Re: [-empyre-] The Collaborator

[John Hopkins <jhopkins@uiah.fi>]

> As indeed it does in Norwegian, my mother tongue. I wonder, would 
> this negative concept of "collaborator" be applicable to those media 
> professionals -- art directors, designers, moviemakers, artists -- 
> who take money from the actors of the dominant image culture (Nike, 
> Gucci, McDonald's) to create for them a look of coolness and 
> desirability.

absolutely!

> I've been in this position myself, and it is not very comfortable. 
> As the outsider with connections to the "underground culture" (the 
> ultimate hip), you have knowledge that the corporations don't. But 
> they are quick to learn, as long as people like yourself are willing 
> to sell it to them. Nike built a great campaign ("The Secret 
> Tournament") around underground marketing techniques like grafitti 
> and the appropriation of venues for street sports. The document 
> outlining it was written by people savvy in the culture of tagging, 
> knowing that the illegality of tags normally means gives them the 
> authority of being "real", i.e. not manufactured by a corporation to 
> make you buy products.
>
> This transfer of knowledge from the underground to the dominant 
> culture is a time-honored tradition, and is only possible due to the 
> "collaboration" of actors close to the underground. An underground 
> they're ultimately selling, piece by piece. But then again, is there 
> still such a thing as a mythical "underground"?

I would position the 'underground' as the site of what Martin Buber 
termed "genuine dialogue" -- the site of inspiring and inspired / 
energized exchange between two human beings -- or in the case of 
larger communities, the distributed/collective sites of exchange 
between each individual (a network).  Once  one steps away from those 
sites (and leaves the actuality of participation), then there is a 
parasitic dynamic (taking but not giving) -- which is a core 
component of re-production and re-creation.  Basically corporate 
entities seek to re-produce the reality of that energized exchange, 
but in the end they make only a hollow shell -- form with no 
substance, action with no embodied experience.  The phrase "you had 
to be there" always springs to mind when confronted by the 
multiplicity of re-creations and re-productions that we are 
confronted by.  "Experiences" attenuated (and largely amplified) by a 
heirarchic social structure whose existence is based on a process of 
concentration of energies and a consequent re-distribution of those 
energies in a 'collectively' mandated form such as (Guy DeBord's) 
spectacle -- the hollow amplified social event...

I think this is a fundamental reason for the insistence, in the 
deployment of 'tactical media', to avoid at all costs, the bulging 
EYE of PR, public media -- as this is the very same mechanism that 
drains 'genuine dialogue' of its soul-full power.

jh
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