Post-Punk, Mark Fisher & Popular Modernism

This video contains music made by me which you can listen to and download at a price of your own choosing here:

Songs in order of appearance:
-
Joy Division - Transmission
Gang of Four - To Hell With Poverty
Magazine - Motorcade
Public Image Ltd - Death Disco
The Fall - Totally Wired
Wire - The 15th
Killing Joke - Eighties
-
Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi’s Dead
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Spellbound
The Cure - A Forest
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Human League - The Path of Least Resistance
Young Marble Giants - N.I.T.A.
Fad Gadget - Ricky’s Hand
-
Throbbing Gristle - Discipline
Cabaret Voltaire - The Dream Ticket
Clock DVA - Beautiful Losers
-
Aya RL - Unikaj zdjęć
Siekiera - Ludzie wschodu
Republika - Moja krew

Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
3:13 - Modernist Art & Adorno
7:00 - Popular Modernism & Post-Punk
14:40 - Social Democracy
17:28 - Brutalism
20:19 - The Soviet Bloc
22:32 - Neoliberalism
28:58 - Conclusion
32:05 - Credits

[jonasceikaCCK]

I made a playlist of classic British post-punk for those new to the genre:
I kept to one song per artist, but the albums each song is from are great as a whole, and highly recommended. It's not an exhaustive list but it'll be a good introduction.

If you're interested in the Polish scene in particular (and you should be), I highly recommend these albums:
Siekiera - Nowa Aleksandria
Aya RL - Aya RL
Republika - Nowe sytuacje
Obywatel G.C. - Tak! Tak!
Tilt - Tilt

And if you'd like to get into minimal wave/minimal synth, you can't go wrong with these albums:
Oppenheimer Analysis - New Mexico
Solid Space - Space Museum
Ensemble Pittoresque - For This Is Past
The Human League - Reproduction
Fad Gadget - Fireside Favourites
Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth

Enjoy, and let me know if there are any other particular recommendations you're looking for. Thanks!

[cesarrdyoniziak]

Post-Punk & Philosophy? this is epic

[thegeekclub]

“leading people to feel nostalgic for a future that never arrived” I get that feeling a lot. I find myself indulging in the nostalgia for stuff like Y2K and pixel art and old 3D graphics and the early internet despite these things either existing before I was born or when I was too young to experience them. They represent a vision of the future that was utopian, especially Y2K and the early internet. There was a sense that the new millennium would usher in a new idealistic future. The early internet was an exciting place of experimentation of creative freedom in many ways, and people dreamed of the ways this new medium would democratize the art world. But none of that happened. Instead we got minimalism and photorealistic graphics and social media. Yet I can’t help but yearn for a world where all those dreams came to pass, or at least a time when we believed they would.

[ArK]

Time continues forward but the future was left behind.

[caniorderapizza]

Finally, another Mark Fisher video. May he not be forgotten!

[planettrax]

The appeal of post punk to me was always its working class roots, the infinite possibilities without needing to be exceptional. It was liberating for someone like me who could never play an instrument like the metalheads or the hippies (who also never had any consistent politics to be honest). The only other place where it happened was some parts of the electronic music scene (and postpunk always intersected with it). Post punk is the music of the future and still is!

[bardofhighrenown]

The section of the video talking about publicly funded arts education in Britain really hits hard. I was considering going to school for photography, the idea of being around creative people doing interesting things and experimenting and having a community of people that share your desire to just create stuff sounds like a dream to me. But it just doesn't make any sense, I would go into a life changing amount of debt and with no strong career paths to help offset the cost at the end so I simply just couldn't justify it.

So I create instead in a vacuum. I just shout into the void of Instagram. No real feedback, no interaction, I don't even get to see people be dismissive of my photos. Nothing. No wonder the future is dead.

[sametkrutzo]

as a darkwave musician in this year, 2024, this is the most accurate description of the essences of post-punk i have ever seen on the internet. i’m really glad you talked about every aspect of it, thank you jonas. hoping to see the development of industrial music video soon.

[odvedokikrema]

24:35 "With so many factories closing down, there were entire towns that had been built around industry, which now found themselves losing the social purpose and meaning that they had developed around."

