The Blind Authority Manipulation Corporation®
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The Blind Authority Manipulation Corporation® is a hard to define concept cooked up in the streets of Melbourne in the late eighties. Bob Arctor interviews one of the founding members who prefers to remain anonymous under the pseudonym of Sophia Lunatic. A graphic school drop out, Sophia plays advertising and the system at its own mind-fuck games.
Bob: Sifting through some of the material produced by BAMcorp® (The Blind Authority Manipulation Corporation®) um.. well.. the concept often seems kinda elusive and blurry. I was wondering if maybe you could shed a little more light onto what it's all about?
Sophia: Well maybe I can and maybe I can't. In some ways its a reflection of the times we live in. Things are hardly ever what they seem. Just when you think you've got something worked out it turns out to be its opposite or something altogether different. Sort of like the mirror of reality concept, the more you reach into the mirror of reality the further you are from the actual object or subject of desire.
Bob: Well that straightens that out then. Clear as mud.
Sophia: I just mean the level of deception in capitalist culture. We have Middle class academics parading as Marxists and anarchists, we have feminists who are just a mirror image of patriarchy, we have academic experts on the avant garde a slightly hypercritical position to say the least. We have situationists who are just self grandiosing egoists. Even magazines like adbusters can be criticised as just another product for the disgruntled. Postmodernism is just modernism repackaged under a different name. There is a limited number of careers for environmentalists providing you do and say the right thing. What seems oppositional is just someone else's deception for a token piece of capitalist pie. A healthy capitalist society is one where you no longer know if you can trust your best friend. A blurry concept keeps people guessing and rethinking their position. Just when you think you've worked out the BAMcorp® something else come up 'cause no-one really knows what it is.
Bob: Some people I know when I show them the logo don't seem to have any idea of what it might be about. To me the logo conjures up some kind of Orwellian big brother type thing.
Sophia: Well some people just think its plain strange and that's fine. Others interpret it as the big brother type of thing which it partly is but perhaps more importantly it questions the whole concept of truth for the individual. It's easy to point the finger at oppressors as evil but where do your own concepts of truth come from and what does it mean when you take on the role of the blind manipulator. How much does self-deception play in peoples quest for justice?
Bob: I remember talking to an artist once at a party who confessed that they didn't participate in political activities because they felt they didn't have any idea about what was the right thing to do. Is that a good state to be in?
Sophia: For the artist it probably was. At least it would have been convenient for them. They were probably quite happy with that position in the same way postmodernists are happy with postmodern theory. Its comfortable. But to accept that is to accept the powers that be and if you were born in an underprivileged community or some economically exploited nation you probably don't accept that truth. To me it's more important to take action and accept that its not necessarily going to lead to liberation but in fact may lead to its opposite or worse still a trivial waste of time. That's part of the reason for using Oppenheimer's eyes. The blind authority splits culture like Oppenheimer split the atom. Einstein testifies that if he had known what would become of his formula he would not have made it public. That's all very well in hindsight. We all act blindly to some degree. That is according to our own subjective experiences. Maybe BAMcorp® will be recuperated if it isn't already as just another tool for the bourgeois revolution. Oppenheimer didn't think that his bomb was going to be tested in a real situation on actual people. That's a good metaphor for how we are always deceived by a mirror society. Oppenheimer received his orders and lies or half truths from above. BAMcorp® places the decision on you. We hope that our chain reaction will help diversify culture and challenge capitalist values but we could be wrong. Capitalism creates the fiction that diversity is possible under the one economic system. This is pure falsity - the one economic system is a monoculture by definition. Under the one economic system difference and opposition exist in appearance only. Most difference and opposition operates more in the service of maintaining the existing structures and that includes revolutionary doctrines. However that is no excuse to go to sleep and become a boring yuppie philistine. The Australian economy is destined to get worse and worse. It will continue while we focus all our energies on the Government. It's naive to believe that governments have any real power. Governments merely fulfil the double role of corporate lackeys and scapegoats. Corporations simply sidestep legislation. Governments, their opposition and the media simply operate to create the illusion that there is some form of accountability. Not that they act in this way consciously it's just that they're comfortable so they can't see beyond their positions. It's a mirror world.. I mean hell everyone knows accountants only account for hings by hiding and disguising them. It would be naive to believe that the richest families didn't conspire. Those that own the banks, the holding companies, the oil companies, the media and everything else. It would be naive to think they weren't secretive. As for all those economic crises it would be naive to believe that they weren't premeditated. It would also be naive to believe they were infallible.
