Shock Factory - Nicolas Ballet

Shock Factory

The Visual Culture of Industrial Music

(Autor)

Buch | Hardcover
640 Seiten
2025
Intellect Books (Verlag)
978-1-83595-075-3 (ISBN)
149,55 inkl. MwSt
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This book aims to introduce the visual and aesthetic elements of industrial culture to a general history of contemporary art by analysing the different approaches taken and topics addressed by the primary protagonists of the movement. 636 halftones
Industrial music appeared in the mid-1970s, and far from being a simple sound experimentation phenomenon, it quickly spawned a coherent visual culture operating at the intersection of a multitude of media (collage, mail art, installation, film, performance, sound, video) and initiated a close inspection of the legacy of modernity and the growing, pervasive influence of technology.



Originally British, the movement soon outgrew Europe, extending into the United States and Japan during the 1980s. The sound experiments conducted by industrial bands – designing synthesizers, manipulating and transforming recorded sounds from audio tapes, either recycled or laid down by the artists – were backed up by a rich array of radical visual productions, deriving their sources from the modernist utopias of the first part of the 20th century. Such saturated sounds were translated into abrasive images, manipulated through the détournement of reprographic techniques (Xerox art), that investigated polemical themes: mind control, criminality, occultism, pornography, psychiatry and totalitarianism, among others.



This book aims to introduce the visual and aesthetic elements of 1970a and 1980s industrial culture to a general history of contemporary art by analysing the different approaches taken and topics addressed by the primary protagonists of the movement, who perceptively anticipated the current discourse concerning the media and their collective coercive power.

Nicolas Ballet is an art historian and assistant curator at the Centre Pompidou in the New Media Department. He is the author of books and articles exploring the visual and sonic contributions of countercultures and experimental artistic practices. In 2023, he curated the exhibition “Who You Staring At?" Visual Culture of the No Wave Scene in the 1970s and 1980s at the Centre Pompidou. He is currently leading a research project for the Centre Pompidou on pro-sex perspectives in art, from the 1960s to the present day.

Foreword 



   Pascal Rousseau 



Acknowledgements



Introduction 



   Alternative Postmodernity 



   Graphical Perspectives 



   Cultural Registers and Industrial Themes 



   Artistic Hybridizations 



 



Part I. The Last of England: Post-Industrial Trauma and a Tradition of Subversion 



Chapter 1. Dystopia for Utopia 





“Prolétariat & Industrie”: Marginality and Post-Industrial Change


         Post-Industrial Context: Transformation of the Nature of Power



         Irony and Industrial Détournements 



         Post-Industrial Zeitgeist and “Global Village” 



         Atomic Paranoia: The Post-Apocalyptic Iconography of the Nuclear Age 



         Survivalism, Paramilitary Decorum and the Fear of Death 



         Breakdown and Continuity of Post-Psychedelic Violence 



         Post-Beat Culture 





Transgression and Destruction: An Aesthetic of Carnage


         Post-Apocalyptic Perspectives and Junk Culture 



         Urban and Industrial Ruins: Dissidence of “Dark Romanticism” 



         Aesthetics of Destruction: Confrontational Attitudes and Visual Parasites 



         Bodily Mutilation: The “Industrial Disease” 



         Industrial Pain 



         Cultural Terrorism  



Chapter 2. The Legacy of Modernity and Postmodern Challenges 





Informed, Marginalized Generation


        Culture Clash: A Diversity of Artistic Traditions Collides 



         Knowledge of Previous Movements and Experimental Shifts 



         Redefining the Avant-Garde in the Post-Modern Era                       





Future Tense: Reinterpreting Futurism


         Manifesto Culture 



         Rupture 





L’Ordre par le Bruit: Constructivist and Suprematist Precedents


         Influence of Propaganda 



         Constructive Destruction 



         “Mechanical Eye”: Organic Machine 





Dadaist Offensive


         Subversive Cabaret



         The Dada Cyborg: Doubting the Man-Machine 



         Post-War Trauma and Prosthetic Men 



         The Duchampian Model of “Anti-Art” 



         Alternative Networks 





Imaginary Surrealists


         Dark Surrealism: Altered Reality 



         The “Uncanny” of a Mechanical Sexuality  Dreams Less Sweet: Surrealist Dreams 





The Neo-Avant-Gardist Factory


         “Fluxshoe”: Behavioural Experiments 



         Actionist Radicality 



         Post-Situationist Détournements 



 



