The end of underground?

Fred de Vries

Underground culture, or underground, as defined by the online Wikipedia Encyclopedia, is "a term to describe various alternative cultures which either consider themselves different to the mainstream of society and culture, or are considered so by someone. The word underground is used because there is a history of resistance movements under harsh regimes where the term underground was employed to refer to the necessary secrecy of the resisters."

Frank Zappa needed fewer words: "The mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground."
Ever since the 1950s, cultural underground (and it's culture and not straightforward politics that we focus on) has manifested itself as being the antidote to mainstream, to the society of the spectacle, to consumerism and to apathy. Underground was real and dangerous, cheap and vibrant, complex and elusive, secretive and exclusive. The term has had different connotations in different eras and social and historical contexts. If a band like the Sex Pistols was underground in 1976, they certainly aren't seen as such in 2006.

Since the mid-nineties, however, underground has lost much of its impact and significance. In the post-modern, digitalised age nothing is shocking, nothing is black and white, good or bad. Irony has levelled everything and robbed it of meaning and depth. Recognition and fame are what virtually every artist yearns for - if only for those seminal 15 minutes.

Underground in the 21st century has a problem (re)defining itself against a much more amorphous and less rigid "establishment". Alternative is the new mainstream. Subculture is lifestyle. Everything is for sale. With globalisation and the advent of the internet old structures have crumbled. High culture is rapidly losing ground, while low culture is the darling of subsidisers.

Meanwhile, every sub-cultural niche now has its own little corner and attracts like-minded people, but no longer poses a threat to the establishment. Underground tactics, for example the idea of détournement as used by the Situationists in the 1960s, have been co-opted by the big corporations in advertising (Nike used the concept of the rioting football hooligan in its adverts for the European Championship; Lucky Strike used the incrowd secrecy of raves for its concerts).

The main question that we seek to address in the seminar is whether there still is an underground. Or is it a dying phenomenon, associated with subcultures and repressive attitudes of days gone by? And if an underground is still viable, what does it entail? What are its characteristics? Where is it hiding? What are the aims? And what are its chances of survival? Or should we, given the lack of vertical hierarchy in contemporary art and culture, now talk of a post-underground? Is the future digital, an extension of hacking? Or is the real underground closer to political terrorism, and therefore unwanted, and much more dangerous than ever before? Does it need redefinition?

The seminar will take place on the 19th of April. We will have three sessions - two in the morning and one in the afternoon - accompanied by the great underground/mainstream documentary Dig! and music by the underground duo Trike.

List of participants

· Michael Titlestad (“From Verloc to the Unabomber: Modernist and Post-Modern versions of the underground”)
· Warren Siebrits (“From the Sharpeville Massacre to the Picadilly Rave; South African underground”)
· Mark Edwards (“Electronic Activism: A Radical Net Art Practice”)
· Dominique Wooldridge (“Flyers through the underground”)
· Adam Levin (“How Aids affected the underground”)
· Melinda Ferguson (“Smacked straight: drugs and the underground”)
· Stacy Hardy (“I fucked the underground: a small, insignificant white chick’s journey from bad-assed boyfriends, capital complicity and oral obscurantism to subaltern sex, popular promiscuity and playwomen”)
· Gael Reagon (Chimurenga) (“The underground is the overground”)
· Fred de Vries (“The Underground character; doomed or heroic?”)
· Lesego Rampolokeng (“Living the underground”)
· Andries Bezuidenhout (“Afrikaner underground and other oxymorons”)
· Mark Kannemeyer (“An underground in punk aesthetics”)
· Ian Fraser (“The banned piece”)
· Trike (live underground music)

Programme for Wednesday April 19th

9 - 10.30       Session 1: Warren Siebrits, Fred de Vries, Michael Titlestad, Mark Kannemeyer (Sarah Nuttall chair)

Coffee

11 - 12.30      Session 2: Lesego Rampolokeng, Andries Bezuidenhout, Dominique Wooldridge, Melinda Ferguson (Achille Mbembe chair)

12.30 - 1.30    Lunch

1.30 - 3.15      Dig! Documentary

3.15                 Tea

3.30 - 5           Ian Fraser reads banned blog piece

Session 3: Marc Edwards, Adam Levin, Stacy Hardy, Gael Raegon (Tom Odhiambo chair)

5 - …            Afrikaans underground duo Trike and wine

Directions

From Pretoria

· Take the Ben Schoeman highway (M1) to Johannesburg;
· take the Smit Street off-ramp;
· turn left into Smit Street;
· take the first left into Eendracht Street;
· at the first set of robots – turn left
· you will approach a bend and then a set of robots
· at the robots you will go straight (you will be facing Wits University)
· drive up to the security booms where you will receive a parking permit – this is the Yale Road – South entrance.
· as you pass the security - the wedge will be the parking area on your immediate left .

Click here for the map

LitNet: 18 April 2006

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