zaglossus
Writings on identity jamming & digital audio production
Nuisance
Terre Thaemlitz
Aktuelle Herausforderungen der Geschlechterforschung
challenge Gender
This series edited by the Gender Research Office at the University of Vienna presents contemporary theories, discourses, and research within the field of transdisciplinary Gender Studies, including Feminist Epistemology, Queer Theory, Postcolonial Studies, Feminist Science Studies, Gender & Science Technology Studies. Central to the series are critical approaches to gender relations and other power structures in the context of globalization. Moreover, “Challenge Gender� presents analytical works that reflect changes over time, and attempt to think sex, gender, and sexuality in new ways.
Volume 5
Contemporary challenges of_within Gender Theory. Series edited by the Gender Research Office
challenge GENDER
Zaglossus e. U. Vereinsgasse 33/12+25, 1020 Vienna, Austria E-Mail: info@zaglossus.eu www.zaglossus.eu
Print: Prime Rate Kft., Budapest Printed in Hungary ISBN 978-3-902902-39-9
Cover design: Terre Thaemlitz based on an image taken from “Katzen” by Angela Sayer, Klagenfurt: Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Hans Kaiser, 1985, p. 36, photo credit: The Image Bank
© Zaglossus e. U., Vienna, 2016 All rights reserved
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
Supported by the City of Vienna – Cultural Department, Science and Research Promotion and by the Gender Research Office at the University of Vienna. Supported special project of the Austrian National Union of Students and of the Austrian Students’ Union at the University of Vienna.
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Introduction to Nuisance
53 63 78 88 116
Means from an End Love for Sale – Taking Stock in Our Pride Interstices Lovebomb / Ai No Bakudan Soulnessless: Introduction
147 151 156
Sloppy 42nds Midtown 120 Blues The Mountain of Despair
DJ Sprinkles
45
Couture Cosmetique
Electroacoustic Series
7
Preface
Introduction
Contents
188 189 193 198
Miss Take’s Dragifesto On the Columbine High School Massacre of April 20, 1999 Homosaywhat The Revolution Will Not Be Injected
236 262 280 308 334 342 368
Viva McGlam? “Becoming Minority” Guest Lecture #6 All’s in Order Terre Interviews Terre Memories of St. Petersburg’s Anti-LGBT-Education Law Going into Effect “I Once Got in Trouble” We Are Not Welcome Here CONTENTS
203
Globule of Non-Standard
Miscellaneous Criticism
181
163
I Am Not a Lesbian
Manifesto
Trans-portation
Radio
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Introduction
Terre Thaemlitz
PREFACE
7
Somehow this news reached the staff at Zaglossus, who graciously offered to help revive the project … and here we are. Again, due to budgetary concerns, there is no German translation, and the final
Almost a decade has passed since planning on this book first began. Originally to be published by the small Berlin publishing house b_books, Nuisance: Writings on Identity Jamming and Digital Audio Production was initially conceived as a completist compendium of all my writings to date, to be printed in a single bilingual English and German binding. Given the amount of work I have received from Germany over the years, I felt it was vital to finally have my texts fully and accurately translated into German. At one point there were also plans to include an interactive audio CD to accompany certain readings. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of b_books’ staff to find the necessary time and finances to complete the translations, as the years passed, it became apparent that it was too difficult a task. Reluctantly, I agreed to allow for an English-only publication, but publisher funding and time remained an issue. By the end of 2013 I announced in my annual end of year newsletter that the publication of Nuisance was officially cancelled.
Preface
8
- Terre Thaemlitz, August 2015
Although the opening text of this book, “Introduction to Nuisance,” was written many years ago specifically for the b_books compendium, I think it remains a valid introduction to this Zaglossus project. And if not, fuck it. Just print this damn thing and get it over with already.
