Tetine, Music For Breathing / After The Future - full interview

Brazilian tropical mutant punk funk trio drop video for 'Music For Breathing' 

Jakia Cheatham - Myles

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/SLBFCMYC16Y

“Music For Breathing” is the brand new video & single by the tropical mutant punk funk duo Tetine taken from their new album After the Future – out now on Slum Dunk Music, 2023.

Formed by Brazilian musicians/artists Bruno Verner, Eliete Mejorado and cellist Yoko Afi, Tetine have been producing a series of singular works intersecting electronic music, performance art, film/video, and spoken word, and acting in experimental contexts both in the music and art scenes since their creation in São Paulo in 1995.

“Music For Breathing” is a dreamy electro-acoustic meditation for cello, treated voices, electronics, and organ, dedicated to our planetary ecosystem in erosion.  Conceived by Eliete Mejorado, the video is an ode to Earth’s ancestral future as the only possible future. One that was already here: a non-human cosmic, forested and aquatic inherited future moved by the movement of rivers, trees, the stars, insects, birds, plants, landscapes, roads, stones, light, the sky, and the sun. It is a slow piece about electricity and a poetic allegory against the centrality of humans and capitalism as the mufflers of other presences.

“Music For Breathing” dwells on such complex relationships motivated by a strong desire for collective change, a shift towards a greater understanding of the cosmos without the need to produce for ‘progress’. The track also comes with “Spaced Out in Paradise”, a washed out, hypnotic melancholic track sung by Yoko and Bruno as they search for another planetary contact.

Stream TETINE’s latest album After The Future now here: https://open.spotify.com/album/1cPPymclUihI1oNdsKopST?si=yxUCdht6TE6iijLA4HTKHw

TETINE play London’s Rich Mix on 19^th Jan 2024. Find out more and get tickets here: https://richmix.org.uk/events/tetine-music-for-breathing/

We had the pleasure of sitting down with TETINE to discuss music, touring and plans for the future: 

Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind “Music For Breathing” and the concept behind your new album, “After the Future”?

The idea to create “Music for Breathing” and the new album “After the Future” came during the first lockdown as we began playing together every day—myself, Bruno, and our then 10-year-old daughter, Yoko. We ended up composing a series of slow and atmospheric pieces for electronics, synths, organ, and cello while stuck in our flat under the influence of watching too much of the terrible news of the time. Much of the inspiration behind the work and the tracks we produced for the records were born out of constant contemplation of the idea of respiration, asphyxiation, the virus itself, acts of suspended breathing, and vertigos related to the experience of living in urban environments in political, social, and philosophical transitions. We were sonically and poetically trying to deal with the persistent sense of claustrophobia, panic, and a state of insecurity that took place in the world, and at the same time, channeling a real desire for collective change, for a greater understanding of the cosmos through our music. One in which the Western idea of ‘production’ and ‘progress’ often dictated by those in power could no longer make sense in the fractured world we live in. Both records were born as a kind of utopian sonic fiction around these themes.

“Music For Breathing” is described as a dreamy electro-acoustic meditation. Can you walk us through the creative process behind this particular track?

The track was born from the many improv sessions we would do at home at the time. I think it began taking form when Yoko and Bruno found the vocal melody and the harmony they wanted for the piece. I then recorded only Yoko’s vocals, and I began treating it electronically as I played with some images on Final Cut—just the voice and then her cello. I thought that they had created such a beautiful and simple melody, and I had this idea that I could make Yoko’s vocals resemble a spooky and alien chant. One that preserved both the organic and ‘human-like’ characteristics of the original vocals recorded and yet acted as a half-human, half-machine melancholic and strange element throughout the track. As I found the tone, then we began again improvising over the vocal line, adding layers of synths, and an organ counter melody. Yoko then added other cello layers, we doubled some of her vocals, and the whole atmosphere of “Music For Breathing” took shape. That was the first track we recorded, and from then on, we started creating the repertoire of After the Future.

In what ways do you hope the music and video convey a message about our relationship with the planet?

I believe that we all know by now (or at least feel) that our ecosystem is in frank erosion. Even those who are still in denial about it may feel that something is not quite right. There’s been so much destruction, endless forms of extraction, exploitation, social injustice, terrible wars, an inundation of poor mental health, and all this in conjunction with unexpected emergencies and climate shifts around the planet. Our “Music For Breathing” video was conceived as an ode to Earth’s ancestral future as the only possible future. Bruno and I were very influenced by the thoughts of the wonderful Brazilian philosopher and indigenous thinker Ailton Krenak, whose beliefs include the perception of the meaning of ‘life’ as transcendental. Something that is beyond our understanding and, therefore, undefinable by words and verbal language. “Music For Breathing,” both as a video and a piece of music, tries to evoke this notion of a future of the past without being necessarily nostalgic. One that was already here: a non-human cosmic, forested, and aquatic inherited future moved by the movement of rivers, trees, the stars, insects, birds, plants, landscapes, roads, stones, light, the sky, and the sun. The video is about electricity. For me, it also conveys a poetic allegory against the centrality of humans and contemporary capitalism as the ‘governors’ and mufflers of other presences.

How do you see music as a medium for expressing and challenging societal and environmental issues?

I think that music is a form of universal language. You can establish distinct types of sensory communication through sound and achieve modes of cultural, social, or political engagement. A piece of music may grab your attention in so many different levels than a purely verbal discourse would do. It touches me directly as no other art form can do. I use it as a poetic way of communicating my feelings, but there are so many ways and formats one can do it. No matter what kind of music. For me, making music is a powerful way to express, celebrate, and challenge any form of sentiment. And this, of course, includes societal, political, historical, philosophical, environmental, amorous issues, and so on.

Can you share some insights into the dynamics between the three members when producing your music?

Our music-making has been permeated by a domestic experience since the early days when we used to live in São Paulo. We produced ‘After the Future’ at home in East London during the unbearably intense hot summer that hit the city between July and August 2022. We set up our studio in our flat’s kitchen to better capture all the acoustic instrumentation (in particular, for the recordings of the cellos) as we would have much less noise interference from the street, and ended up assembling all the tracks in that space. It was such a beautiful process that involved me and Bruno and our daughter Yoko, who became the third member of Tetine and contributed with cellos, vocals, some additional keyboards, and who co-authored most of the repertoire in After the Future. The three of us became so intimate musically since the first lockdowns, and this record is the result of such dynamics. It was a natural kind of amalgam, as there was not much to do during this time except play together, watch films, listen to the news, and talk about the strange world we live. This was fuel for composing, and that’s how it all came about. It was an amazing period of collective discoveries for the three of us, much differently than if we were all each separately working on our own things musically. It also coincided with Yoko starting to compose her first pieces. She had just made a track called “Aurora,” which had also been released on a Brazilian electronic music compilation Baphyanas Brasyleiras (and that we ended up later including on After the Future) as it was aligned with what we had been composing for Tetine. So, it was a natural process the way she incorporated herself in Tetine’s world participating in videos and composing. And that’s how we ended up with a tropical mutant DIY piece of electronica and experimental chamber music.

In the text Bruno wrote for the “Music For Breathing” vinyl’s insert, he uses the expression ‘agile and naive as a child’ by Oswald de Andrade, to refer to the process of making these pieces, while at the same time commenting that the album was composed with the ‘arrogance of a second childhood’; a quote by British filmmaker Derek Jarman that has also influenced Tetine both visually and philosophically in so many ways over the years.