Oh... now I have full understanding of these lines:

"As railhead towns feel the steel mills rust
Water froze
In the generation"

(Straight to Hell)

Much thanks for this brilliant video and my renewed appreciation for The Clash.

[wlxlhmk]

I strongly recommend Rip It Up and Start Again, by Simon Reynolds (the expanded UK edition)- for those who want to learn all the info on post-punk.

[MichaeloStarzioni]

As a Pole, that Jarocin segment with the showcase of our post-punk music scene was a welcome addition. Well researched, absolutely a job well done ♥️

[Reid-mvll]

This is the coolest mini-documentary on post-punk that I have seen, great work!

[Birbface]

I admire punk and post-punk but cannot stand the music almost entirely, but I seem to recall Fisher saying similar things about techno, club, rave, trance and drum n' bass, which are all the genres I love the most. Techno and house and acid and trance and dn'b were all forms of protest music as well originally, though sometimes you had to squint to see it compared to other genres like punk and post-punk, and they were co-opted by capital and the culture industry just as quickly as with other forms of music, but I find it entertaining that one of the quiet stalwarts of 90s techno, Richard H Kirk, gradually moved into electro, techno, ambient dub and noise as a continuation of his themes of resistance, rebellion, and internationalism that he started in Cabaret Voltaire, bridging the genres in intention and time. Meat Beat Manifesto was inspired by the industrial movement (and made it himself to start) and noise collages and funk a la the Bomb Squad before pioneering big beat that influenced the Prodigy, and many many others.

[yawnandjokeoh]

I think this analysis is spot on. I lived in Providence Rhode Island during the period of 2001 to 2014. During which time largely affordable post industrial spaces were available to many artists at then relatively affordable rates of rent. There existed a community of people who lived and produced work in former mill buildings. There was a flourishing of artists and projects that came into being due to the resources available, particularly spaces that were multi-purpose: living, gallery and performance spaces, as well as political, social and economic venues aimed at creating an environment of liberation. This wasn’t always the explicit goal but the vibe was there. The difference with social democratic structures was Providence and it’s diy movement existed in a sort of liminal space owing to the class tension between the government of local protectionism the Rhode Island mafia created against the financial system of broader political and economic institutions within the US, that eventually was overturned by the FBI and political rivals to the Cianci regime there. The presence of Brown University and RISD helped introduce a class layer of students with leanings towards modernist and postmodernist ideas in a city whose infrastructural achievements under capitalism halted with the beginning of the Great Depression largely. When the FBI and local Democratic Party were able to oust the long sitting Mafia and Republican Mayor Cianci the city became less shaped by a local protectionist political system and that of the prevailing neoliberal direction. Mills became condos and real estate developers began to shift towards urban development schemes. Fort Thunder and anarchic flea market became a strip mall, corporations and banks built offices. This is to say the Cianci clique was ‘progressive’ as under his admin the Providence Place Mall (once considered as a large Casino was built, and a tourism based downtown improvement scheme started) but there was a distinct shift the national capitalist class forced onto that city via the FBI by ousting a long standing however corrupt mayor. The shift in 2007/2008 with the economic crisis also had its effect, Cianci’s government would have also most likely eventually caved to financial and real estate pressures. But there was a brief period of spaces that where utilized by many local and transplant artists and other creative people, even undocumented workers that led to a period of heightened imaginative art particularly in live music performances.

[coming_up_roses]

dude soviet band KINO is SO GODDAMN GOOD, you didnt talk about them but i appreciate the included footage :P

[Biteflight]

Your videos have honestly fucking changed my life. I love the way you philosphicize, and the way you think about music, it has allowed me to hone my understanding of the medium, of the art form, and ultimately to become a better artist and for that I truly thank you from the bottom of my heart .

[Voicecolors]

You somehow mix my favorite things and organize them into a system. Love you, man !

[seanh]

22:24 "But at the end of the day this is a YouTube video essay, so one thing is inevitable..." YouTube ad immediately plays!!!...Intentional or Unintentional but perfect timing....

[nowhereman]

I love how the go-to picture of Mark Fisher is him holding his chest like his heart is breaking upon seeing the dystopia that we live in.

[Phosphoreus]

Parts II, III, and IV please. Subscribed.