----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- Hi Mathias, Thanks for your thoughtful remarks. There are many ways of addressing TRUMP, and yes, I appreciate the “dressing down” so to speak of the root problem without necessarily demonizing the object.
However, I am really glad you brought up the introduction to my XTreme TRUMPology writings, because it is precisely the intent of this “performance rant” to expose the underlying psychological forces at play in those who unwittingly follow TRUMP into the darkness and the breakdown of the real. I quote myself: “You must enter deeply into the FLOW of TRUMP to be a surrogate for XTreme TRUMPology. You must fully immerse yourself in the FLOW in all of its immense deception & anger & entertainment & anarchy. You must open up wide the Media Tap in order to initiate its ingestion and activate its total destruction, swimming against the stream of disinformation to absorb & expose & annihilate its meaning. Yes, you must even embrace the danger of any confusion to your perception of reality.” http://www.randallpacker.com/category/xtreme-trumpology/ It is my belief that through the seduction of popular culture and the cult of celebrity, TRUMP has amassed a following who revere him for his power of personality, his wealth, his politically incorrect positions, his blatant racism, his love of false conspiracy, his embrace of fakery. TRUMP has tapped an explosive, pent-up well of hatred in the population that he has reshaped into a powerful political movement. I want to understand what is inside the minds of the so-called “deplorables,” I want to know how they can possibly embrace the fakery, the xenophobia, the misogyny. Even with the current Mika scandal, you see the White House fighting back in fully reality tv regalia, casting TRUMP as the “fighter,” who doesn’t take anything from the media without pushing back, violently. This is great television and they’re all talking about it. We have to ask, what kind of a society have we become when the President can illicit this kind of behavior, can generate daily scandals, can blatantly lie to the American people? In brief, it’s a society brought up on reality tv, dark confessionals, celebrity backstabbing, tabloid scandals, et al. It is from within this culture that TRUMP has cultivated and exploited his tactics to undermine the truth as a power play for his own ends and narcissist ego. The force of XTreme TRUMPology is an attempt to get inside of that phenomenon, to become it, in order to grasp it both critically and viscerally. I quote again: QUOTE: “And to be a TRUE surrogate for XTreme TRUMPology, you must tear it all up, blow it up, vent & smash all things establishment, status quo, conventional. You must rise to the TRUE CAUSE of XTreme TRUMPology by lashing out against the media to pulverize its incessant, chattering punditry in order to attack & redirect the negativity of its ABSOLUTE bias. This (& more) is required to become fully XTreme in the pure essence of the TRUMPological state of being.” Randall On 6/29/17, 1:29 AM, "Mathias Fuchs" <empyre-boun...@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on behalf of mathias.fu...@creativegames.org.uk> wrote: ----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- Dear Randall, I understand and share your anger about the current temporary holder of the title of US president, but I wonder whether the focus on "diabolical fakery" and the introduction of XTreme TRUMPology targets the core of the problem. Bertold Brecht made an observation once, that by continously mentioning the "Führer" and his name, one would just make addititonal propaganda for the NAZIs, and he came up with a solution: He introduced a fake profession for Hitler, and called him "Der Anstreicher". This is German for someone who covers dirty walls with fresh paint to hide the dirt underneath. By doing so Brecht made a joke on Hitler's failure in getting accepted at the painters Academy class in Vienna, he reminded his readers on Hitler's whitewashing attempts, but at the same time he avoided repeating the name of the political enemy. Brecht faked the professional title of Hitler, but he did so in working against his regime. I think that we need not spend half of our lives in correcting all of the lies and the fake facts of the president's administration, but rather look at political problems from a viewpoint that goes beyond personification of political activities conduction in favour of a concrete political system, i.e. turbocapitalism, without assigning it to a demon or a devil. Do you see what I mean? It is hard to find mediatic truth within the political system we are forced to live in. How can messages of a tweet length format be true anyway? And why do we still hope that communicating on the basis of such would leave a chance for truth, correctness or appropriateness? The difference between true and false and the problem of keeping such a distinction as a valid guide for action is a matter that is rooted in a mediatic structure and a political system. The man with the yellow hair is just a puppet of a wider interest structure and once he leaves - I am afraid - we cannot celebrate having solved the problem. My main point here is that I think a personalisation of a political problem distracts from the problem. Having said so, may the man with the yellow hair soon stumble and fall. Best Mathias -- Prof. Dr. Mathias Fuchs Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM) Scharnhorststr. 1, C5.318 21335 Lüneburg Co-Editor Journal Digital Culture & Society http://www.transcript-verlag.de/zeitschriften/digital-culture-und-society/ Co-Editor Journal of Performance Research, Vol. 21 (4) http://www.performance-research.org/ > Message: 3 > Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2017 16:14:52 -0400 > From: Randall Packer <rpac...@zakros.com> > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Week 4: Welcome Lindsay Kelley, Anna Munster, > Randall Packer, and Ana Valdex > Message-ID: <cf7c86be-63dd-4eb9-83af-65d4b6bb1...@zakros.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > Dear List: > > Since August of 2015, I have been chronicling the TRUMP phenomenon, which I refer to as XTreme TRUMPology. Here are 50 posts I have written to date: http://www.randallpacker.com/category/xtreme-trumpology/ > > I see the developing fake news issue as the catalyst of a much greater problem: the intentional distortion of reality for the purpose of gaining political control. Fake news is a means to an end, what happens when morally bankrupt demagogues are in pursuit of absolute power. > > To this end, it beholds us to construct critical ?weapons? that we can use to deconstruct and defuse this diabolical fakery, and it is my hope, that during this next week, the empyre list can serve as both a virtual roundtable for discussion, as well as a space for developing tactical methods we can employ as media artists, theorists, and educators in our everyday lives and work. Some of these methods have already been identified in past weeks? I hope to see more! > > These are dangerous times and I am interested in the kinds of critical tools we can develop collectively to combat the torrent of fakery and disinformation that is consuming our government, our country, and the world. > > It?s time for action. > > Best, Randall > > > > -- Prof. Dr. Mathias Fuchs Institute of Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM) Scharnhorststr. 1, C5.318 21335 Lüneburg Co-Editor Journal Digital Culture & Society http://www.transcript-verlag.de/zeitschriften/digital-culture-und-society/ Co-Editor Journal of Performance Research, Vol. 21 (4) http://www.performance-research.org/ _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