As a duo that has been active since 1995, how do you see Tetine evolving in the future, both musically and thematically?

The process of composing ‘After the Future’ was a way for us to review characteristics of Tetine’s own trajectory as a duo. Almost like a form of ‘self-cannibalization’. We went back to our roots as Brazilian artists living in the UK and to the beginning of our history as an electronic duo formed in 1995. Also, we went through places that were dormant, understanding things that we did in different ways in the past.

I see Tetine evolving into a powerful experimental DIY chamber ensemble, amplifying our blend of electronic and acoustic instrumentation while re-dimensioning our interest in the politics of day-to-day living and the domestic through the relationship between nature and technology.

For more information visit: https://www.instagram.com/wearetetine/ or contact terry@cannonballpr.com 

CONDFEITO PODCAST EP.22 - TETINE+ YOKO AFI

Here's a two-hour long nice conversation we had with Muep Etmo for his brilliant CONDEFEITO PODCAST, check it out. (audio only)

Conversação boa para o PODCAST CONDEFEITO do grande Mueptemo do

Mirella Brandi x Muepetmo

! 2 hrs sem cortes sobre várias ondas (& não-ondas tb)...musica, vida, performance, arte, prática, tempo, conhecimento(sx), jaulas, prisões culturais, emocionais, filme, cinema, discos antigos (+ música + anti-música). Ouça aqui:

 

Entrevista sobre o novo disco Animal Numeral (2019)

Entrevista concedida ao jornalista Abonico Smith, October 2019.

>> O que é e como vocês definiriam o Animal Numeral?

BRUNO: Um animal hormonal à serviço do gozo. De carne osso até o pescoço, construindo ficções de nós mesmos. Auto-ficção. Animal Numeral é um álbum eletrônico-orgânico que investiga poeticamente questões filosóficas, políticas, históricas, sociais, sexuais, matemáticas e linguísticas. Pulsões relacionadas às nossas experiências mediadas por números, por ações, inações, pelo corpo, tecnologia, remédios, raça e marginalidade. É um disco sobre a percepção da velha ideia de “fim da história” que na verdade nunca se consumou mesmo estando na beirada do fim da própria história. O apocalipse que não chegou, o apocalipse em constante formação. O disco ‘conversa’ sobre esses processos de desumanização; sobre ser e estar imerso, digo, interconectado em cadeias pós-humanas sem chances de voltar. Sobre os nossos afetos, e suas viagens hormonais. Mas também sobre uma apatia energética global que nos conecta à aparelhos celulares, redes sociais, grupos, outros artistas, organizações e instituições pelo mundo afora. Cada um no seu quadrado, mas todos engolidos, saturados, exaustos e ainda assim emanando meias verdades. Em outras palavras, sobre ter se tornado ‘número’ dentro do projeto neoliberal tecno-científico-racial mundial. Um projeto de guerra.

>> Este disco aumenta o tom político das letras da dupla. Sinal dos tempos atuais? O que vocês poderiam falar sobre quem acha que um artista não deve se posicionar politicamente, apenas gravar e subir ao palco para entreter os fãs?

ELIETE: Tudo na vida é político.  Nasci durante a ditadura militar. Fui obrigada a hastear muita bandeira e cantar o hino nacional na escola. Estudei em uma escola do estado na Zona Leste de São Paulo, vi muita criança com marca de queimadura de ferro de passar, desnutrida, crianças que vomitavam durante a aula. Com 7 anos não sabia o que era aquilo… não se falava sobre o assunto no Brasil. E era um silêncio mortal na minha casa. A casa de Bernarda Alba! Fui descobrindo as coisas por mim mesma. Me lembro de uma professora Russa sobrevivente da Alemanha de Hitler… seus pais morreram na Segunda Guerra. Esse era o cenário. Acho que hoje vivemos em tempos onde somos cúmplices de tudo, e temos muito mais informações do que tínhamos em 1974. Tudo é visível. O teatro está aberto, escancarado. Quando você ouve uma música como “A Mulher do Fim Do Mundo”, por exemplo, aquilo te muda… te transtorna… te da uma urgência. É esse o espírito. 

>> Quem são as maiores inspirações (para o bem ou para o mal) deste novo disco?

BRUNO: Acho que o disco é um reflexo de uma constelação de condições, decisões e temporalidades distintas. Tudo passa por esse buraco. O genocídio mundial praticado por homens de terno que se acham “autores”; presidentes que se acham ‘performers’ e que acreditam piamente no seu teatro. A exclusão social, a imigração, o holocausto climático, o lamaçal, o Brexit, o racismo, o óleo, o lixo, as indústrias farmacêuticas, alimentícias, armamentistas, religiosas, e as praias do Brasil ensolaradas.

>> “This Is The Voice” fala sobre os supremacistas brancos que não só ainda existem aos montes nos Estados Unidos como também tiveram ampliados suas vozes e ações nos últimos anos. O que vocês acham da relação deste povo com uma extrema direita que hoje governa o Brasil, votou para o Reino Unido se separar da Comunidade Europeia e está em crescimento aí por outros países do velho continente também?

ELIETE: O fascismo está aí normalizado e legitimado por toda essa nova geração de políticos populistas de direita e seus seguidores. Todos se acham ‘autores’. E com os seus pomos de adão têm direito a voz. E a mulher? Essa não pode vacilar. Veja o que aconteceu com a Marielle, uma MULHER que tinha voz. Uma mulher que falava. Coisa rara, foi morta porque falava. Isso pra mim traduz todo esse tempo.

O fascismo é parte do dia a dia de agora. Foi aberta a caixa de pandora e tudo está saindo de dentro. A máscara caiu e virou um show cafona. 

BRUNO: É sintomático ver o Brasil tão alinhado à essa nova corrente mundial tendo como líder um fantoche tacanho, subserviente, agressivo, misógino, homofóbico, racista, pouco sexy, cafona-evanjeka. Ninguém merece um imbecil desses como porta voz de um país que até pouco tempo atrás era representado por forças como Glauber Rocha, Abidias Nascimento, Rogério Sganzerla, Luiz Melodia, Itamar Assumpção, Brizola, Elke Maravilha. Onde foi que isso tudo se perdeu? 

ELIETE: Um retrocesso político, estético, social, mental, energético, sexual e religioso se instituiu. Aonde foi parar o nosso desbunde real? Sinto falta desse Brasil.  Lembro com dor de estômago na ocasião daquela votação para o impeachment da Presidente Dilma em TV aberta, um mundo de homens engravatados - a maioria (mas também outras mulheres) se pronunciando em nome da tal família brasileira. O futuro presidente oferecendo seu voto à memória de um coronel torturador que durante os anos da ditadura militar colocava ratos nas vaginas das mulheres. A energia do Brexit é parecida, mas é mais cínica. Ha muito racismo na Europa de agora. Sempre houve, mas agora está exacerbado, normalizado, oficializado. Mesmo em Londres que é uma cidade onde se fala mais de 300 línguas. 

  

>> A letra de “Why Bandido” se destaca pela extensa narrativa e por versos bastante imagéticos. Como surgiu a ideia desta música? Vocês temem que a distopia cantada na letra um dia acabe acontecendo de fato?”