Part II Nothing Short of a Total War: Industrial Dissidence and Shock Tactics 



Chapter 3. “Persuasion”: Burroughsian Strategies of Reversing Mind Control





“Spread the Virus”: Electronic Revolution and Industrial Cut-Ups


         Post-Industrial Biopolitics and Strategy of Recycling 



         The “Control Process” and Disruptive Advertising 



         Televisual Piracy 



         Bioelectronic Virus 





Duty Experiment: Military and Civilian Scientific Experiments


         Experimental Scientific Protocols and Torture 



         “War of Nerves”: Acoustic Warfare and Crowd Control Military Infiltration and Civilian Conditioning 



         Attacking and Hijacking Popular Culture 



 Chapter 4. Symphony for a Genocide: Industrial Music and Totalitarianism  





Détournement of Trauma and Industrial Provocation


         Death Factory: Dictatorship of the Mass Media and “Dark Situationism” 



         Paramilitary Fetishism and Transgressive Attitudes 



         Laboratory of Ambiguity 



         Industrial Anti-Fascism  





Industrial Catharsis: Psychological Mechanisms and Cognitive Tests


         Shock Impressions and Historical Boundaries 



         Overplaying Totalitarian Brutality 



         Human Atrocities: Countering the Inhuman 





Industrial Excesses and Political Manipulation


         (Re)discovering the Shoah 



         Fascination for the Historical Archive and the Effect of Complacency 



         Radicalization of a Political Scene 



         Fear of Cultural Disappearance 



Chapter 5. “Suture Obsession”: Aestheticization of Horror 





The Atrocity Exhibition: Anti-Psychiatric Interference and Tolerance Thresholds


         Reflective Tradition of the Unbearable Image 



         Science of Perception: Psychiatric Perversion and Shock Treatment



         “The Cathedral of Death” 



         True Gore: Fascination and Repulsion of the Unbearable Image 



         The Toilet Exhibition: Shared Trauma 





Bleeding Images: Criminal Anxiety


         The Manson Family/Jonestown: Sectarian Lure and Collective Suicide 



         Warped Portrait of a Serial Killer



         Murderous Impulses and Creative Desires 



         Criminal Experience 



         Sex Crime Atrocities 



Chapter 6. “Prostitution”: Sexual Reconfiguration and Industrial Feminism  





White Souls in Black Suits: Pornographic Abuse and BDSM Subculture


         “Degree Xerox” and Sexual Repression 



         Psychopathia Sexualis and the Fascination with Sexual Transgression 



         Sexual Discipline: Effects of Fetishization and Reconfiguration of Pain 



         Unusual Perversions: Bondage Subculture 



         Crash Biomechanical Sexual Mutation 





Brutality as a Masquerade


         Gender Relations Within the Movement



         “Obsession”: Infiltration Tactics and Appropriation of the Female Body 



         “Alpha Females”: Violence and the Power of Gendered Deconstruction 



         Engaging the Industrial Male 



 



Part 3 “Body and Soul”: Industrial Occulture 



Chapter 7. Pagan Day: Occult Rituals and the Re-Enchantment of Reality 





Third Esoteric Revival


         (Revolutionary) Social Utopias of Magical Awakening 



         (Re)discovery of Occult and Artistic Practices 





Crowleymass: Rehabilitated Contemporary Occultism


         Magia Sexualis: Influence of a Magical System  



         Writing and the Language of the Occult



         Astral Explorations and Queer Mysticism  





Zos Kia Cultus: The Legacy of Austin Osman Spare


         Sigils and Graphic Work 



         Automatic Drawings Under Spiritual Influence 



         The Alchemical “Whole”: Occult Androgyny and Hermetic Challenges 





The Process: Sectarian Systems and Informal Satanism


         “Psychedelic Fascism”: Influential Processes at the Margins 



         Transparency, Devotion and Overthrow of the Guru 



         Industrial Satanism  



         Demonic Possessions and Religious Reconfigurations 





Modern Primitives: Neopaganism and Ritualized Body Modification


         Wicca Tradition: Nature Worship 



         “The Orgastic Potency of the Primitives”: The Anthropological Turn 



         “Traces of the Sacred”: Marks of the Body and Mind 



 



Conclusion 



         Authoritarian Reconfiguration and Cultural Assimilation 



         Extra-Planetary Village 



Archives and Interviews 



Bibliography 



 

Erscheint lt. Verlag 28.3.2025
Reihe/Serie Global Punk
Zusatzinfo 636 Halftones, color
Sprache englisch
Maße 170 x 244 mm
Themenwelt Kunst / Musik / Theater Malerei / Plastik
Kunst / Musik / Theater Musik Klassik / Oper / Musical
ISBN-10 1-83595-075-2 / 1835950752
ISBN-13 978-1-83595-075-3 / 9781835950753
Zustand Neuware
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