided and gleaming Alps. The vastness of these phenomena may have produced a feeling of insignificance in those who looked upon them, but the sensation I feel has a compounded sense of alienation because, instead of singular, grand objects, the Post-Modern Sublime is now an unknown number of things, interconnected, but, paradoxically, also fragmented. Also it is often what is not visible, rather than what is displayed, that is truly frightening. Whereas a mountain peak is fundamentally a symbol of itself, every monument to Capitalism is representative of the entire system at work.

I began to realise that I was drawn to certain aspects of 20th and 21st Century cityscapes which evoked this same powerful ambivalence. I was obsessed with repetition, geometric patterns, rigidity of form and straightness of line that could be found in the composition of a city. I began to study the work of Expressionist and Modernist architects and set designers such as Edward Gordon Craig whose work features looming oblong screens, huge steps and other structures that were often lit from oblique angles to produce jagged shadows. It was the potential of these designs to be imposing that intrigued me. Furthermore, as my use of the generic term 'the city' suggests, my interest lay in the most homogenised aspects of an urban landscape. Whilst the vast scale and opulence of particular famous skyscrapers impressed me, I cared less about their individual design because it is more about the vision of a single architect rather than an image of the network of power. I was more interested in the buildings that could be in any developed city in the world - the composite makeup of an archetypal city.

At this point I was able to recognise, somewhat disquietingly, that it was my preoccupation with these shining, universal cities, entirely the product of global Capitalism, was a fascination with the aesthetics of Authoritarianism. However, it was not that I had simply been seduced by these images, rather, I was drawn to their capability to chill as well as fascinate me, something that made me feel more aware and alert to what was around me.

The political implications of replicating this experience in art have been explored by musicians involved in the twinned art-pop movements of Vaporwave and Distroid that include James Ferraro, on Far Side Virtual and through his work under other monikers such as BODYGUARD and BEBETUNE$, Fatima Al Qadiri, INTERNET CLUB and Jam City. The sounds of corporate relaxation, such as muzak piped into a hotel lobby, are emulated, as well as artificial and vapid mainstream pop and infomercial soundtracks. However, the Capitalist, consumerist and technological signifiers that saturate Vapourwave and Distroid tracks have been concentrated to a frightening intensity, creating a sound that is even more 'futuristic, lurid and brutal'. The movement has an unofficial platform in the form of DiS Magazine uses the same outdated C.A.D graphics that can be found in Fatima Al Qadiri's 'Vatican Vibes' video and a layout that recalls a time before social media standardised the way that websites look. Somehow this use of the obsolete makes the DiS website hideous, even disturbing to look at.

It would be easy to Categorise Vaporwave and Distroid music as satire, detournment, or as an exercise in irony, but this is somewhat reductive. The relationship between the music these artists are making, and the themes they are exploring is far more complex. Something that satirises an advert shouldn't still make you want to buy the product that the advert is selling. With an album like James Ferraro's Far Side Virtual, whilst in some ways seeming like pastiche, the seductive quality and persuasive power of the original material is retained: it cannot be fully extricated from the world it reflects. This is because of the degree to which form and content align in this music. It does not just represent techno-Capitalism, it also replicates the style and methods employed by it.

The comfort of an explicit moral position offered by satire is therefore denied the listener. However conscious and alert they are, the artists' refusal to display an ideological framework to support the images and sounds they have created leaves the listener not knowing how to feel. This is however what prevents Vaporwave and Distroid music from merely affirming Authoritarian ideology; it is ambiguity that contributes hugely to the cultivation of dread in the listener, and with it comes an understanding that there is something deeply disturbing is being explored.

As music critic and academic Adam Harper has argued, the philosophical viewpoint this music most strongly aligns with is that of Accelerationism. Accelerationist theorists argue that oppositional ideas and images are so ravenously appropriated by Capitalist systems that they are no longer a viable means of dissent. Instead, the trajectory of Capitalist development must be encouraged, even contributed to; this may perversely expose the fragility or the faults within the power structures and when this futuristic, Neo-liberal nightmare has been pushed far enough, 'destruction is the only logical answer'.

My own fascination with corporate and industrial architecture's sublimity, and my attempts to replicate this in my own work similarly reflect this potentially Accelerationist relationship with the 21st Century Capitalist culture. Artists that capture urban and industrial environments as they are crumbling apart or surrounded with scaffolding disrupt the enforced perception that these emblems of technological and consumerist achievement are infallible. For instance, Aaron Siskind's building photographs focus on the texture of disintegrating surfaces, Close-ups of peeling wallpaper and shards of fallen plaster become abstract images which diminishes the power the building held as a whole and unblemished structure. Marchand and Leffre's recent collection 'The Ruins of Detroit' features the buildings of once formidable cities, gutted and carpeted in debris, and symmetrically framed shots of exposed concrete pillars. These images are pleasurable to us in a different way to those that reinforce the sublimity produced by the buildings. Modern ruins offer a glimpse into the point where the current social-political system is collapsing in on itself. These pictures have a similar effect to the moments of distortion and corruption, non standard percussion and the hyperreal, even disquieting quality that comes from super high-definition digital recording that feature in Vaporwave and Distroid music.

Because of the inseparable connection between particular genres of electronic music and the cities that cultivated them (Detroit Techno, Chicago House/Footwork etc), and because, as I have described, urban environments so clearly reflect the ambivalence and alienation of the Post-Modern Capitalist climate, my designs naturally took on a city-like formation. The physical structures, music and projection elements of this piece all explore these unsettling images of modern consumerism and absolute corporate power. The pieces of polystyrene I am using to construct one of my Installations, as well as being somehow more synthetic in essence than any other material, have been used to store and transport electronic equipment such as computer monitors and soundsystems. En masse these pieces form ghostly white and lifeless towers, immovable and imposing. The track by FREnchfire that accompanies the polystyrene structure contains a sound like a helicopter blade that intermittently cuts through its texture. It did feature a vocal sample, albeit heavily distorted, but after discussion we decided to remove it. Just as music that evokes violent mechanical processes and invisible yet omniscient platforms of knowledge and power feels decidedly inhuman, the cityscapes of my designs exist as emblems of this same power, not as places to inhabit. These are hostile locations, but not because they are ruinous, but because they were never intended to be occupied.