Bob: You seem quite content to practice your experiment on the world at large disregarding any responsibility for the consequences.
Sophia: The whole idea that you can work something out in a laboratory is a modernist lie. Modern scientific movements such as quantum physics should have meant to dispel this myth but the lie continues in the service of those who profit from it. This is also the lie of academia. Marxism, Leninism and revolutionary models tend to be a lie in the same way. It's a linear model of reality. People tend to dispel the importance of games as an important component of knowledge itself. People also tend to dispel the reality that decision makers are also practising a real life experimental game.In a sense the economy is a mass bourgeois psychosis. It operates more in the realm of fantasy than any objective reality. It is a disease of class seperation. A fantasy game played out by the bourgiosie on real people from different classes. My own game is to try and inflict a little diorientation to create a little conflict within people living in comfort zones rather than wait for the many oncoming crisis. I wouldn't be so brave as to say I had a clearly set project. A lot of indigenous cultures use games as an important aspect of education and have created sophisticated forms of knowledge from it. We need to keep constantly on our toes. To Believe in the relevance of Marx in today's world maybe akin to believing in the relevance of the Bible or the Odyssey. On the other hand translating the odyssey to a useful contempory theology may not be a bad experiment. It could also be interesting to see how postmodern texts are plagiarised from all these texts but then again maybe it doesn't matter. Maintaining a praxis is an important aspect of my own truth.
Bob: How did you first come up with the BAMcorp® idea?
Sophia: It was actually a graphic design school assignment. We had to design business cards and letterheads for an agency of our choice so three of us come up with detournments of the whole advertising industry. Apart from taking the concept to the streets with a few silk screened posters it was pretty much left at that. Then I went travelling overseas and met Monty Cantsin and other neoists in Brussels where I got the idea to expand the Blind Authority® concept by plagiarising neoist ideas. Hopefully one day it will be anti-neoist or perhaps post neoist. A conradictory position but not an impossibility.
Bob: So you got inspiration from travelling?
Sophia: Not really. I kind of get pissed off with all those middle class travellers. It's like some kind of initiation in to adulthood. Travelling overseas proves your maturity whilst fucking up the stratosphere in the process. Wiser people have stayed put. At least the sex pistols lyrics 'a cheap holiday in someone else's misery' stands the test of time. On the other hand most of our own culture is based on a cheap thrill in other peoples misery. Yes the revolution of the bourgeoisie has been successful with the overwhelming majority of the worlds' population living in misery.
Bob: So you don't identify as middle class?
Sophia: Well yeah, I am actually but most middle class people really piss me off as well.
Bob: Ok. fair enough. I was wondering how it feels to just give away your ideas like that? Don't they feel a little precious to you? Most artists are really possessive with their ideas. I understand that there is this guy in Adelaide who goes around acting as if he himself created the idea.
