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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28315 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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Eisenman is saying that comfort and harmony do not constitute the totality of either aesthetic preference or human experience, and just like someone might listen to metal or prefer picasso to kinkade, buildings may accommodate and respond to a broader spectrum of experience.

'Another way of knowing' is the primary rhetorical tool used in socialist and gnostic argument. Socialists have the nous and non-socialists do not. Their knowledge has gone through more dialectical aufheben. Its not that the views of others are wrong. Its just that there is another way of knowing. The thing you like is just one part of a spectrum of experience. Where as the socialists can view the whole spectrum. You like Motzart. He likes Metallica. But what if music had more? What if there was an entire other way of viewing and experiencing music? What if music challenged you? What if it made you uncomfortable with the injustices of the world? A view of music that is limited to the order of the notes is such a limited view. And really its harmful, because it excludes the people who view music as a way to do justice.

No thanks, and no thanks.

The new soviet man doesn't actually exist. Buildings meticulously designed to be discordant and harmful don't actually fill a portion of the populous with warmth. Eisenman doesn't feel comfort in his own buildings. He feels discomfort because he is good at what he does. Discomfort is the point. Take him at his word.

I think Marty Robbins has this one handled:

Your concern is not to help the people. And I'll say again, though it's been often said. Your concern is just to bring discomfort, my friend. And your policy is just a little red. Now, ain't I right?

You state a lot of mockery against an image of a socialist you have constructed in your head and do not make much of an actual case in favor of "there is correct art and wrongbrained communist art".

I don't particularly care for noise music or black metal, as its a bit abrasive to my ear, but it'd be something of a epistemological leap to assert that no one genuinely enjoys it. Perhaps there is or is not some socialist uberman that exists in perfect equanimity with the entire sonic universe made and unmade, but I don't think the observation that some people listen to Merzbow is somehow contingent on it.

What if music challenged you?

Great idea! You'd be missing out on a lot of brilliant music if you avoided everything that was challenging.

I'd not be willing to listen to more than 10 minutes of that without a substantial cash payment.

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