<videovortex> Social media is the new punk

[G.H. Hovagimyan]

I like the premise of the video but it seems like a pre-packaged info- 
mercial.  Indeed, if I was a neo-punk I'd immediately say fuck these  
guys, their trying to co-op what we're doing to make money.    You  
have to differentiate punk from new wave. The info-mercial does do  
that and is very informative historically. It doesn't talk about the  
nihilism of the times.  There was a severe recession in the US. worse  
than the one now.  The UK had just elected Margaret Thatcher was  
eliminating social programs.  Punk was also about diminished prospects  
for the youth coming up after the hippy generation. Actually it was  
anti-hippie.  One of the recurrent catchphrases was, " '69 was the  
summer of love, '79 was the summer of hate."

Being one of the original punks in New York I can talk about what that  
scene and time period was really like.  http://post.thing.net/node/ 
719  here's a list of posts with the search words punk.  http://post.thing.net/search/node?keys=punk

The feelings at the time was that there were no jobs, and no place to  
show your art if you were an artist.  For performance art there was  
only The Kitchen and occasionally Paula Cooper Gallery.  What  
performance artists did was perform in the rock clubs in between acts  
or form bands.   That became a sort of ant-elitist position to the art  
world. We were doing all of our acts for our on alienated group and  
didn't want a larger audience.  The only way to be free of a corporate  
success mantra was to self destruct before you could become successful.



G.H. Hovagimyan
http://nujus.net/~gh
http://artistsmeeting.org
http://transition.turbulence.org/Works/plazaville