[-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology, and some music by Bonaparte

[Johannes Birringer]

hello all


"I boycott everything that's not made by my hands"  

 (from the song "Boycott everything" by Bonaparte, Berlin trash punk band); their new album is called "My horse likes you". 

I read that social psychologists are doing research on emotional confusion/irritation, and how it might be turned into something creatively productive, not cognitively dissonant and disturbing. 
The article that reports on this (and the sometimes difficult adaptation processes, especiallly for older people),  and places the study in the context of what Scott refers to as the magic of "globalized technologically mediated communication environments,"  appeared in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. 

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/gemischte-gefuehle-hier-geht-es-um-killerhaie-1.975594-2

The report was headed by a photograph of a graffiti wall in an urban neighborhood, like the one Scott's hypothetical account walks by.  

So i thought 'd send you the picture.  The music that goes with it can be downloaded from Bonaparte [http://www.myspace.com/bonaparte].  
This theatrical band / theatre group refers to its music as ""Aufmerksamkeits-Defizit-Syndrom-Musik" .  their success is probably based on their extravagant circus-like live
concerts, but their popularity, so we hear, is largely based also on their "digital" presence/distribution & viral promotion via the YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and twitter networks.  when they play in New Zealand or St Petersburg, the fans can sing along with the songs. 

Not sure how how to try to analyse the relations of ADHS-syndrome to social networks.

but it occured to me that Scott's proposition is perhaps based on an assumption that electronic literature points towards a new path of creativity (out-dating the old authors/readers) > "Network Based Creative Community: Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice".   

But recent findings show that reading, and books (written by authors), is alive and well, in fact the literary world seems to be doing better than ever anticipated. Now why would this be the case?

Scott argues:
>>
Yet the very nature of producing work, for a network, for a platform, using software written by huge collaborative teams, which is then read or experienced by a participatory audience, who more often than not affect the way that the art is received and that the artist changes and changes his or her own practice, in an an endless feedback loop that cycles very quickly, strips bare the idea of "authorship" or "creativity" as located within any particular individual. I think it is now almost accepted as a given that creativity is enabled by social relations and cultural contexts more than by inspiration.>>

To come back to Bonaparte (founded by Tobias Jundt.  who also writes most of the songs), would you apply your proposition to hype phenomena such as bands or celebrities who are enabled (and also self promote and enable themselves), and in the same manner, would you apply it to media arts, grass roots activists, NPOs?   how are NPOs enabled, or enabled differently from a trash punk band?  what happened to the self-promotion?  why has electronic literature faced such apparent resistance in the creative writing departments?   (at least I remember that there were such resistances when Sue Thomas headed the trAce Online Writing Centre (since 1995), in Nottingham.  At the institution where i work, in London, there is a vibrant creative writing program, but no one seems to touch e-literature). 


regards
Johannes Birringer



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