ELIETE: O terceiro mundo já explodiu. Essa música foi criada em 2011 quando fizemos a performance Tetine vs O Bandido da Luz Vermelha. Ela foi concebida como uma declaração de amor à obra do cineasta Rogerio Sganzerla. A primeira vez que apresentamos foi com a musa Helena Ignez, que participou ao vivo quando tocamos no Sesc Vila Mariana dentro do projeto Cine Concerto. A letra surgiu de experimentações e improvisações vocais que fazíamos com diálogos e falas dos filmes do Sganzerla. A partir disso criamos uma outra narrativa. A primeira versão da música saiu no disco In Loveland With You (2013), e pode ser considerada a nossa versão original. Depois em 2018 começamos a fazer outros experimentos com a letra do Bandido e acabamos gravando uma nova versão que virou o “WHY BANDIDO”. Essa versão é bem diferente da original, tem um beat e um baixo bem marcados, foram gravados novos vocais e se parece mais com um Kraut bem dissonante. Gostamos tanto da nova versão que incluímos ela nos nossos dois últimos álbuns Animal Numeral e Tetine vs Pasolini: The Baron, The Bishop, The Judge, The President and The Relative, este último gravado ao vivo no Sesc Avenida Paulista.

>> Outra letra altamente distópica é a de “Rats And Humans”, na qual vocês sugerem uma raça que misture as duas espécies…

BRUNO: "Rats and Humans” é uma canção ambígua sobre a falta de lugar dentro do próprio lugar. De novo uma auto-ficção sobre o espaço público no leste de Londres, mais especificamente, sobre um fim de tarde em Bethnal Green, em Tower Hamlets - bairro onde nos últimos 20 anos circulamos quase todos os dias. A música comenta esse eterno deslocamento vivido pelos imigrantes, por corpos racializados, e por aqueles que 'não-pertencem'.  As crianças e os adolescentes vigiando o parque, os dealers de heroína passando com seus  carros, as mães passeando com os carinhos de bebês, o vendedor de flores. E a morte eminente, sempre rondando. É uma canção sobre sobreviver. Ou melhor, sobre continuar vivo, sobrevivendo.  O anti-refrão dela, funciona meio que como uma corrida Beckettiniana; aquela corrida que não dá em lugar nenhum. E assim, é também uma alusão poética aos ratos de Londres. Uma cidade inteira submersa. A letra é delirante como um sonho. Ratos e humanos na mesma corrida. Mamíferos numerais. As gaivotas já estão no centro da cidade e não só mais no litoral. A música também fala sobre atear fogo. A atmosfera nos faz lembrar das riots de 2011 aqui em Londres, depois que a polícia atirou em um jovem negro em Tottenham. E também do fogo visceral que tomou conta de mais de 25 andares do edifício Grenfell Tower em West London em 2017. 

>> As duas primeiras faixas, “Cannibalia” e “Konkret Dance” são de forte teor sexual. O sexo, aliás, sempre esteve bastante impresso em letras de outros discos anteriores…

ELIETE: Sexo é fonte de energia vital. Sem essa energia, não há nada, não ha pulsão.
>> Como é o processo de criação musical do Tetine, já que muitas das obras musicais são acompanhadas por instalações, performances e vídeos? Letra, melodia e harmonia chegam primeiro do que todo o resto? 

BRUNO: Depende, as vezes a música vem primeiro e depois a melodia e a letra. Não temos uma fórmula.  E isso vale para os outros tipos de trabalho em vídeo, instalações, performances e etc. Trabalhamos os dois de forma bem orgânica. Acho que no fundo o que estamos fazendo parte da ideia de intervir no ar. São intervenções rítmicas mediadas por som, imagem, palavra, gesto, dança, sexo e respiração.  As vezes vem de algo que ouvimos. De conversas, de insônias. De percepções. Ou de algo que algo que assistimos, ou lemos. Ou de alguma experiência doméstica. Estar vivo em 2019 já é muito. Tudo em tempo real.

>> Uma das faixas traz uma adaptação do francês Alfred Musset, considerado um dos grandes expoentes do período romântico. Qual é o grau de envolvimento do Tetine com as obras dele?

ELIETE: Sobre Alfred Musset, gosto muito do pessimismo, da solidão, da hipocrisia e da melancolia dos textos dele. Ação X Reflexão. Isso é parte da alma do Tetine também. Já estava lá no nosso primeiro disco Alexander’s Grave de 1995. 

>> Vocês são lançadores compulsivos de discos, chegando a lançar um ou até dois álbuns por ano. Quanto tempo do dia ou da semana vocês se dedicam a criar, gravar e experimentar sons?

ELIETE: Depende muito da fase, ou do projeto que estamos trabalhando, ou da nossa disposição pra fazer as coisas. Mas te digo que respiramos Tetine 24 horas por dia. É como uma filha que está em todo lugar com a gente acompanhando a corrida e sempre em formação. É desse modo que criamos. Observando, vivendo a vida domesticamente, negando, celebrando, conversando, criticando e ficcionalizando o mundo.  O Tetine pra gente é um modo de entender o mundo, um modo de estarmos vivas, onde é possível intervir poética, filosófica e politicamente ao mesmo tempo.  

>> Em outros discos o Tetine esteve mais próximo do funk carioca, mas curiosamente neste quase não há sinais do gênero, em prol de tons mais dançantes e sóbrios (eletrônico, pós-punk). Por quê?

BRUNO: Acho que o Animal Numeral é um disco de verve mais pós-punk mesmo. Seu tom é melancólico, lisérgico. É um álbum dissonante, melodioso e as vezes sufocante também, dependendo do seu estado de espírito. Saiu assim. Mas poderia facilmente ter entrado alguma faixa mais próxima de um ‘funk’ mais sombrio. Digo, uma faixa como ‘Desnorteia’, por exemplo, que está no disco Bonde do Tetão; ou mesmo de experiências como “Zero Zero Cinco Cinco Se Vende!” do L.I.C.K My Favela; músicas que foram bem influenciadas por Miami Bass e Funk Carioca. 

>> O funk carioca está em sua melhor fase no Brasil, conquistando de vez respeito, fama, popularidade e já escalado em grandes festivais. Ainda falta o quê para que seus principais artistas estendam o trabalho para a Europa?

BRUNO: Outro dia mesmo a Deize Tigrona esteve aqui com o Batekoo pra tocar, assisti o set deles e achei incrível! Falta só mundo o aprender a falar outras línguas e deixar de ser permissivamente branco, hegemônico, Anglo-Americano. Falo isso não só em relação a música, mas toda uma cultura do sul global que está anos-luz a frente de muita coisa que se faz por aqui, e acaba existindo sempre de maneira periférica.

>> Bruno, você ainda está fazendo o doutorado em pós-punk? Qual seu envolvimento pessoal com o gênero e por que escolheu este tema? O brasileiro ainda não conhece o pós-punk feito no país nos anos 1980?

BRUNO: Sim, e agora finalmente estou caminhando para o fim. Meu envolvimento com pós-punk vem desde os anos 80 em Belo Horizonte, cidade em que nasci, e aonde toquei em várias bandas da época como R. Mutt, Divergência Socialista, Ida & Os Voltas, Sebastian in Space (entre outras) que circulavam pelo cenário alternativo da cidade. O pós-punk mineiro dos anos 80 foi um universo poético à parte na minha história como artista. Era uma cena bem hibrida que foi parte fundamental da minha formação como músico, e trouxe muitas amizades que conservo até hoje. Em 2018 lançamos um álbum chamado Colt 45: Underground Post Punk, Tropical Tapes, Lo-Fi Electronics & Other Sounds From Brazil (1983-1993) – uma compilação com trabalhos de várias bandas dessa época, além de outras igualmente importantes que vieram de cenas similares ao redor do Brasil. Foi um período de descobertas e uma fase de extrema criação e produção para muita gente que viveu na época. Foi ali que aprendi muito do que sei sobre arte, música, performance, poesia, política e teoria. Tudo de forma intuitiva e sempre coletivamente. Tenho certeza que foi um momento muito importante na vida de todos que viveram. 