Sophia: It's a pleasure! I mean really I wish more people would do the same. Maybe write their own versions of what this things about. Their own Blindmission® statements or manifestos. Even contradict everything I've said or invent a counter history. After all this is common practice in mainstream manipulations such as those performed by PR agencies. Most of our news is just constructed fictitious lies presented for commodity consumption. Activists mould themselves into this structure by censoring themselves for fifteen minutes of fame. In the middle ages plagiarism was the highest compliment and I think of it as a compliment when I see the logo being used. I'll have to find other ways to survive in a monetary sense. Or then again maybe I can find a way to make a little out of this thing. It's not that important how it's used. As more people begin to use BAMcorp® the more it will pull apart the rhetoric of testimony. People identify with other people with simular socio-political backgrounds like they're barracking for a football team or something. This isn't necessarily a good thing. One other point is when you do something that is outside of market structured consciousness you tend to either completely baffle people or be seen as some crazy eccentric. Identity has become the measure of your market potential. A problem with a lot of feminism these days is that it embraces market structured consciousness which is akin to embracing masculine rationality. There's nothing in itself wrong with rationality but there's more to life than boredom and there are certainly many other important forms of knowledge. Being a lunatic is important, hence my name. It's not a coincidence that the moon, a traditional feminine symbol, is used to describe people who apparently suffer from unreason. It's about time more men stopped pretending that they're rational beings and adopted a little self conscious lunacy themselves. On the other hand it's dangerous to start talking about what people should be. Time to bury the psychoanalytic myth of becoming whole. You are what you are and that's all you need to be. I mean who needs to reach their full potential when you can meet with reality immediately. Competition is an indication of your insecurity. The fact that 90% of all trade is done in futures is probably as good an indication as any that we're shit scared of the present.
Bob: So where do you think all this is going to lead to? Is this a step towards some great revolution or is it a stupid waste of time?
Sophia: To be quite honest I think it's irrelevant. Revolution and reform are two sides of the same forgery coin. It's part of the modernist lie inherited from the middle ages of reaching some kind of heaven or perfection. Postmodernism plays the same conniving tricks with ideas such as desire and pleasure. It's just modernism repackaged. Lenin and countless other Marxists have used the myth of progression to create their oppressive positions of power. The myth of progression is also the inheritance of racist ideology. I'm not saying we should go backwards - that's just thinking in the same stupid linear framework. I think it's more important to dispel the whole oppressive myth of progression. If there is such a thing as advancement then Aboriginal people would have to have one of the most advanced cultures in the world yet modernist texts always point to them as primitive. At the same time their educational methods are exploited by super learning experts. If Aboriginal culure is so primitive then all the migrants that have been coming to Australia over the last 200 or so years are even more primitive. Aboriginal culture has developed highly sophisticated models of thought. Aboriginal people have excelled so much in European education that non-Aboriginal Australia has had to find new methods of oppression and cover up that particular aspect of the history of Australia's invasion. Do you think we would be flying around in helicopters if it wasn't for the inventor on the Australian $50 note? Not that the helicopter was necessarily a good idea. Not that I'm any expert on Aboriginal culture either. It goes way over my head. It's not a good idea to use another culture as a model. That would be a continuation of colonial genocide. We have to swim in our own shit. We need to learn to listen, for sure, and at the risk of sounding mystical we need to listen beyond the surface of language. Shut the media up. All of it for a while. Then we might be able to gain some wisdom rather than an endless babble of information.
Bob: Anything else you would like to add to wrap up this interview?
Sophia: Well just to get out there and do it. The simple act of sticking the logo over another logo is a lot of fun. Stick it on posters on postcards or think of some thing outrageous and stupid to do. I think it is better if people use multiple names such as Karen Eliot, Monty Cantsin or Luther Blissett or a pseudonym of their own rather than using their actual names. This makes the concept more challenging. There is a myriad of things you could do with it. Create your own Blindshares® or Blindmoney® and try to convince someone that they are worth something. Tell them the US dollar is measured against it.
Bob: Lets go down the pub
Sophia: OK
Corporate Blindvision® statement
To create value for our shareowners on a long term basis by building a business that enhances the Blind Authority Manipulation Corporation® trade marks. To create the latest designer subversive novelty fad. To plagiarise what no one could be bothered before. To give away all our good ideas so we can become poor martyrs. To take the high moral ground. To rip the shreds out of dominant culture and expose it for the hollow shell it is. To negate our own objectives. To stoop to new levels of irresponsibility and irrelevance. To wait patiently until a corporation offers to buy us out. Our prices aren't too high.
Corporate Blindmission® statement
(write your own in the space below)
Please pass this on to other gullible idiots.
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