CUT UP FEMME POP: A MANIFESTO
“Girl you know it’s girl you know it’s girl you know it’s girl you know it’s girl you know it’s girl you know it’s girl you know it’s girl you know it’s girl you know it’s girl you know it’s”
- Milli Vanilli
This is a clarion call to arms for a war that is waged in the gleaming, steaming viscera of cultural carrion with vultured aesthetics, file sharing and soul baring against the grain of that which would remake you, erase you and drive you insane.
The message, the image, the mandate beams in; it is information organized and optimized, it is the medium through which the patriarchy speaks, by which we are persuaded and with which the status quo is aided. Don’t believe anyone who tells you it is meaningless when in fact it is the very apparatus that begat us into this mess. Mass media is a capitalist dream logic Frankenstein monster that glamours us, enamors us, and, by virtue of its genius, appears seamless.
Pop is fast fashion is planned obsolescence is need more, be more, buy more. Try more. Turn your eyes to the sky more. Where the sky meets the sea is its own seam is the horizon line is the site where the meaning is made between that which is I and other. Sooner or later, the seams show their weakness, because nothing really fits when it’s mass-produced, even though we’re all seduced. You can’t help but seek this and thus worry the tear, as it gets worse for your wear, like a loose tooth, or a suddenly deeply doubted truth. Get your finger in there and feel it move, feel the wet world underneath, lay it bare to greet the beast behind the curtain.
To be certain, these systems are a form of possession against which your subjectivity is a potent potion. Disrupt the tranquility of dominance: build your own chimeras and put them into motion. Split: the seam, the screen. See what’s underneath and alongside the deep lie. Ape the gaping, press against the crack, and watch it grow. You know that lack. Make them feel it. Find the untold story and make it known. Explode. Erode. Recode. You’re not buying in if you steal it.
It may not dismantle the master’s house but hey, the right text to write against their best attempts is the best defense. Live in the walls and make off with the crumbs like a mouse, if you must. Appropriation is a currency of purposely misplaced trust.
Commissioned for the Sensoria Series at the INOVA center, Milwaukee, WI