>> O Tetine já está há vinte anos radicado em Londres, mostrando que é possível viver do circuito da arte fora do país. Existe alguma possibilidade de retorno ao Brasil ou vocês sequer pensam nisso até o momento?

BRUNO - Sempre fomos estrangeiros mesmo dentro do Brasil. Nunca pertencemos totalmente. Depois de 20 anos sendo estrangeiros na Inglaterra também, nos definimos mesmo como Aliens. Tanto lá, quanto aqui.          

>> Quais são as três piores e as três melhores coisas de se viver longe do Brasil durante duas décadas?

BRUNO E ELIETE: 

3 piores:  

1. Se deparar sempre com o fato de que pessoas não falam a sua língua, e portanto, não atuam no mesmo campo sensorial. 

2. Instabilidade frequente, principalmente agora com o Brexit. 

3. Hegemonia imperial

3 melhores: 

1. Anonimato e cultura. 

2. Um outro tipo de liberdade. Os parques.

3 O sistema de saúde NHS.

An interview with Tetine about the release of NUMERAL ANIMAL (2019)

>> What is it and how would you define Animal Numeral?

BRUNO: A hormonal animal in the service of gozo. From flesh bone to the neck, building fictions of ourselves. Auto-fiction. Animal Numeral is an electronic-organic album that poetically investigates philosophical, political, historical, social, sexual, mathematical and linguistic issues. The impulses related to our experiences mediated by numbers, actions, inactions, body, technology, medicine, race and marginality. It is an album about the perception of that old idea of the ​​"end of story" which never really took place, even being on the edge of the end of the story itself. The apocalypse that has not come, the apocalypse in constant formation. The record talks through these dehumanization processes; about being immersed, I mean, interconnected in post-human chains with no chance of returning. It is about our affections, and their hormonal travels. But also, about a saturated ‘global' apathy that connects us to cell phones, social networks, organisations, institutions, other artists and people around the world. Each one in its own square, but all swallowed, saturated, exhausted and yet emanating half-truths. In other words, this is about becoming 'number' within the worldwide techno-scientific-racial neoliberal project: a war project.

>> This album increases the political tone of the duo's lyrics. Is this a sign of the present times? What could you say about those who think an artist shouldn't position themselves politically -  just record and take the stage to entertain the fans?

ELIETE: Everything in life is political. I was born during the military dictatorship. I was forced to raise that flag and sing the national anthem at school. I studied at a state school in the East Zone of Sao Paulo, I saw children with their legs burned, children who were vomiting during class, malnurished. When I was 7 years-old I didn't know what that was. We didn't talk about it in Brazil. And there was a deadly silence in my house. Bernarda Alba's house. I was discovering things for myself. I remember a surviving Russian teacher from Hitler's Nazi Germany… her parents died in World War II. That was the scenario. I think today we live in times when we are complicit in everything, and we have much more information than we had in 1974. Everything is visible. The theatre is open, wide open. When you listen to a song like “A Mulher do Fim do Fim Do Mundo, (Woman of The End of The World)” for example, it changes you… upsets you… gives you an urgency. That's the spirit.

>> Who are the biggest inspirations (for better or worse) of this new album?

BRUNO: I think the record is a reflection of a constellation of distinct conditions, decisions and temporalities. Everything goes through this hole. The worldwide genocide sponsored by men in suits who consider themselves “authors”; presidents who think they are performers and strongly believe in their theatre. Social exclusion, immigration, climate holocaust, mudflats, Brexit, structural racism, oil, waste, the pharmaceutical industry, food industry, arms, religious, and the sunny beaches of Brazil.

>> "This Is the Voice" talks about white supremacists who not only still exist in the United States in large numbers but have also expanded their voices and actions in recent years. What do you think about the relationship of this people with an extreme right that rules Brazil today, voted for the United Kingdom to separate from the European Community, and which is still growing in other countries of the old continent as well?

ELIETE: Fascism is normalized and legitimized here by this whole new generation of right-wing populist politicians and their followers. Everyone thinks they are authors. And with their Adam's apple they have a voice. And the woman? A woman cannot falter. Look what happened to Marielle, a WOMAN who had a singular voice. A woman who spoke. A rare thing, she was killed because she spoke. This for me translates everything about these times we are in. Fascism is part of everyday life now. The pandora's box has been opened and everything is coming out of it. The mask fell off and the world has turned itself into a tacky show.

BRUNO: It's symptomatic to see Brazil so aligned with this new world order, having as its leader a narrow-minded, subservient, aggressive, misogynist, homophobic, racist, non-sexy,  tacky and above all an evangelical puppet. No one deserves such an imbecile as spokesman for a country that until recently was represented by forces such as Glauber Rocha, Abidias Nascimento, Rogério Sganzerla, Luiz Melodia, Itamar Assumpção, Brizola, Elke Maravilha. Where did it all get lost?

ELIETE: A political, aesthetic, social, mental, energetic, sexual and religious setback has been instituted. Where did all of our ‘desbunde’ go? I miss this Brazil. I remember with a stomach ache, at the time of that horror show that was the vote for President Dilma's impeachment on open TV, a world of men in costume - most (but also other women) speaking out on behalf of the Traditional Brazilian Family. The soon-to-be president (Bolsonaro) offering his vote to the memory of a torturing colonel who during the years of the military dictatorship placed rats in women's vaginas. Brexit's energy is similar but more cynical. There is a lot of racism in Europe right now. There has always been, but now it is exacerbated, normalized, made official. Even in London which is a city where more than 300 languages are spoken.

>> The lyrics for “Why Bandido” stand out for their extensive narrative and very imagetic lines. How did the idea for this song come about? Do you fear that the dystopia sung in the lyrics will one day actually happen? ”

ELIETE: The third world has already exploded. This song was created in 2011 when we created the performance Tetine vs O Bandido da Luz Vermelha. It was conceived as a declaration of love for the work of filmmaker Rogerio Sganzerla. The first time we performed this song was with Sganzerla’s own muse and wife Helena Ignez. She was on stage with us when we played at Sesc Vila Mariana within the project Cine Concerto. The lyrics came from experiments and vocal improvisations that we did with dialogues and speeches of his films. From this we create another narrative. The first version of the song came out on the album In Loveland With You (2013),and is considered our original version. Then in 2018 we started experimenting with Bandido's lyrics and ended up recording a new version that became “WHY BANDIDO”. This version is very different from the original, has a well-marked beat and bass; new vocals have been recorded and sounds more like a dissonant Kraut-punk funk. We love this new version so much that we decided to include it in our last two albums Animal Numeral and Tetine vs Pasolini: The Baron, The Bishop, The Judge, The President and The Relative, the latter recorded live on Sesc Avenida Paulista.

