#tkwc

[bidonicart]

 @post-ironicweaboo commissioned me this series of characters from his fic The Kings Who Cared in 2020, and I got the green light to share! (part 1/4)

●other social media, patreon and prints ●

[tkwc]

Being Together Precedes Being — Philadelphia book launch at Slought

Tuesday, November 5, 2019, 6 - 8 pm

Image: Noa Yafe, Red Star, 2016-17. Photo by Gal Deren.

Slought is pleased to announce The Kids Want Communism, a public conversation exploring the legacies and meaning of communism today. The event will feature writers and scholars including Marissa Brostoff, Kristen Ghodsee, Malcolm Harris, and Joshua Simon, and marks the publication of the book  Being Together Precedes Being: A Textbook for The Kids Want Communism  (Archive Books), copies of which will be available courtesy of Ulises, and is presented in partnership with Philly Socialists. Specters are haunting the globe—the specters of anticommunism. From the European Union and its erosion to the disastrous "war on terror" and the destruction of the welfare state; from Wahhabism to neoliberalism; from debt economy to privatization; from game theory and disruptive innovation to cybernetics, and the surveillance of entertainment devices - all these anticommunisms are fighting one another, and collectively haunting us. What began with the implosion of real existing socialism almost thirty years ago comes full circle with the current collapse of the neoliberal arrangements that were then constituted. The discussion will consider communist legacies and knowledge inside and outside of real-existing socialism, to address some urgent questions facing us today: automation and reproductive labor, human capital and algorithmic management, environmental capitalist reform and planning for zero growth. From the Cold War to Global Warming, from the Soviet Block to Blockchain technology, from the Space Race to Space X, the word communism stands again as the radical opposition for exploitation and inequality. Being Together Precedes Being offers itself as a text book for The Kids Want Communism project, which was initiated towards the 99th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 as a series of exhibitions, symposiums and conferences, screening programs, publications and a summer camp around the world. In this textbook, communism does not merely describe an "us versus them" relation, but also offers that we are becoming the future. This trajectory of communism runs parallel to us at every single moment and its guiding principle is that being together precedes being. This event is free and open to the public. 

For more information, please visit here.

FB event available here. 

[bidonicart]

 @post-ironicweaboo commissioned me this series of characters from his fic The Kings Who Cared in 2020, and I got the green light to share! (part 3/4)

●other social media, patreon and prints ●

[bidonicart]

 @post-ironicweaboo commissioned me this series of characters from his fic The Kings Who Cared in 2020, and I got the green light to share! (part 2/4)

●other social media, patreon and prints ●

[bidonicart]

 @post-ironicweaboo commissioned me this series of characters from his fic The Kings Who Cared in 2020, and I got the green light to share! (part 4/4)

●other social media, patreon and prints ●

[tkwc]

Amazing propaganda images from the 1960s show how the Soviet Union thought the world would look in 2017

“Amazing images from the height of communism showing how a futuristic and all-conquering Soviet Union might have looked in 2017 have emerged in Moscow. The fantastical prediction of an idealized communist paradise - with the West defeated - was made almost half a century ago and envisaged Russia as it marked the centenary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. In this brave new world, there are under-ice cities in the USSR's polar regions where the season was 'eternal spring' with their own tropical sea and beach. Heat is obtained from 'the bowels of the earth' by 'underground boat 'moles' made from extremely heat-resistant steel' tapping into sources of perpetual energy. And Soviet apparatchiks tamper with nature to reverse two of Siberia's mighty rivers - the Yenisei and Ob (the fifth and seventh longest in the world) - to flow into the Caspian Sea, instead of the Arctic Ocean, to feed states of the union. The slide show was intended as a propaganda filled comic strip for Soviet children in 1960 allowing a glimpse the exciting future of their country, which - in fact- was to collapse in ruins in 1991 after nations such Ukraine voted for independence.” 

Read more here. 

