Manifesto of the Hypocritical Realists
Butterflies landing on China pinks –
Hinges of silver,
Frozen water, duck-head green –
Coins of glass,
Its six-fold curves enclose a lamp
Burning orchid-oil.
She lets down her tresses before the mirror,
Sheds her gold cicadas,
Perfume of aloes from a warm fire,
Smoke of dogwood.
Goblets of wine joined with a sash,
A new bride in raptures,
Wind by moonlight blowing the dew,
Cold outside the screen,
As crows cry from the city walls,
The girl from Chu sleeps on.
—Li Ho
Song of the Screen (translated by J.D. Frodsham)
The latest discovery is always that the mind is a screen: a flat surface servicing the projection of equally flat imagery; a limiting device, shielding from view the presumably deviant acts taking place on either side; a pocket-sized, densely porous membrane for the capture and filtration of saleable data-streams as they enter and are redistributed across a centralized communications network; a movable partition, establishing the categories necessary to the preservation of modesty and interiority (and their attendants, publicity and notoriety) by screening from view what is best not looked at and substituting images more diverting to the eye. Edible lip filler; buy Apple; brush your teeth with Nike sneakers; the ecstatic backflips of fictional gunshot victims; sinkholes near you.
Exposure to the totality of available sense data in a modern environment being likely to induce cascade in any organism engaging with it unfiltered, the possession of an experiential screen constitutes not merely an evolutionary advantage but a basic condition for intelligible behaviour. Consciousness—the sense of self of fashionable meat—is held to be competitively neutral byproduct of this screening process.
Consider an unbalanced equation: energy enters the circuit in the form of light, warmth, movement, sound, and so forth, but what leaves again as action and its attendant bleeding of heat and noise does not equal intake. Input (life) exceeds output (work). Something is being withheld, making the system unstable and liable to flooding. Without a reliable means of disposal, the screened material doesn’t dissipate but collects (pools) and over time festers. This clotted matter, clogging the strainer, is what the mind is left to hang onto, and pooling, shapes familiar patterns on the surface of the screen, as do (say) coffee grounds in a paper filter or the scum left behind by boiling rice. There is a clear competitive rationale for the development of a means for disposing of the waste in a way that will confer the least possible disadvantage on the organism while producing only neutral or serendipitously advantageous effects; events which serve no purpose: senseless vocalisations; crying; laughter; unrequited want; repetitive motion; tradition; the collecting or fabrication of purposeless objects; ritual religious observation.
What we take to be our thoughts, feelings, memories, etc., are the sum of that which must be removed from our environment to facilitate the continued functioning of our systems, as (say) the liver sieves the blood of toxins and poisons which are later expelled. What we are is what is no longer necessary, what is left over after the execution of an algorithm determined to eliminate waste, and which informing no action or decisionmaking, takes part in no behaviour that is not impertinent to the proper functioning of the body when it is no longer the body of an animal. This material is not a necessary part of the mechanism. It is its waste product, the set of informational quanta collected over time that are unnecessary for the successful running and continued survival of a corpse.
In short the human is runoff. Effluence. To be counted among the other excreta. It is open to question whether the body knows that we are here.
One Lifeline at a Time, by Oma Ikenga
To screen contains simultaneously the possibilities of hiding and disclosure. One screens both from and for public view, and to read or watch something happening onscreen is to become temporarily mindless: what is known with the greatest certainty is what it is agreed to ignore; what is most secret is what is openly acknowledged: we have been abandoned by science; our children play with toys made by slaves; Western civilisation is a machine for convincing young women to fuck old men.
Among these public scandals is counted the fact that our channels of public communication are not maintained to transmit the images we take in in the form of our loved ones’ smiling faces, popular entertainment, literature, our money and careers, education and art—which are at best the spillage (more aptly the filtered contaminants) of the real transmission. It is left us only to guess at the nature of the genuine signal, which purified of these adulterants is rendered imperceptible to us. The modern condition is to no longer know what our bodies are being told by the media, and to feel as though we can only watch to see what we do. The only certainty being that our guesses will be wrong, being made of the wrong stuff.
Where once the body of the lover stood behind the screen, shaping the changing silhouette, technological advance has rendered this element redundant, replacing it with circuitry, and now to peek behind is at most to see the same image reversed.
Hypocritical Realism calls for the production of works that are capable of inverting the filter, of screening for the mind the messages meant only for the viscera and vice versa (though it is advised this latter program be postponed until it is ascertained where the body is). We believe this will require the implementation of new public works and wholesale state-funded programs for sleeping with celebrities.
The categories of fiction and nonfiction, reality and unreality, accident and on-purpose being not only no longer fit-for-purpose but downright confusing to behold, the new realism will be neither true nor false but simply repetitive and alarming, as life is now. It will serve no one and do everything. Its music will reek; its food will sound terrific. Its advertisements will be in foreign languages and demand payment upfront before they’ll tell you what they’re for. Its official currency will be quickly declared illegal. For a time we will not remember where we are, but in the end hopefully we will realize we are outside. Something has to change.
Among our forebears and contemporaries we identify Christine Brooke-Rose, Ken Russell, Miguel Llansó, Michele Bernstein, Valerie Solanas and others, all either dead or unknowing.