>> Another highly dystopian track is "Rats And Humans," in which you suggest a race that mixes the two species…

BRUNO: "Rats and Humans" is an ambiguous song about displacement within the place itself. Again, a auto-fiction about public space in East London, more specifically a late afternoon in Bethnal Green in Tower Hamlets, a neighbourhood where we have been circulating almost every day for the last 20 years. The song comments on the eternal dis-location experienced by immigrants, racialized bodies, and those who do not belong. Children and teenagers in the park, the heroin dealers, mothers strolling their babies, the flower salesman. And the imminent death, always prowling. It's a song about surviving. Or rather, staying alive. Her anti-chorus works kind of like a Beckett event. That race that goes nowhere, you know what I mean? And so, it's also a poetic allusion to the rats of London. A whole submerged city. The lyrics are delirious like a dream. Rats and humans in the same race. Numeral mammals. The seagulls are already in the city centre and not only on the coast. The atmosphere reminds us of the 2011 riots here in London after police shot a young black man in Tottenham. And also, the visceral fire that took over 25 floors of the Grenfell Tower building in West London in 2017.

>> The first two tracks, "Cannibalia" and "Konkret Dance" are of strong sexual content. Sex, by the way, has always been quite present in lyrics from other previous albums…

ELIETE: Sex is a source of vital energy. Without this energy, there is nothing, there is no drive.

>> What is Tetine's  creative process like, since so many of the musical works are accompanied by installations, performances and videos? Do lyrics, melody and harmony arrive first of all?

BRUNO: It depends, sometimes the song comes first and then the melody and then lyrics. We do not have a formula. And that goes for the other types of works, be they videos, film,  installations, performances and so on. We both work very organically. We make poetic ​​interventions in the air, that’s how I like to think about the process. These are normally rhythmic interventions mediated by sound, image, word, gesture, dance, sex and breathing. Sometimes, it comes from something we hear. It might come from conversations, from insomnia. From something we watch, or from readings. These are the types of perceptions, I believe. And quite a lot is born out of domestic experience as well. Being alive in 2019 is already quite a thing, I’d say. All in real time.

>> One of the tracks features an adaptation of the French author Alfred Musset, considered one of the great exponents of the romantic period. How involved is Tetine with his works?

ELIETE: I love the pessimism, loneliness, hypocrisy and melancholy of Musset’s texts. Action X Reflection. This is part of Tetine's soul as well. It was already there on our first album Alexander’s Grave  from 1995.

>> You guys are compulsive recorders, even releasing one or even two albums a year. How much time of day or week do you devote to creating, recording and experimenting with sounds?

ELIETE: It depends a lot on the phase, or the project we're working on, or our willingness to do things. But I tell you that we breathe Tetine 24 hours a day. It's like a daughter who is everywhere with us, growing up and therefore, always in formation. This is how we create. Observing, living life domestically, denying, celebrating, talking, criticizing and fictionalizing the world. Tetine for us is a way of understanding the world, a manner of being alive. It is a mental and sonic and visual space where it is possible to intervene poetic, philosophically and politically at the same time.

>> On former albums Tetine was closer to funk carioca, but curiously there are almost no signs of this genre, in favour of more dancing and sober tones (electronic, post-punk). Why?

BRUNO: I think Animal Numeral has more of a post-punk verve. His tone is melancholic and lysergic. It's a dissonant, melodious and sometimes a suffocating album, depending on your mood. It came out like that. But it could easily have dark funks on it as well. I mean, a track like 'Desnorteia, for example, which is on Bonde do Tetão (2004); or even experiments like “Zero Zero Five Five For Sale!” from the album L.I.C.K My Favela (2005).

>> Funk carioca is in its best phase in Brazil, gaining respect, fame, popularity and in all major festivals. What do you think the main artists still need to reach Europe?

BRUNO: The other day Deize Tigrona was here with Batekoo to play, I watched their set and I found it amazing! I think, the world has to learn to speak/ understand and feel other languages ​​and stop being permissively white, hegemonic and Anglo-American. This is not only about music, but an entire Southern global culture that is light years ahead of much that is being done here, and always existed on a peripheral basis.

>> Bruno, are you still doing a doctorate in post-punk? What is your personal involvement with the genre and why did you choose this theme? 

BRUNO: Yes, and I'm now finally heading towards the end. My involvement with post-punk comes from the 1980's underground scene of Belo Horizonte, which is the city where I was born, and where I played in several bands such as R. Mutt, Socialist Divergence, Ida & Os Voltas, Sebastian in Space (among others) that circulated around the alternative music and art circuit of the city. The Minas Gerais post-punk of the 80s was a poetic universe apart from many other Brazilian scenes. It is part of my formative years as an artist. It was a very hybrid scene that was played a fundamental role in my development as a musician, not to mention it brought many friendships that I still have today. In 2018 we released an album called Colt 45: Underground Post Punk, Tropical Tapes, Lo-Fi Electronics & Other Sounds From Brazil (1983-1993) - a compilation of works by various bands from that time, as well as other important artists from distinct scenes around Brazil. For me, this was a period of discovery, as well as, and a cultural moment of extreme creativity and production for those who lived at the time. That's where I learned a lot of what I know about art, music, performance, poetry, politics, and theory. All intuitively and always collectively. 

>> You have been living in London for twenty years. Is there any possibility of returning to Brazil or you don’t ever think about it?

BRUNO - We have always been foreigners in Brazil. We never belonged fully. After 20 years being foreigners in England too, we define ourselves as aliens. Both there and here. In the meantime, I have no plans to come back.

>> What are the three worst and three best things about living away from Brazil for two decades?

Worst 3:

1. The fact that people do not speak your language, and therefore do not share the same sensorial field.

2. Frequent instability, especially now with Brexit.

3. Imperial hegemony and the constant illusion of it.

Best 3:

1. Anonymity and culture.

2. Another kind of freedom. 

3 The NHS 

BBC TV-STUDIO TALK – G. P-Orridge's lost UK archives

"It was a cynical commentary.... like most of my work always has been.... on hypocrisy and arrogance and pomposity" 

'I was not surprised that it was taken into court....given the climate of our times which is basically one of insidious repression. The separating of individuals,  the separating of minorities.... and most of all the discrediting of freedom of thought as an option'. 

But I don't think people should be surprise.... I don't think people should expect to see overt attacks on the status quo from artists. Since my case most artists are a bit like civil servants....they want to get their study and commission and they want to get ready for a job at the art college and their bursaries..... and they don't want to rock the boat because they scared of what can happen....  

extracts from BBC TV-STUDIO TALK – G. P-Orridge's lost UK archives.

I'll have my computer talk to you or my 21 st century bicycle

1984" Apple Macintosh commercial

In 1984, Riddley Scott directed a big-budget ($900,000) television commercial, "1984", to launch Apple's Macintosh computer.^[Scott filmed the advertisement in England for about $370,000; which was given a showcase airing in the US on 22 January 1984, during Super Bowl XVIII, alongside screenings in cinemas.^[ Some consider this advertisement a "watershed event" in advertising and a "masterpiece". Advertising Age placed it top of its list of the 50 greatest commercials

Steve Jobs presenting the first Mac in 1984
January 24, 1984: Apple founder Steve Jobs presented the first Macintosh computer. The Macintosh 128K.

Macintosh 1984 Promotional Video - with Bill Gates.
This is an edited version of a promotional video produced by Apple Computer in 1984 to launch the Mac. Surprisingly, Steve Jobs does NOT make an appearance in this video. It is BILL GATES that we see extolling the virtues and future of the Mac.

1981 Nightline interview with Steve Jobs

Ted Koppel, Bettina Gregory, and Ken Kashiwahara present news stories from 1981 on the relevancy of computers in every day life and how they will affect our future. Included are interviews with Apple Computer Chairman Steve Jobs and writer David Burnham.