Some images from the story below:

The front cover of the propaganda comic strip depicts a futuristic world of cities in the sky, high speed trains and space shuttles venturing into outer space. The western capitalists have been defeated but attempt a feeble fight back in the story.

The cartoon story predicted that the Soviet Union would be at the forefront of technology with heat obtained from 'the bowels of the earth.' The roots of the Union came in 1917 when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government.

The picture in the backdrop shows a towering skyscraper, aircraft dotted across the sky and a high speed train traveling on a glistening white bridge. The portrait painted in the cartoon was far removed from reality and just four years after the piece was released the country encountered a period of economic stagnation from which it would never recover.

Children of 2017 look out to a projection of an immaculate city with blanket white buildings and roads.  'The Era of Stagnation' is deemed to have started in 1964 under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev and lasted until 1985 when Konstantin Chernenko was in office. Experts say the state over budgeted on its military which lead to a prolonged period of economic decline.  

The image shows how 'bridges stretched over bottomless gorges' connect the vast Soviet Union together. It suggests that even mountains, which were blown away by 'precisely-aimed nuclear explosions,' cannot stop the rise of communism nor stunt the growth of the country.

'The sea that was just recently drying up now accepts new deep rivers,' reads the script. The Soviet Union, which was then presided over by President Nikita Khrushchev, shows it can play god in 2017 managing to beat nature by reversing two of Siberia's mighty rivers - the Yenisei and Ob (the fifth and seventh longest in the world) - to flow into the Caspian Sea instead of the Arctic Ocean.

This map shows the tumultuous route the waters would have taken to reach the Caspian Sea which would have served the Soviet states of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. This underlined in no uncertain context the strength the Union would have upon its centenary year.

Propagandists also claimed that the socialists state would build a dam across the Bering Strait linking Russia and an Alaska 'liberated' from capitalism. The dam can also accommdate 'nuclear powered trains' on double decker railway lines. 'See nuclear powered trains rushing across it. The dam blocked a cold current from the Arctic Ocean, so improving the climate of the Far East' the caption reads.

Elsewhere, defeated Western 'imperialists' have been banished to a remote island in the southern Pacific and are trying desperately to claw back land by building bombs with the manpower they have left.

Not content with conquering the world the communists were able to reach the depths of space to expand the Soviet Union's burgeoning territory.  The state consisted of now 15 separate countries including European nations such as Estonia, Moldova and Latvia. The union also encompassed Central Asian powerhouses Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

'Photonic rockets - interstellar ships - swept across space at near the speed of light, heading for the nearest, yet so distant planetary system of Alpha Centauri,' the script reads as a scientist gives a class to attentive students.

After an introduction to the impending achievements of the Union the story focuses on a boy called Igor who was awoken by another technological advancement of the regime. The boy's alarm clock sends out a hand to pinch its owner's nose to wake them.

See the rest of the story here. 

[tkwc]

Opinion | The Unexpected Afterlife of American Communism

Although grass-roots activists have long been painted as alien agitators, a proud homegrown tradition persists.

[tkwc]

Russian and Soviet visual music

by Peter Kirn

Excerpted from here

Wassily Kandinsky "Red Yellow Blue", 1925, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France.

“Russia has put image to music in the form of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, in Wassily Kandinsky’s vibrant abstract paintings and numerous oversized dramatic spectacles. But lesser known are the country's experiments with electrified visual music, particularly those conducted in the Soviet period. These strange, ahead-of-their-time inventions are now being reborn with a new generation of artists.

VISION INTO REALITY

Jean Delville's cover illustration for  Scriabin's Prometheus: The Poem Of Fire composition

In theatre, dance and music, Russian and Soviet-era artwork used every available technology to achieve a trans-disciplinary, immersive aesthetic experience. They continued to innovate with machine-driven optics and light when many other electronic music experiments were left literally in darkness. And if the composer Richard Wagner only theorised about Gesamtkunstwerk, it was the Russians who attempted to turn their fanciful visions into reality.

