Happy New Year!
I hope you’ve all had a happy holidays. Here at Camp XG, my girlfriend and I basically been locked down with her brother and his girlfriend. It has been a cosy, sleepy Christmas.
I also turned 29, although we didn’t really celebrate it this year. Post-adoption trauma always makes my birthday a time of year where I feel like I’m losing my mind a little bit so collectively deciding to pretend it simply wasn’t happening was an interesting and surreal break with tradition that I’m actually feeling pretty good about.
Now that’s all over with, onto the 2021!
But before we properly welcome in the New Year, here’s a quick breakdown of everything posted on the blog in December 2020.
Hauntology and Salvagepunk
This was originally meant to be the intro to the previously promised Oneohtrix Point Never megapost. That post got too bloated and exploded all over me but I still liked this as a way to set the scene. It might also be an interesting way to consider hauntology in relationship to its near-forgotten cousin, salvagepunk. More on that later…
Political Idiocy
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been feeling pretty fed up with right-wing idiocy lately. It has been ever-present during the Trump era but dumb arguments made throughout the coronavirus pandemic have been grating on me more and more. The more they grate, however, the more I feel like the cracks in their logic show. So here are a few grumpy posts on how the right has wasted its political ascendency and the sooner they collapse under their own overblown hype the better.
— The Double-Edged Sword of Postmodernity: On the Trussed-Up Ideology of Liz Truss
— Against Covid Libertarianism
Christmas Music
I didn’t do so well at getting into the Christmas spirit this year. I ignored it was happening for the most part, which I tend to do every year. But the phenomena of Christmas music interestingly lost its ubiquity. Since the run-up wasn’t spent in shops or with the TV on, the only Christmas music I heard was put on on purpose by my girlfriend. To each their own, but it only made the whole thing more surreal. I ended up finding some of the seaonal music I personally associate with this time of year that bit more endearing.
— The Christmas No. 1: A Hauntological Frontline?
— Winter Songs: Christmas with Lindisfarne
Cyberpunk 2077
Have you played Cyberpunk 2077 yet? Me neither. But the whole palaver did end up feeling like a particularly cynical black mirror… A fantastic depiction of the future that failed to live up to expectations, undermined by capitalist crunch time, that limply promises to embark on a heartfelt voyage of self-improvement? Are we still talking about a video game right now?
— Gaming in a Present Future-Past: Notes on the Polygon Review of Cyberpunk 2077
Photography
I spent a lot of December out on walks around West Yorkshire — better than staying in all day. Below are some choice cuts from our excursions.
Merch
In case you missed it, I teamed up with Craig from the Acid Horizon podcast and Crit Drip to make some new xenogothic merch. Not one to sell a load of hypothetical designs without trying them out myself, I ordered a few t-shirts and am happy to report they look and feel great. We got caught out on the Yorkshire moors in the snow when I was taking one for a spin. Cue impromptu photo shoot:
— “Look for an Exit”: T-Shirts in the Snow
Interviews and Podcasts
Whilst reflecting on the year just gone, I realised I’d been on over a dozen podcasts over the last twelve months. I must admit, I do really enjoy just chatting shit at people, not that I find myself to be particularly coherent and lucid. Still a better writer than I am speaker.Nevertheless, I went on The Archipelago, a show broadcast of Athens’ Movement Radio, in December for a two-parter on Mark Fisher, hauntology, Oneohtrix Point Never, and some other stuff.
— Mark Fisher & Lost Futures: XG on the Archipelago
I was also interviewed by Ege Çoban for the Turkish cultural magazine Terrabayt, which I really enjoyed. (Writing > speaking, sorry not sorry.) I really liked how this came out:
— “There is a world to be transformed”: Interview in Terrabayt
Sean and I also released the second episode of Buddies Without Organs on the plane of immanence. We’d hoped to have a third episode out before Christmas but, unfortunately, technical problems meant we had to scrap it and we’ll be taking another run at it once we’re over the grief our of pod loss in the New Year.
— Buddies Without Organs — Episode #02
Misc.
In the midst of all that, I had a couple miscellaneous posts. One post I wrote whilst struggling to sleep one night and feeling like I had vertigo.