About footnotes and comments: Footnotes indicated only with a number (e. g. 1, 2, 3, etc.) were part of the original texts. Notes starting with “Comment …” (e. g. Comment 1, Comment 2, Comment 3, etc.) were written specifically for this book and are dated in the pattern (YY/MM/DD).
It is worth mentioning that the final text selection reflects the fact that Zaglossus’ field of expertise leans more towards themes of identity politics than digital audio production (hence the notable omission of all three Rubato Series texts), as well as their preference to exclude texts that have already been published in book form (such as “Please tell my landlord not to expect future payments because Attali’s theory of surplus-value-generating information economics only works if my home studio’s rent and other use-values are zero”). But never fear, all of those texts and more are readily available on the Comatonse Recordings website (comatonse.com/writings/) and elsewhere.
selection of texts included herein – albeit updated – are far from completist …, but I suppose that should be no surprise, considering that nearly ten years of new texts have accumulated since this book’s initial planning.
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INTRODUCTION TO NUISANCE
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I began writing this introduction about nine months ago. Ugh, what an unfortunate length of time, with its metaphorical implication of my writing process as an act of giving birth. Be sure to edit that part out, and also avoid the terms “labor” and “labored over.” I haven’t been able to write anything for several months now, because the very act of setting fingers to keyboard is so imbued with fantasies of “communication” that I simply shut down. I’d rather nap, but my insomnia won’t let me. Clarify goals: My intention is to write in defense of pessimism, and to critically reject the incessant optimism lurking at the core of virtually all media, conferences, concerts, events and symposia – “critical media” or not. My intention is to show that such optimism simply reflects our conformity to those
nuisance noun 1. a thing, person or situation that is annoying, inconvenient, or causes trouble or problems; 2. behavior which is harmful, offensive or annoying to the public or a member of it and that a court of law can order the person to stop.
Written in 2006-2007. First published on Comatonse Recordings (www. comatonse.com), August 2008.
Introduction to Nuisance
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First World humanist and capitalist practices we wish to critique. My intention is to warn the reader that my own texts compiled in this book also fraudulently use positive terminology, which betrays my subjective views, implying a potential for “positive” social change and betterment, which I do not personally believe in. My intention is to explain how this fraud not only reflects the demands and limitations of the discourses to which I have personally been exposed and which I have mimicked in my own projects, but also reflects how the various media industries in which I have survived as a freelancer for the past fifteen-plus years demand a degree of optimism and uplifting happy endings so as to generate a product capable of sale in a marketplace with no forgiveness for pessimism (including commodified and campish pessimism such as Goth, Death Metal or Punk, which exploit a latent adolescent optimistic desire for belonging). To this end, the product you hold in your hands now is the collaborative result of generous translators, editors and designers who worked for little or no compensation, and my working pro bono …C 1 all of which comes as absolutely COMMENT 1 (15/08/25): no surprise to anyone even remotely involved in this Aside from the lack of translators for this edition, it is pretty much line of production, and seems suspect for me to point the same situation with Zaglosout because doing so risks invoking romantic images of sus as I gather and proof these heroism, conviction and suffering for one’s art – perhaps texts with no advance. as a consumer you admire our conviction and/or feel sorry for our financial state, or perhaps as a producer of some type you have had similar experiences and resent the potential implication that any of this is out of the ordinary or worthy of reflection (which is likely a denial of your own well-conditioned self-pity and self-loathing) – all of which works against my actual intention of documenting my/our dependency upon social systems and media industries which defeat us before the first letter has been written.