Mark Fisher (1968-2017) interviewed by Rowan Wilson

"I'm hoping that, before long, the neoliberal era will be seen for what it was: a barbarous anti-Enlightenment atavism, a temporary interruption of a process of egalitarian modernization." - Mark Fisher (1968-2017)

They Can Be Different in the Future Too: Mark Fisher interviewed

By Rowan Wilson / 16 January 2017

"The failure of the future haunts capitalism: after 1989, capitalism's victory has not consisted in it confidently claiming the future, but in denying that the future is possible.  All we can expect, we have been led to believe, is more of the same - but on higher resolution screens with faster connections. Hauntology, I think, expresses dissatisfaction with this foreclosure of the future [...]

Part of the battle now will be to ensure that neoliberalism is perceived to be defunct. I think that's already happening. There is a change in the cultural atmosphere, small at the moment, but it will increase." — Mark Fisher  

Mark Fisher (1968-2017) published his first book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? in 2009. He had been writing an acclaimed blog as k-punk for some years and was centrally involved in the birth and development of the Zer0 Books (the staff have since left and formed Repeater Books). In 2010, Rowan Wilson interviewed Mark for Ready Steady Book about the 'para-space' of Zer0, blogging and cyberculture; capitalist realism; hauntology and lost futures. 

Rowan Wilson: Your blog, k-punk, is one of the leading blogs for cultural analysis. When did you first start writing it and why did you start?

Mark Fisher: Thank you. I started it in 2003. At the time, I was working as a Philosophy lecturer in a Further Education college in Kent - I reflect on some of my experiences there in Capitalist Realism. I was then quite badly depressed - not because of teaching, which I enjoyed, but for a whole series of long-term reasons - and I started blogging as a way of getting back into writing after the traumatic experience of doing a PhD. PhD work bullies one into the idea that you can’t say anything about any subject until you’ve read every possible authority on it. But blogging seemed a more informal space, without that kind of pressure. Blogging was a way of tricking myself back into doing serious writing. I was able to con myself, thinking, "it doesn't matter, it's only a blog post, it's not an academic paper". But now I take the blog rather more seriously than writing academic papers. I was actually only aware of blogs for a short while before I started mine. But I could quite quickly see that the blog network around Simon Reynolds’ blog - which was the first network I started to read - fulfilled many of the functions that the music press used to. But it wasn’t just replicating the old music press; there were also sorts of strange, idiosyncratic blogs which couldn’t have existed in any other medium. I saw that - contrary to all the clichés - blogs didn’t have to be online diaries: they were a blank space in which writers could pursue their own lines of interest (something that it‘s increasingly difficult for writers to do in print media, for a number of reasons).

RW: You’re almost one of the elder statespeople of blogging now. How has it changed since you started?

MF: Blogging networks shift all the time; new blogs enter the network, older ones fall away; new networks constitute themselves. One of the most significant developments was the introduction of comments; a largely unfortunate change in my view. In the early days of blogs, if you wanted to respond to a post, you had to reply on your own blog, and if you didn’t have a blog, you had to create one. Comments tend to reduce things to banal sociality, with all its many drawbacks.

Yet blogs continue to do things that can't be done anywhere else: look at the way that Speculative Realism has propagated through blogs. Originally coined as term of convenience for the work of the philosophers Ray Brassier, Graham Harman, Iain Hamilton Grant and Quentin Meillassoux, Speculative Realism now has an online unlife of its own. This isn't just commentary on existing philosophical positions; it's a philosophy that is actually happening on the web. Graham has his own blog, Object-Oriented Philosophy, but there are a whole range of Speculative Realism-related blogs, including Speculative Heresy and Planomenology. Reid Kane of Plamomenology has gone so far as to argue that Speculative Realism is “the first avatar of distributed cognition”, that, in other words, there is a natural fit between SR and the online medium.

RW: You were one of the co-founders of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU), described by Simon Reynolds as the academic equivalent of Apocalypse Now’s Colonel Kurtz. Who did you form it with and what was its purpose?

MF: The main driving forces behind it were Sadie Plant and Nick Land. But Sadie Plant left quite quickly so the CCRU as it developed was much more shaped by Nick Land. Nick’s 1990s texts - which are to be issued in a collected edition this year, by Urbanomic, who publish the Collapse journal - are incredible. Far from the dry databasing of much academic writing or the pompous solemnity of so much continental philosophy, Nick’s texts were astonishing theory-fictions. They weren’t distanced readings of French theory so much as cybergothic remixes which put Deleuze and Guattari on the same plane as films such as Apocalypse Now and fictions such as Gibson’s Neuromancer.

Jungle was crucial to the CCRU. What the CCRU was about was capturing, (and extrapolating) this specifically British take on cyberculture, in which music was central. CCRU was trying to do with writing what Jungle, with its samples from such as Predator, Terminator and Blade Runner, was doing in sound: "text at sample velocity", as Kodwo Eshun put it.

RW: The writing of the CCRU seems very different to your current style. Are you still involved with the CCRU – and indeed is it still operating?

MF: It was never formally disbanded but then again it was never formally constituted. It's odd because, it's only a decade on that the stuff is starting to get published in book form. As I said, Nick's texts are just about to be published. Steve Goodman (aka Kode9) has just had his book Sonic Warfare published on MIT Press. As for the change of style, I suppose a number of things happened. One was the slowing of the UK cyberculture that had inspired the CCRU throughout the 90s. Gradually, the exorbitant hypotheses of the CCRU seemed to have less purchase on a culture that increasingly seemed to correspond more with Jameson’s ideas of retrospection and pastiche. In the 90s, it was possible to oppose a vibrant cyberculture to the malaise which Jameson identified. But in the 00s, the blight of postmodernism spread everywhere.

Also, I found that, as I started teaching regularly, and as I got used to writing for an audience - and there's no form of writing that makes you as aware of having an audience as blogging; print publications just don't compare - I rediscovered rhetoric, argument and engagement. The exhilaration of the CCRU-style was its uncompromising blizzard of jargon, text as a tattoo of intensities to which you just had to submit. But it's hard to maintain that kind of speed-intensity for longer writing projects; and I found that I enjoyed producing writing that was expositorier and which tried to engage the reader rather than blitz them. I like Zizek's line that the idiot he is trying to explain philosophy to is himself; I feel the same. Much of my writing now is me trying to explain things to/for myself.

There were also political schisms. The CCRU defined itself against the sclerotic stranglehold that a certain moralizing Old Left had on the Humanities academy. There was a kind of exuberant anti-politics, a ‘technihilo' celebration of the irrelevance of human agency, partly inspired by the pro-markets, anti-capitalism line developed by Manuel DeLanda out of Braudel, and from the section of Anti-Oedipus that talks about marketization as the "revolutionary path". This was a version of what Alex Williams has called "accelerationism", but it has never been properly articulated as a political position; the tendency is to fall back into a standard binary, with capitalism and libertarianism on one side and the state and centralization on the other.

But working in the public sector in Blairite Britain made me see that neoliberal capitalism didn't fit with the accelerationist model; on the contrary, pseudo-marketization was producing the pervasive, decentralized bureaucracy I describe in Capitalist Realism. My experiences as a teacher and as trade union activist combined with a belated encounter with Zizek - who was using some of the same conceptual materials as CCRU (the Freudian death drive; pulp culture, technology), but giving them a leftist spin - to push me towards a different political position. I guess what I'm interested in now is in synthesizing some of the interests and methods of the CCRU with a new leftism. Speculative Realism has returned to some of the areas that the CCRU was interested in. What I'm hoping will happen in the next decade is that a new kind of theory will develop that emerges from people who have been deep-cooked in post-Fordist capitalism, who take cyberspace for granted and who lack nostalgia for the exhausted paradigms of the old left.