In this age of electrified machines, Russia's fascination with visual music can be traced to its spiritual forefather, the composer Alexander Scriabin. He found esoteric, spiritual meaning in the connection between colour and sound, with different musical notes producing synesthesia – the merging of one sense with another. To recreate the stimuli in his mind, he even added a line for colour organ ("clavier à lumières") to his mystical tone poem Prometheus: The Poem Of Fire from 1910. That creation splashed colour around the theatre in time with shifts in the music.

CITY AS SYMPHONY

Arseny Avraamov's "Ornamental Sound Animation", patterns that would be used as the basis for sound production

In early Russian visual music creations, you find a connection between music and painting. Futurist Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné's "Optophonic Piano” instrument created in 1907 employed hand-painted discs, spun in front of lights by a mechanical apparatus controlled from a keyboard.

Avant-garde composer Arseny Avraamov (1886–1944) was known for ideas like his raucous Symphony Of Factory Sirens. This work used an entire city as its instrument – employing factory sirens, automobile horns, the foghorns of the Soviet naval fleet alongside machine guns, cannons airplanes, a large band and choir performing the socialist anthem “Internationale”, among many other elements – all to create a massive-scale composition.

KGB AND SOVIET SPACE PROGRAM

Diagram of Evgeny Sholpo's Variophone that produced "ornamental sound"

In fact, it's possible to imagine an alternative history of the synthesizer, one in which optical-electronic technology is employed in place of analogue (and later digital) circuitry. Drawn to the uniquely organic sounds that can be created, artists are reinterpreting this history, made accessible by the internet and by researchers like Andrey Smirnov, a specialist in the history of Russian visual and musical technologies. Derek Holzer and Mariska de Groot have each been inspired by the earlier inventions to work with the medium of opto-mechanical-electronic tone wheels. These spinning discs transform patterns of light and shadow into simultaneous sound.

Other works are just now coming to light. Some of these productions had military backing for research into the effects of audiovisual stimulation on different subjects. The KGB, Soviet air force and space program each supported the development of light instruments as technology that might eventually have intelligence or aerospace applications. Asking my Russian friends with some expertise in the area is itself a strange experience – they're initially surprised I don't know about the connection, then cagey about details, which were tightly classified in the age before Glastnost.

LIGHTING UP SOVIET LIVING ROOMS

Bulat Galeev's "Indicator"  a light and sound instrument designed for Soviet spacecraft.  Courtesy Institute Prometheus

These projects might seem like off-hours hobbies – and the engineers certainly had to frequently scrounge for parts, but the USSR bureaucrats evidently believed in their usefulness to the Soviet agenda. None other than legendary rocket engineer Sergey Korolev requested the "Indicator" to be produced by Bulat Galeev – a light and sound instrument designed for spacecraft. Instead of blaring klaxons and blinking buttons, the Indicator showed data as swirls of abstract colour – looking more like science fiction, or at least your screen saver, than what you'd expect from an average 1960s control panel. The design saw real-world tests, even if lighter, more compact conventional instrumentation won out in practice.

Following military experimentation, the light organs were popularised for the regular Russian citizen. An invention called "Disco" was mass produced, and brought sound-reactive coloured lighting effects to Soviet kitchens and living rooms. For those who couldn't afford to buy such things, DIY was an option. The Moscow Central Radio Club managed by the state even published electronics diagrams of inventions from the USSR as well as the West in pamphlets, and in the days before the internet, would respond to written inquiries from hobbyists electronics creators. This meant that psychedelic coloured lighting was a regular feature in music performances.

If you didn't encounter them there, you might even have some mandatory exposure to audiovisual installations in the relaxation rooms of factories, like the auto production facility at Kamaz. There, the USSR hoped, the abstract animations would sooth workers and boost productivity.”

Read more here.