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INTRODUCTION TO NUISANCE
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When I speak of media industries, it is not with the intention of conjuring images of a faceless, heartless, hyperindustrial “media marketplace.” As with most producers, writers and others making cross-categorical works that do not generate sales revenues, the overwhelming majority of my employment is the result of personal invitation. I do not mean the invitations come from personal friends (although that does happen upon occasion), but simply that I am usually contacted personally by an individual event curator or other decision maker, and the nature of our interactions is oneto-one and distinct in tone from the more bureaucratic aspects of their jobs, such as writing grants and securing funding. Even in instances of outright patronage, where my financial remuneration is a lump sum unaffected by ticket or product sales revenues, there is still the need to provide the employer with information and materials convincing them of the validity to “invest” in my works for their non-financial “returns” (cultural, philosophical, etc.). The employer must, in turn, re-pitch to their financers in even more optimistic terms, guaranteeing some degree of acceptable “return.” Thus the very nature of my own works, and what can be communicated through them, is bound from inception to a demand for marketability and appeal – if not to the customer-as-audience, at least to the customer-as-organizer. The nuances of these demands vary depending upon the employer’s particular relation(s) to the music industry, museums and visual arts industries, or academic institutions. As a result, over the years my projects and appearances have cultivated a character around myself that I presume is essentially that of a passive-aggressive sarcastic asshole. I am hired for my “criticality,” and although I make every effort to keep the hypocritical implications of my position as a “dog trained to bite the hand that feeds me” as transparent as possible, the notion of
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Pessimism is fundamental to any critique. It is core to any confession of awareness that things are not working out, and facilitates our doubts in faith toward any status quo or powers that be. Criticism is rooted in unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Yet within the “critical fields” themselves (commercial, academic, artistic or otherwise), we must continually repress the role of pessimism. Today, any viable critique capable of “reaching the people” (to varying degrees a demand of every media publisher and distributor, as well as academia – US
hypocrisy as a strategy is often lost in the wake of awkward moments, ill-phrased comments and even hurt feelings. As a case in point, my first contact with Nicolas Siepen of b_books, the chief person behind the initially planned publication of this anthology, was during a Q&A session following an audio performance in which I apparently dismissed his question (of which I have no personal recollection) with a snide snap that was, indeed, taken personally and perceived as rudeness on my part (probably justly so) – something he confessed to me later, much to my embarrassment. Occasionally, my transgenderism excuses some of my cynicism through common associations of the “bitchy queen.” People let you get away with a lot of shit when they think you are always “on stage” in life, and the zany antics of transgendered people are easy to dismiss as the faux actions of participants in an unending role-play game. However, this is a poor way to foster business contacts, and within the music industry my working for the same promoter more than once is rare. As my bitterness accumulates with time, and my sociability withers both professionally and privately, combined with my general lack of queenish behavior to buffer my cynicism with a facade of personality, it gradually becomes clear to all that I am in fact little more than a nuisance. Bookings are down.
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academia in particular) must emphasize romantic desires to “make things better,” engaging a psychological denial of an immediate material need to simply end what exists but is unacceptable and replacing it with hypothetical notions of what could be / what should be. Despite the fact that every social critique, rebellion or act of non-conformity is anti-social to some degree, pessimism represents a kind of antisocial outlook that remains taboo even within critical circles. Today’s First World status quo is so unforgiving of pessimism that the socio-sanctioned chemical mind alteration of middle-class children and adults via Prozac and other success-oriented pharmaceuticals is commonplace. Medications that would help me avoid these very thoughts. On almost every First World television one sees documentaries portraying a thirty-something housewife or other likely suspect suffering from massive depression, on the road to recovery through such wonder drugs. The patients live amidst the signs of middle-class lives, in nice houses or apartments, with spouses and children. As viewers, we are encouraged to read their environment as both socially and economically comfortable (i. e., the fiction of what is “standard”) and with all the signs of happiness, hence the only logical source of their depression is madness, a physiological flaw, a chemical imbalance in need of repair. There is no room for unhappiness within the bourgeois lifestyle. Under a bourgeois-centric global economy, the only understandable place for unhappiness is poverty, which very few people wish to actively identify with. (And the high standard of living held by most members of First World lower classes, which is typically not starvation-level destitution, further obscures which classes we inhabit and intersect.1) 1 Hence, multi-billion dollar self-help industries appeal to In fact, I was raised to believe I was unquestionably middlean overwhelming belief among all classes – rich or poor – class, until a sociology course in that, with some effort, a better life is always waiting to be high school presented me with
economic statistics that defined my parents’ household as firmly lower-class. My initial reaction was disbelief and a sense of shame in my economic fall, but it also suddenly clarified a lot of things in my life – such as why in winter we had to heat our American Dream-sized suburban home by burning firewood scavenged from fallen trees on the roadsides, racing to cut and haul our winter fuel before city utility trucks came to do their clean-up job. My coming into class awareness meant not only confronting the distortions of my personal perception of my environment but also understanding the dynamics behind my Great Depression-era parents’ desire to believe they had overcome their lower-class upbringings to arrive in the middle class – a belief they hold to this day in that same suburban home, which, with my father at age 80 and my mother at age 75, is still somehow not paid for. It’s a classic collision of limited opportunities compounded by financial mismanagement, and a Catholic insistence upon too many children – poor family planning being a key factor in global poverty.