RW: One of the most exciting things to happen in publishing last year was the development of the Zer0 Books imprint. Can you explain how that came about and the purpose of the project?

MF: The imprint was set up by the novelist Tariq Godard. He asked Nina Power and me if we'd like to do books, and we suggested a range of other people. What we wanted was to produce the kind of books we'd want to read ourselves, but which weren't being published anywhere. In mainstream media, the space that had drawn Tariq and myself towards theory in the first place - the music press, areas of the broadcast media - had disappeared. Effectively, that kind of discourse had been driven into exile online. So part of what Zer0 was about was harvesting the work that has been developed on the blog networks. Zer0 is about establishing a para-space, between theory and popular culture, between cyberspace and the university. The Zer0 books are a reminder of what ought to be obvious, but which the imbecilic reductionism of neoliberal media would like us to forget: serious writing doesn't have to be opaque and incomprehensible, and popular writing doesn't have to be facile.

RW: Your first book, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, was published by Zer0 in November. Why do you think that capitalism, even in the wake of the financial crisis, has such a grip on our consciousness?

MF: I’m not sure that it has a grip on our consciousness so much as on our unconscious. It shapes the limits of what we can imagine. It does so because it has enjoyed 20 years of unchallenged domination, blitzing our nervous systems with its intoxicants, paralysing thought. Put at its simplest, capitalist realism is the widespread idea that capitalism is the only "realistic" political economic system. The response to the financial crisis only reinforced this belief - it was (on every level) unthinkable that the banks could be allowed to crash. The problem is imagining an alternative that anyone believes could be actually attained. Which isn't to say that an alternative can't ever come about; in fact, after the financial crisis, we're in the bizarre situation at the moment where everything - very much including the continuation of the status quo - looks impossible.  But this is already an improvement from how things seemed only two years ago. The financial crisis forced capitalist realism to change its form. The old neoliberal story was no longer viable. But Capital has not yet cobbled together much of a new narrative, or come up with any economic solution to the problems that led to the crash in the first place. It's as if capitalism has suffered its own version of shock therapy.

RW: How is your argument different from that put forward by Fredric Jameson in his work on the culture of postmodernism?

MF: Well, as I say in the book, in many ways what I’m calling "capitalist realism" can be contained under the rubric of Jameson’s theorization of postmodernism. Yet the very persistence and ubiquity of the processes that Jameson identifies - the destruction of a sense of history, the supersession of novelty by pastiche - meant that they have changed in kind. Postmodernism is now no longer a tendency in culture; it has subsumed practically all culture. Capitalist realism, you might say, is what happens when postmodernism is naturalized. After all, we've now got a generation of young adults who have known nothing but global capitalism and who are accustomed to culture being pastiche and recapitulation.

RW: In the book you move from describing the problems of capitalist society to how it is making us mentally ill. What do you think are the central lasting effects of neoliberalism on our psyches and, with its collapse, how do you see these unravelling?

MF: Neoliberalism installs a perpetual anxiety - there is no security; your position and status are under constant review. It's no wonder that, as Oliver James shows in The Selfish Capitalist, depression is so prevalent in neoliberalized countries. Widespread mental illness is one of the hidden costs of neoliberal capitalism; stress has been privatized. If you're depressed because of overwork, that's between you and your brain chemistry!

I do think that the financial crisis killed neoliberalism as a political project - but it doesn't need to be alive in order to continue to dominate our minds, work and culture. Even though neoliberalism now lacks any forward momentum, it still controls things by default. So, sadly, I don't see the deleterious psychic effects of neoliberalism waning any time in the immediate future.

RW:You identify the madness of managerial bureaucracy, the incessant and pointless ‘auditing culture’, in contemporary public services, specifically education. You discuss how this auditing culture is now, along with capitalism’s PR network, a new big Other, a replacement for God. It’s the ideological matrix that we all cynically dismiss (not just privately – this cynicism is now the accepted public language; see the Guardian’s G2 section for daily examples) but nonetheless remains the binding authority. Why are we not simply able to shrug it off?

MF: PR is not limited any more to specific promotional activities - as I say in the book, under capitalism, all that is solid melts into PR. In so-called "immaterial" labour, the effect of auditing is not to improve actual performance but to generate a representation of better performance. It's a familiar effect that anyone subject to New Labour's targets will know all too well.

Neoliberalism reproduces itself through cynicism, through people doing things they "don't really believe". It's a question of power. People go along with auditing culture and what I call "business ontology" not necessarily because they agree with it, but because that is the ruling order, "that's just how things are now, and we can't do anything about it". That kind of sentiment is what I mean by capitalist realism. And it isn't merely quietism; it's true that almost no-one working in public services is likely to be sacked if they get a poor performance review (they will just be subject to endless retraining); but they might well be sacked if they start questioning the performance review system itself or refusing to co-operate with it.

RW: So now we move from the critique to the positive proposals. In an interview with Matthew Fuller for Mute you tentatively suggest that the left needs to come up with a new big Other, one that is more representative of Rousseau’s ‘general will’. How is this to be distinguished from the capitalist big Other and how would it be prevented from becoming reified, a new system of mystical dominance?

MF: Reification isn’t a problem per se; in fact, it’s something we should hope for. Evan Calder Williams, whose book Combined and Uneven Apocalypse is coming out on Zer0, talks of an "anti-capitalist reification", and I think that’s what we need to develop. It’s capitalism that poses as being anti-reification; it’s capitalism that presents itself as having dissolved all illusions and exposed the underlying reality of things. Part of what I’m arguing in Capitalist Realism is that this is an ideological sleight of hand; it's precisely neoliberal capitalism's ostensible demystifications (its reduction of everything to the supposedly self-evident category of the free individual) that allow all kinds of strange, quasi-theological entities to rule our lives. But I don't think the aim should be to replace capitalism's fake anti-reification with a "real" anti-reification. Reification can't be entirely eliminated. I take this to be one of the important lessons that Lacanian psychoanalysis has to teach. Being a speaking subject at all involves a minimal reification; the big Other is coterminous with language itself. But this is very far from being a problem for the left. It's the left that needs to insist on the reality of something in excess of individuals, whether you call it the "general will", the "public interest", or something else. When Mrs Thatcher famously denied the existence of society, she was echoing Max Stirner's claim that all such abstractions are "spooks". But we can't ever rid ourselves of these incorporeal entities - neoliberalism certainly hasn't. As I argue in Capitalist Realism, neoliberalism hasn't killed the big Other - for who is the consumer of PR (which no actual empirical individual believes) if not the big Other? The point now - and I would affirm this forcefully, not tentatively - is to invent a leftist big Other. This doesn't mean reviving authoritarianism; there is no necessary relation between the big Other and a strong leader. On the contrary, in fact, authoritarianism happens when there is a confusion between the big Other (as virtuality) and an empirical individual. What we need are institutions and agents that will stand in for - but cannot be equated with - a leftist big Other.