Another about D.H. Lawrence and rainbows:
— Rainbows: From D.H. Lawrence to the NHS
I posted a Patreon exclusive: a draft preface for my new book. I actually made a lot of additional headway with this over the Christmas break and it has already changed a great deal from what was originally posted. That’s how editing yourself works, I reckon. It’s only when you know something has been exposed to the scrutiny of others that you really see the lingustic flaws in it.
— Preface to a New Project: Accelerationism and the Future of the New
And, as is the annual tradition, I did an archival run-down of all the posts worth remembering that I wrote in 2020:
Postcapitalist Desire
The launch of the physical edition of Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures of Mark Fisher is almost upon us. There have already been a few reviews of the ebook version, including this new on by Phil Christman for Commonweal Magazine. I really liked how Phil pulled out Fisher’s post-punk attitude from the heart of the project itself. A really nice write-up.
— “Turning Nothings Into Somethings”: Phil Christman on ‘Postcapitalist Desire’
Repeater also ran a competition, asking people to share their favourite Fisher quotes. I picked my favourites and, although perhaps a very easy little marketing gimmick to be cynical about, it turned out to be a really nice excuse to dive back into the k-punk blog.
— Postcapitalist Desire: Repeater Books Competition Winners
What’s to Come in 2021…
Very much related to the above, January 2021 is going to be a veritable k-punk fiesta. So far, all that has been announced is the book launch for the physical edition of Postcapitalist Desire, for which I will be in conversation with James Butler, erudite co-founder of Novara Media, hosted by Housmans Bookshop.
— Postcapitalist Desire — Book Launch at Housmans Bookshop
But this is just the first event in a series that feels to me like a pretty massive undertaking… I’m pretty stressed about things but I think there is a lot to be excited about.
Note: none of the below has been announced yet, so I’d appreciate it if Patreons could keep it amongst themselves for a little while. All of the below will be announce publicly in due course but, as ever, here’s a sneak peek just for you.
Firstly, I’ve got two only tangentially related events on the horizon for mid-January. I’m going to be talking to PhD students at Leuphana University Lüneburg, discussing Fisher’s fifth Postcapitalist Desire lecture on Lyotard as part of their Cultures of Critique programme.
A few days later, I’m going to be giving a talk at the Association for the Design of History. This is going to be about Evan Calder Williams’ concept of “salvagepunk” and why I think it is the missing link between hauntology and accelerationism.
Then, Repeater Books’ k-punk festival gets under way. Following the book launch at Housmans, I am going to be hosting a series of conversations with writers and theorists, exploring the themes of Mark’s final lectures and discussing how various individuals are continuing to explore similar topics. I’ll be talking to Will Stronge and Helen Hester about the future of work and domestic realism; JD Taylor about psychedelic Spinozism and Hari Kunzru about weird fiction and consciousness raising. There are one or two participants still TBC.
These talks will take place on alternating weeknights during the last two weeks of January, right before Goldsmiths launches its alternative approach to the Mark Fisher Memorial Lecture this year. I’m not entirely sure what that is going to entail at the moment, but the details I have heard do sound very exciting…
As ever, my friend Natasha Eves and I have been organising the “after party”. But since the Memorial Lecture is happening online this year, so is our party. For this, we’ve teamed up with the London’s Institute of Contemporary Art, who are generously funding five mixes, each one again responding to a different theme from Mark’s final lectures. The participants for this include Incursions, Iceboy Violet, Tim Lawrence, Time Is Away and Oneohtrix Point Never. I am so excited for that.
It is going to be premiered on the ICA’s Cinema 3 platform first, on Saturday 30th January between 10PM and 3AM GMT. Access to this is likely to be behind a paywall but we will be broadcasting it elsewhere, for free, at a later date. (Maybe even the next day…)
Watch this space for all that!
Once that’s done with, 2021 will begin properly for me from February onwards, when I have no plans or commitments left over from 2020 to deal with. We’ll get back to the Patreon reading group and I’m hoping to also buckle down with the two books I have on the go. It’d be nice to get one of the finished for release in 2022…
Until then!