Sunday Symposium, October 15th
Festival Theme Panel — FALL OF LOVE : PARADISE TOSSED with Erik Davis, V.Vale, Mark McCloud & Naut Humon
Uncanny Cultures, Context, and Contradictions - What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Now that the 50th anniversary of the Summer to bummer of Love is winding down RML thought we would jumpstart into this 2017 season's transition with a bizarre pre-hallows-eve commemoration of the October ’67 “Death of Hippie” mock funeral procession on Haight Street, where they constructed a custom coffin filled with the countercultural paraphernalia and wilted flowers, signifying the death of the media generated hippie - was this a Premature Burial? Or the FALL OF LOVE? - (its all up for grabs!)
As an outsized stretcher with a flower clutching “corpse” followed the ceremonial casket into a makeshift street fire it seemed like the first strains of the symbolic “Burning Men” saga began here long before a scrap wooden man was burned in ’86 on SF’s Baker Beach. By proclaiming their own demise, the Diggers hope to purify, cleanse and bear this "birth of free" from the commercialIzed construction that the plastic hippie stereotype had culminated. Then as the fundamental dash through Woodstock nation got rattled at Altamont the previously postulated imaginings of a kind of revolutionary PARADISE or utopia whose optimistic springboard was getting TOSSED, turned and churned through the following decades.
Another Phoenix rose thru the freak scene from the post 60’s ashes which was an NYC underground "Punk Mass” designation by a minimalist electronic duo called SUICIDE who predated the later punk rock movement by almost six years. Like the Velvet Underground before them, Suicide seized upon the sonic tension of the diversifying musical times far in advance of their eventual subcultural recognition.
Musically and lyrically, punk rock was the intentional antithesis of the disco scene, the progressive stadium rock genre and the hippie subculture. When Suicide opened for the Clash concerts in ’78 they were booed and jeered by the so-called punk crowd whose object of affliction was perhaps closer to the raw punk ethos than they were.
As the Blank Generation slowly transformed towards today's Bank Generation with the “Death of Hipster“ a new darker DMT ghost has slipped into the deep dream computer machine - LUCIFAR-AI RISING.
Erik Davis, author of techgnosis.com, will download his thoughts in a keynote style around all these topics on a special Sunday evening panel with V.Vale of Research publications (https://www.researchpubs.com) and Mark McCloud purveyor of the Blotter Barn Blizzard exhibition (http://www.blotterbarn.com), and moderator Naut Humon, curator and founder of the Recombinant Festivals.
Show & Tell with Martin Rev
The Martin Rev weekend residency has a final night on Sunday with a Show and Tell interview moderated and prepared by Marcus Herring ad Tom Fitzgerald from LA. We’ve invited Marty in person to talk tour time travel back to the cusp of 70’s for the original Punk Mass and studio tales around the underground emergence of the annihilating musical assault unit SUICIDE - a band that pretty much invented, defined and then exploded electronic punk. Come join us for this unique compendium of rare clips, conversation, photos, fliers, and even stranger topics and stories of the no-wave era street scene in the midst of Suicide’s rise to notoriety and no compromise voice and machines stance through the 1st several albums with him and Alan Vega plus Rev’s initial solo releases. A full spectrum perspective from the popular to the perverse.
SCREENING: Suicide Live 1980/2001 and Alan Vega: In His Own Words by GoNightclubbing: Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong w/ an introduction by Martin Rev
Video artists Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong, in the pre-MTV days from 1977-80, spent their nights documenting New York’s nascent punk and no wave scenes. Armed with portapak cameras, they shot now legendary shows and on-camera interviews, including this amazing Suicide performance.
Innovators Alan Vega and Martin Rev put forth the model for the synth duos that went on to dominate the ‘80s – but with their own unmatched style and legendary use of drum machines, organs, and synths. To strip down and twist the pop format inside out, to turn music into a confrontation that had at times almost no familiar sounds — such fierce minimalism made Suicide undeniably challenging, as this extended footage of a 1980 set shows. The film captures them in the time zone on the eve of their second album sessions and release. The SUICIDE LIVE screening will start with a lead-in by Martin Rev.