Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg: TIL that the New Wave band DEVO was formed in response to the Kent State shootings. In 1970, co-founders Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis got serious about their idea of the "de-evolution" of the human race after Casale's friends Jeffrey Miller & Allison Krause were killed by OH national guards.

TIL that the New Wave band DEVO was formed in response to the Kent State shootings. In 1970, co-founders Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis got serious about their idea of the "de-evolution" of the human race after Casale's friends Jeffrey Miller & Allison Krause were killed by OH national guards.

Reminds me of how almost all the French dadaists and surrealists were WWI veterans of the trenches seriously exploring alternatives to conventional thought and language.

Tolkien claims (in "A Secret Vice") that he wasn't the only soldier he knew who spent his time in the trenches constructing new languages.

You see it with the Post-Structuralists after WWII too - the idea that root of the madness lies between the world and how we process it through language.

Oh so that's what they were on about?

Yeah. “How did fascism happen?” is a very important part of that intellectual movement, but it’s the background of a whole lot of Western art of the era.

www.max-ernst.com/the-triumph-....

The Triumph of Surrealism, 1973 - by Max Ernstwww.max-ernst.com

Oh neat! This was a minor plot point in Fargo S2. [spoilers below] I didn't know that there was historical precedent. ... .. . [spoilers] There's a scene where a WWII vet reveals he is trying to create a universal human language to help avert future conflict and tragedy

The Bronner Soap guy too. He’s more esoteric religion, but it springs from being the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust: www.drbronner.com

Dr. Bronner's: The Original All-One Magic Soap and More!www.drbronner.com Vegan & cruelty-free products for your home, body & hair using the highest quality organic & fair trade, environmentally responsible ingredients.

And I suspect Esperanto would fit into this, too.

Speaking of Today I Learned. Wow.

Oh yeah. That final letter from his father has haunted me ever since I first read it.

I met a Japanese artist trying to do something similar in response to Hiroshima.

It's also a major plot in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Though Skull Face's plans are the opposite. Using a virus that will kill anyone who speaks English, he plans to eliminate its strangehold on the world. Also the virus gives you super powers and he wants everyone to have nukes.

Which wraps back to Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities - where the printing press and the act of reading your local and national “values” every day is how we created the modern nation state. In our heads every day, we make it real.

Maybe that's why Dada and Neo-Dada was so popular during the Usenet and BBS days?

Was it? I just thought everyone was having fun being weird.

I mean, them having fun being weird was also probably what drew them to Dada and Neo-Dada, but there was some thought that went into how Dada could be used on new communication technologies.

The Church of Euthanasia distributed self-consciously Dada literature over Usenet, and there was a ton of optimism about what the future of communication tech could hold. There was a lot of overlap between early hackers and the phone phreaker community.

For the same reason: I am 100% convinced that in a decade, when the people who were kids when covid hit grew up, we are going to end up with new art forms as they find the old ones are insufficient to their expressive needs.

You could argue that’s already happening on TikTok. I’ve also seen other people commenting on how surrealism’s all over the place again too.

And I am noticing a huge break in the weird “constant now” where a lot of 90s culture just stuck around and kids are actively pushing back on it. They are finally rejecting Gen X culture, which makes this Gen Xer really proud of them.

I've seen people talking about this much earlier, in the wake of 9/11 and millennials' tendencies to enjoy absurdist humor

Millennial art:

Yeah like this stuff has been going on for a long while already. Some time ago I read a thoughtful essay about that SNL skit where everybody shoots each other ("The Shooting" aka "Dear Sister") tying it into this broader trend (link for the unfamiliar; aired in 2007) www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmd1...

Skibidi Toilet agrees.

I agree! My favorite part on TT is the absolutely nonsensical, almost Dadaist, videos that hit on a completely different level.

I read something recently that basically said in WWI in particular death wasn't an issue for kids, almost everyone had dealt with a family member dying with dignity, so the gore really shocked them, but now the gore is fine, but the finality of death hits. So the impact on art maybe very different

have you read China Mièville's short book reflecting this?

No. I really like his fiction, but I haven’t read any of his stuff since The Iron Dream. Will look into it!

The Last Days of New Paris

Thanks for the recc, I also like his stuff so I'll seek this out.

The Iron Dream was Norman Spinrad. Perhaps you meant Iron Council?

Yeah! The train one.

An excellent excuse to post a link to dazzle camouflage, used extensively during WWI and pioneered by the painter Edward Wadsworth and the Vorticists: www.google.com/search?clien...

dazzle camouflage - Google Searchwww.google.com

Didn't the Futurists come out of this too? Decidedly a mixed bag.

Futurists are largely pre-war WWI. Their whole “the future will be full of cool wars!” schtick took a hit with the war. It made a comeback when allied with Mussolini and became the inspiration for fascist art.

In fairness to the Futurists they did at least all enthusiastically join up immediately (lots died), very much a case of putting their money where their mouth was. Of the ones who survived some doubled down & ended up in Fiume & later w/ the PNF. Others decided they’d been wrong.

The Vorticists too, only that served to kill the movement as so many of them died at the first Ypres and the Somme. There is a reason why there are only two issues of BLAST.

Yes - the Vorticists and the Futurists produced some fantastic work. Early 20th Century modern art is jam packed with incredible stuff everywhere you look.

so many Futurist biographies end with "and he died during WWI"

So it's Mussoline fleaing on these ideas, rather than the Futurists themselves who were fading.

Not only that, But Chrissie Hynde was also a survivor and played an early versions of Devo’s lineup

Yes, she also played in early lineups of The Damned and was a major associate of The Sex Pistols

Damn, you're bringing the goodies on TIL Tuesday here

I am TIL a fuckton with this thread.

Indeed! Worked at Vivienne Westwood’s ‘Sex’ boutique on the King’s Road, iirc