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Radical though this ongoing shift may be, it is anything but sudden. For my immediate purposes, and limiting this discussion to the West, let’s trace it back to the Lutheran reformation, leading through the Enlightenment, until the notion of deferred paradise (namely Heaven after a life of earthly suffering) was gradually replaced by Ben Franklin-esque notions of “man’s” divine potential for earthly reward and self-improvement (Heaven on earth). The public fear of, and disdain for, unhappiness has led to a dismissal of those who confess to unhappiness as nothing more than whiners and romantic “martyrs.” Indeed, the notion of martyrdom itself – the crux of Christianity – has become so removed from notions of critical sacrifice and social resistance, and so inextricably linked with masturbatory ego-driven anti-heroism, that Christians themselves have been forced to transform the figure of Jesus (real or not) away from that of a pitiful social outcast struggling in endless critique against dominant cultural forces, which ultimately murdered him, and turn him into an independent and self-actualized messiah worthy of the respect
achieved. Prosperity is a lifestyle choice, and happiness is not simply an emotion of the moment but a sustainable lifestyle that defeats other emotions. Not only does this tyrannical notion of “sustainable happiness” strike me as utterly absurd (even a “sustained orgasm” cannot outlast a day, with no loss to the power of its conceptual image), but I believe it is symptomatic of a radical ongoing philosophical shift against pessimism among the public at large that is fundamental to capitalist development.
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INTRODUCTION TO NUISANCE
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of wealthy social leaders – the kind of guy who today just might head his own start-up company and make it big, even without his fortunate connections to Big Daddy. Today’s First World evangelical Christians are no longer inspired by the traditional model of Jesus as a puppet-of-God, whose acts of social critique were inseparable from his predestination for slaughter, but have recast him as a positive and motivational character full of life. Jesus as individual. T-shirts and activewear asking “WWJD” (“What Would Jesus Do?”) in lieu of WDJD (“Why Did Jesus Die?”). A friendlier face for contemporary Christo-Western economic crusade and conquest (Fig. 1). Meanwhile, befuddling an overly simplistic critical dismissal of the social functions of Christianity and religion, recent projects by audio activists Ultra-red point out that evangelical liberationist theology has become a key foundation for Central and South American labor organization, and frames the martyrdom of murdered labor organizers and other martyrs. Indeed, the martyr’s decline in fashion in the First World coincides with our ability to radically reduce internal signs of suffering and resistance by exporting the worst of our barbarities to those out-of-sight countries upon which our crumbling economies stand … Places that have not yet risen to standards of living where the collective social consciousness can cleanly replace material acts of abuse and murder with their reified images in televised fiction. Places where martyrdom is not an individual’s romantic choice but the result of brutal assault by forces of oppression and greed.
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Fig. 1 Hell of a guy: Completely non-ironic Catholic youth outreach posters from the Philippines.
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