hic & nunc anticarpediem : Low Tech Postfuturist Poetics, Communities of Learners & the Remix

a.k.a. / de / mix : against noise hic & nunc anticarpediem : Low Tech Postfuturist Poetics, Communities of Learners & the Remix Nikolina Nedeljkov PhD Candidate in English, The Graduate Center The City University of New York Presented at The Nexialist*: 2nd Interdisciplinary Studies / Cultural Studies Conference, October 18, 2014 at Teachers College Explorations across disciplines of modern day culture elucidate both the proliferation of media saturated realities and technology and social networking revealing the unifying role of interconnectivity and networking communities in rendering confusion soluble. Rethinking pluralist discourse through the prism of novel expressive modes in popular culture, low tech postfuturist poetics combines elements of high culture with more accessible, albeit not oversimplified, vernaculars. Questioning the compatibility between digital and conventional reading-writing tools epitomizes the conversation between traditional and fresh cultural vocabularies. The hic & nunc anticarpediem approach draws from McKenzie Wark’s ideas pointing out a dialogue between high theory and other theoretical modes, thus sharpening the perception of the here and now, yet avoiding the sentiment of instantaneity prevalent in contemporary culture. It can be understood as a non-prescriptive approach to knowledge and its connection to the practices of the everyday, while resisting oversimplification and sensationalist impositions. Mainly focusing on Stewart Home’s and Dennis Cooper’s novelistic takes on contemporary culture, supported by a crossbreed of theoretical views of Svetlana Boym, Paul Virilio, Steven Connor, jan jagodzinski, Terry Eagleton, and Jean Baudrillard, this article looks at depictions of noise symbolized by hollowness of spam emails, swarmed interaction in the shadow of grotesquely absent fruitful conversation, and reverberation in the vast spaces void of communal cohesion. These theoretical and novelistic portrayals are linked to a glance of Michelangelo Antonioni's film The Night (1961) and the sound of the Stooges. Neither demonizing nor lionizing either advanced technology or progress per se, but rather trying to discern in them—freed from distorted interpretation and perception—sources of dissolvement of distraction, the inquiry focuses on the idea and practice of the remix as a means of peaceful/peaceable resistance to oppression, and in the service of the preservation of both individuality and unity epitomized in the notion of refacement. As a hybrid expressive mode, mobilizing creative energies and galvanizing critical thinking, it seeks creative / critical responses against bewildering, yet remixable, cultural realities threatening to obfuscate language and solidarity within the community of human beings.