RW: You talk about the re-formatting of memory that is a symptom of capitalist realism, where history can be altered almost instantly (as in a Philip K. Dick novel) as we stand agog before the supposed ceaseless innovation of capitalism. You were also one of those to start using the concept ‘hauntology’, the idea that there was a cultural meme that acknowledged the collapse of a moment and picks through the remains for the lost futures buried within (it’s probably fair to say that Owen Hatherley’s Militant Modernism, the first Zer0 Book, is operating within this terrain). Similarly, we are in a political landscape littered with ‘ideological rubble’ (as you quote Alex Williams). My suspicion is that for you the ‘moment’ that has collapsed is the politics of ’68, one that was perhaps guilty of the re-formatting of history and memory in its own way, before many of its ideas were taken up by a post-Fordist capitalism. So what is the detritus that you are picking through? What of the discarded remnants of left politics would you dust off? And is it possible to give old ideas new momentum?

MF: I would say that, in many ways, the politics of '68 haven't collapsed enough. '68 is a spectre which still hangs over theory. Yet the forces which '68 railed against no longer exist; there is no Stalinist Party or State that we need to blow apart with a Cultural Revolution. Which isn't to say that we should want to return to Stalinist authoritarianism, or that it is possible to do so; the oscillation between these two options is the sign of a failure of political imagination. It's necessary to go all the way through post-Fordism, to keep looking ahead, especially at times when there seems to be nothing ahead of us. Part of the importance of the concept of hauntology is the idea of lost futures, of things which never happened but which could have. On one level, late capitalism is indeed all about ceaseless reinvention, nothing is solid, everything is mutable; but on another level, it is about recapitulation, homogeneity, minimally different commodities. Some of Jameson's best passages are about this strange antinomy. Deleuze and Guattari, too, emphasize the way in which capitalism is a bizarre mix of the ultra-modern and the archaic. The failure of the future haunts capitalism: after 1989, capitalism's victory has not consisted in it confidently claiming the future, but in denying that the future is possible.  All we can expect, we have been led to believe, is more of the same - but on higher resolution screens with faster connections. Hauntology, I think, expresses dissatisfaction with this foreclosure of the future.

So it's not now a question of giving old ideas new momentum, it's a matter of fighting over the meaning of the words "new" and "modern". Neoliberalism has made it seem self-evident that “modernization" means managerialism, increased exploitation of workers, outsourcing etc. But of course this isn't self-evident: the neoliberals fought a long campaign on many fronts in order to impose that definition. And now neoliberalism itself is a discredited relic - albeit, as I argued above, one that still dominates our lives, but only by default now. Part of the battle now will be to ensure that neoliberalism is perceived to be defunct. I think that's already happening. There is a change in the cultural atmosphere, small at the moment, but it will increase. What Jim McGuigan calls "cool capitalism", the culture of swaggering business and conspicuous consumption that dominated the last decade, already looks as if it belongs to a world that is dead and gone. After the financial crisis, all those television programmes about selling property and the like became out of date overnight. These things aren't trivial; they have provided the background noise which capitalist realism needed in order to naturalise itself. The financial crisis has weakened the corporate elite - not materially so much as ideologically. And, by the same token, it has given confidence to those opposed to the ruling order. I'm sure that the university occupations are the signs of a growing militancy. We need to take advantage of this new mood. There's nothing old fashioned about the idea of rational organisation of resources, or that public space is important. (The failure to rationally organise natural resources is now evident to everyone; and the consequences of letting the concept of public space decline are equally obvious to anyone living in Britain, with its violent crime and drunkenness, both of which are symptoms of a kind of despair that is as unacknowledged under capitalist realism as it is ubiquitous). Similarly, what is intrinsically "modern" about putting workers under intolerable stress? The pseudonymous postal worker Roy Mayall put this very well in his LRB blog:

We used to be told that there were three elements to the postal trade: the business, the customers and the staff, and that all were equally important. These days we are clearly being told that only the business matters. So now the ‘modernisers’ are moving in. They are young, thrusting, in-your-face and they think they know all the answers. According to them, the future is the application of new technology within the discipline of the market. But the market doesn’t tell us what to do: people tell us what to do. The ‘market’ is essentially a ploy by which one group of people’s interests are imposed on the rest of us. The postal trade is at the front line of a battle between people’s needs and the demands of corporations to make ever increasing profits. That’s what they mean by ‘modernisation’, and it’s not ‘nostalgia’ to remind ourselves that things used to be different.

But the fight will only be won when we can say with confidence, not only that things used to be different in the past, but that they can be different in the future too. I'm hoping that, before long, the neoliberal era will be seen for what it was: a barbarous anti-Enlightenment atavism, a temporary interruption of a process of egalitarian modernization.

RW: At the end of last year you edited a collection of essays, The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, brought out almost at the speed of John Blake Publishing! What was so important about Michael Jackson’s death that made you put such energy into this project?

MF: Yes, it's rapid-response theory! There's no doubt that Jackson's death arrived at a punctual moment. A whole thirty year reality system had just collapsed with the bank bail-outs. Obama had been elected. There was no-one who personified that thirty year period more than Michael Jackson. In the few days after Jackson died, I found myself watching his videos over and over again. I surprised myself by moved from a position of detached cynicism to feeling increasingly sad. There was something in those videos - particularly the Off The Wall clips - which afterwards disappeared from Jackson personally and from the culture in general. So I listened to Off The Wall and "Billie Jean" obsessively. I probably listened to "Billie Jean" forty times, but it was like listening to it for the first time; there were depths to it I'd never got to before. I wrote a post on my blog which elicited some positive responses; and it struck me that the network around Zer0 - which includes many of the world's music writers as well as theorists - was in an ideal position to produce a book that could deal with MJ as a symptom. Which isn't to say that the book is some desiccated analysis that doesn't engage with the sensuous qualities of Jackson's music - there are some wonderful descriptions of the tracks and Jackson's dancing. The book was put together very quickly, but I'm extremely pleased with the results. It was heartening to see what music writers can do when you give them space and let them pursue their interests. There are some pieces in the book - such as Chris Roberts' and Ian Penman's - that are so sui generis that it is difficult to imagine them appearing anywhere else.

RW: You’ve had a busy year, what with the blog, teaching, finishing a stint as reviews editor at The Wire, conference papers, marriage, Zer0 and the publication of two books – is it time for a rest now or will 2010 be just as busy?

MF: This is not the time for a rest. On a personal level, a rest is impossible. Most of what I do doesn't make me much money, so I have to keep working at a furious rate to keep my head above water. On a wider cultural and political level, this is a highly exciting time, not a moment to be convalescing. This year, in addition to the teaching, blogging, freelancing and editing for Zer0, I will be putting out Ghosts Of My Life, which will bring together my writings on hauntology and lost futures; in some ways, it's the other half of Capitalist Realism. There's another big project that I'm involved with which I have high hopes for, but we're not ready to go public on that yet.

RW: And finally, I hope it’s not too late to ask what were your favourite books of last year?

MF: Apart from the Zer0 books - and I've almost certainly forgotten something really important - they would be:

Fredric Jameson, Valences Of The Dialectic. A genuinely monumental work that I expect to be referring to for many years.
Graham Harman, Prince Of Networks. A stunning reinterpretation of Bruno Latour's work that is also Graham's most lucid account yet of his object-oriented philosophy
Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics. Jodi's sharp analysis of the impasses of the left is also a kind of requiem for much the 2.0 bluster of the last decade.
Slavoj Zizek, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce. Much more focused than some of Zizek's recent books, this was a reminder of his supreme relevance to the current conjuncture.

RW: Thanks Mark.