crockfest

Hey there. I reckon that your curious Tropfest colleagues might be interested to read a great book by Toronto writer Hal Niedzviecki, called “We Want Some Too…”. Hal’s book might go some way towards explaining to them the SquatFest phenomenon… in an interview at http://www.bookmouth.com/Niedzviecki.html he writes,

“When I talk about true participation in pop culture, I’m not necessarily saying that it will all be new and individual. Most of it will simply be rote and silly. And yet that too me is somehow preferable to the mundane and focus grouped. Do I want to see a bad movie done by a huge corporation or do I want to see a bad movie done by my next door neighbor (whom I’ve never met, I’m too busy writing letters to Jennifer Lopez)? New isn’t necessarily the point, and great art — whatever you think that is — is more likely to emerge if you can choose between two hundred movies (most of them local and independent) than the 5 prepackaged spectacles currently playing in every movie theatre in North America. The move from pop to individual expression is already happening: the more we are obsessed and live our lives through mass culture, the more we want to be participants in that glamorous world, the more we become grass roots cultural producers.”

then again, http://www.andrewandkathleen.com give another, even simpler reason, as to why SquatFest happens each year and is such a great independent celebration:

“But geez, how much advertising can they [TropFest] sneak in? Sneak’s not quite the right word, the advertising all but comes up to where you’re sitting and yells at you “Hey, look at THIS ad! Sony’s SPONSERING [sic] the event! And HEY, what about FORD, check THIS CAR out! It even has ONE OF THE TROPFEST directors MAKING A MOVIE ABOUT IT!” It felt a little dirty, and I doubt the idea of the original creators had big corporate logos adorning the screen. Sort of like an ad sponsered [sic] by 16 short films. Then again, if you want to put on a festival for 100,000 people, you have to suck it down.”

[ps…I am sure Hal’s book would also be helpful in your subsequent blog post, about the “recuperation of resistance” and the jeans website…]

cheers Lucas

Ach, that Niedzvieki link’s not working for me.

I don’t think Niedzvieki’s occasional opposition of “pop” and “individual” is particularly consistent, and that’s for a good reason, since I think he rightly recognises that the notion of grassroots cultural production is to do with the real movement of recomposition — that it’s already happening in the middle of the glamour of pop culture, and not as a mystical outside, and that being resistant and different and creative has no real grounding in any “natural” first principles. And also that productive desire can emerge from fields — like the immersion in glamour — that we all thought were more cynically sown by executives in boardrooms. I think that’s really interesting.

Hi Jebni. [Not sure if you meant that the url link is not functioning properly, or that Hal’s ideas weren’t working for you!]

Perhaps you could clarify some bits of your comment for me, as I found it a bit dense.

a.) Who was it who wrote about “real movement of recomposition”? Was it Niedzviecki, or is that from somewhere else? And what does that mean, exactly?

b.) I also didn’t quite follow your phrase “‘natural’ first principles”…

The link wasn’t functioning, but it is now. I used the phrase “real movement of recomposition”, which has vague Autonomist overtones, to suggest that people are actually always doing their own (often very interesting) shit as part of a dynamic with “mainstream” culture, that we don’t just take it lying down like zombies, but that neither is our creativity “natural”, as opposed, say, to the “artificiality” of mass culture. In this dynamic, we remake our creative selves based on various conditions, but in a canny, matter-of-fact way, and not as victims of any conspiracy. I guess that dynamic process of making and remaking is “the real movement of recomposition”.

What I don’t really get about Niedzvieki, though, is that he still seems to hang onto some of the old moralist oppositions, in spite of himself. He seems to still believe, deep down, that wanting to quit your job and become a punk star shouldn’t matter in everyday life. The fact that it does matter is an “interesting” thing to him, a symptom. But it matters because wanting to quit your job and become a punk star is completely understandable, given the nature of work. In a lot of ways, it’s a totally noble thing, and not strange at all. And who the hell is he to tell me that deep down I actually want to participate in pop culture because Britney is to empty and meaningless?? That’s, like, totally moralistic.

Still, his (more schematic and intellectual) abandonment of a reactive oppositionalism to mass culture, in favour of a “just do it” ethic of participation, interests me.