Manifesto of the Hypocritical Realists
Butterflies landing on China pinks –
Hinges of silver,
Frozen water, duck-head green –
Coins of glass,
Its six-fold curves enclose a lamp
Burning orchid-oil.
She lets down her tresses before the mirror,
Sheds her gold cicadas,
Perfume of aloes from a warm fire,
Smoke of dogwood.
Goblets of wine joined with a sash,
A new bride in raptures,
Wind by moonlight blowing the dew,
Cold outside the screen,
As crows cry from the city walls,
The girl from Chu sleeps on.
—Li Ho
Song of the Screen
(translated by J.D. Frodsham)
The latest discovery is always that the mind is a screen: a flat surface servicing the projection of equally flat imagery; a limiting device, shielding from view the presumably deviant acts taking place on either side; a pocket-sized, densely porous membrane for the capture and filtration of saleable data-streams as they enter and are redistributed across a centralized communications network; a movable partition, establishing the categories necessary to the preservation of modesty and interiority (and their attendants, publicity and notoriety) by screening from view what is best not looked at and substituting images more diverting to the eye. Edible lip filler; buy Apple; brush your teeth with Nike sneakers; the ecstatic backflips of fictional gunshot victims; sinkholes near you.
Exposure to the totality of available sense data in a modern environment being likely to induce cascade in any organism engaging with it unfiltered, the possession of an experiential screen constitutes not merely an evolutionary advantage but a basic condition for intelligible behaviour. Consciousness—the sense of self of fashionable meat—is held to be competitively neutral byproduct of this screening process.
Consider an unbalanced equation: energy enters the circuit in the form of light, warmth, movement, sound, and so forth, but what leaves again as action and its attendant bleeding of heat and noise does not equal intake. Input (life) exceeds output (work). Something is being withheld, making the system unstable and liable to flooding. Without a reliable means of disposal, the screened material doesn’t dissipate but collects (pools) and over time festers. This clotted matter, clogging the strainer, is what the mind is left to hang onto, and pooling, shapes familiar patterns on the surface of the screen, as do (say) coffee grounds in a paper filter or the scum left behind by boiling rice. There is a clear competitive rationale for the development of a means for disposing of the waste in a way that will confer the least possible disadvantage on the organism while producing only neutral or serendipitously advantageous effects; events which serve no purpose: senseless vocalisations; crying; laughter; unrequited want; repetitive motion; tradition; the collecting or fabrication of purposeless objects; ritual religious observation.
What we take to be our thoughts, feelings, memories, etc., are the sum of that which must be removed from our environment to facilitate the continued functioning of our systems, as (say) the liver sieves the blood of toxins and poisons which are later expelled. What we are is what is no longer necessary, what is left over after the execution of an algorithm determined to eliminate waste, and which informing no action or decisionmaking, takes part in no behaviour that is not impertinent to the proper functioning of the body when it is no longer the body of an animal. This material is not a necessary part of the mechanism. It is its waste product, the set of informational quanta collected over time that are unnecessary for the successful running and continued survival of a corpse.
In short the human is runoff. Effluence. To be counted among the other excreta. It is open to question whether the body knows that we are here.
One Lifeline at a Time, by Oma Ikenga
To screen contains simultaneously the possibilities of hiding and disclosure. One screens both from and for public view, and to read or watch something happening onscreen is to become temporarily mindless: what is known with the greatest certainty is what it is agreed to ignore; what is most secret is what is openly acknowledged: we have been abandoned by science; our children play with toys made by slaves; Western civilisation is a machine for convincing young women to fuck old men.
Among these public scandals is counted the fact that our channels of public communication are not maintained to transmit the images we take in in the form of our loved ones’ smiling faces, popular entertainment, literature, our money and careers, education and art—which are at best the spillage (more aptly the filtered contaminants) of the real transmission. It is left us only to guess at the nature of the genuine signal, which purified of these adulterants is rendered imperceptible to us. The modern condition is to no longer know what our bodies are being told by the media, and to feel as though we can only watch to see what we do. The only certainty being that our guesses will be wrong, being made of the wrong stuff.
Where once the body of the lover stood behind the screen, shaping the changing silhouette, technological advance has rendered this element redundant, replacing it with circuitry, and now to peek behind is at most to see the same image reversed.
Hypocritical Realism calls for the production of works that are capable of inverting the filter, of screening for the mind the messages meant only for the viscera and vice versa (though it is advised this latter program be postponed until it is ascertained where the body is). We believe this will require the implementation of new public works and wholesale state-funded programs for sleeping with celebrities.
The categories of fiction and nonfiction, reality and unreality, accident and on-purpose being not only no longer fit-for-purpose but downright confusing to behold, the new realism will be neither true nor false but simply repetitive and alarming, as life is now. It will serve no one and do everything. Its music will reek; its food will sound terrific. Its advertisements will be in foreign languages and demand payment upfront before they’ll tell you what they’re for. Its official currency will be quickly declared illegal. For a time we will not remember where we are, but in the end hopefully we will realize we are outside. Something has to change.
Among our forebears and contemporaries we identify Christine Brooke-Rose, Ken Russell, Miguel Llansó, Michele Bernstein, Valerie Solanas, and others, all either dead or unknowing.
Samuel Bother is a photographer and indexer living in Wicklow, Ireland.