Second-Hand Time (piano, audio track, video)

Second- Hand Time (25m) - Inspired by and integrating the words of Adam Curtis, Henry A. Giroux, Brad Evans, Svetlana Alexievich, and Noam Chomsky.

This piece explores a new format (for me) by combining the emotional power and excitement of virtuosic musical performance with a pre-recorded cinematic audio soundtrack (drawn from real and electronic worlds) and integrating these with synchronised projected text that delivers precisely-timed social commentary on current and crucial issues, such as runaway economic models and their impact on society, education, climate change, the threats to current life and culture, and the future prospects of the human race.

Text - Henry A. Giroux, Brad Evans, Svetlana Alexievich, Adam Curtis, and Noam Chomsky

Name UL (New Zealand) - Drum’n Bass Layers

Moxina (Taiwan) - Noise Metal Layers

The Nature of Reality

Second-Hand Time Part 1

If you are looking for me

I am beyond nowhere

my friends are long gone

at night I talk to the dead

old age means

loneliness

surrounded by strangers

i'm a reference book

a living library

but I have no one to talk to....

historical memory disappears

the past no longer connects

regular people don’t care about history

they’re concerned with simpler things:

falling in love

getting married

building a house

having kids

what we think of as real today

is whatever goes on inside our heads

what goes on in our heads

and

what we want

and

what we desire

minute-by-minute

second-by-second

is real

a massive shift in that has happened

because of the internet

the fundamental question

is subjectivity

what does it mean to change the subjectivities desires and consciousness of people?

every age has its definition of reality  

not what IS real  

but what feels real  

this definition of reality  

at every age  

stops you seeing other things

what are we missing?

all we can seemingly imagine  

is a world  

filled with unavoidable catastrophes  

the sources of which

we are told  

remain beyond our grasp

and the only world conceivable  

is the one  

we are currently forced to endure  

a world  

that is  

brutally reproduced  

and forces us all  

to become  

witnesses  

to its spectacles  

of violence

the goal of making the world  

a better place  

has been replaced  

by dystopian narratives  

about how to survive  

alone   in a world  

whose destruction  

is just a matter of time  

citizenship is mostly about forgetting  

not learning

a widespread avoidance of the past  

the sanitising of public memory  

and imposed amnesia  

have become weapons  

used to keep people passive  

and blind to the truth  

are we pulled forward by future happiness  

or  

pushed from behind  

by the horror of destruction  

we keep perpetrating on the way?  

the ideal citizen  

is one at work all the time  

industrious    

and attentive to the screen image  

diligence  

has come to mean  

a readiness  

to obey

memories  

of collective struggles  

against government  

and corporate abuses  

have been deposited  

down the memory hole

but historical memory  

is one of the primary weapons  

to be used  

against  

the abuse of power

and that is why  

those who have power  

create  

a desert  

of organised forgetting  

can we learn to remember?  

we live in societies  

without narrative coherence  

there isn’t a big story  

everyone’s just trying  

to manage the now  

and desperately hold it stable

the powerful would like us to believe  

that we live  

in an eternal present  

in which reflection  

is limited  

to Facebook  

and historical narrative  

is the preserve  

of Hollywood  

thinking about past and future

has collapsed

into a presentism  

the real is now a never changing present  

the real is now a never changing present

the real is now a never changing present  

the real is now a never changing present

the real is now a never changing present the real is now a never changing present the real is now a never changing present  the real is now a never changing present the real is now a never changing present the real is now a never changing present  the real is now a never changing present  the real is now a never changing present the real is now a never changing present the real is now a never changing present  the real is now a never changing present

we’ve somehow created a world  

in which it’s as if  

progress  

has come to a stop

it’s like

our world is  

outside time

and the future

seems to have stopped  

standing in its proper place  

time comes to us second-hand  

digital technologies  

have become  

the new  

architect of our intimacies  

all aspects of social life  

are increasingly shaped by  

the communication technologies  

under the control  

of corporate forces

the internet has been captured  

by four giant corporations  

who don’t produce anything  

contribute nothing  

to the wealth of the country  

and hoard  

their billions of dollars  

when our fears have all been serialised  

our creativity censured  

our ideas "market-placed"  

our rights sold  

our intelligence sloganized  

our strength downsized  

our privacy auctioned…  

when the theatricality

the entertainment value  

the marketing  

of LIFE itself

is complete…

we will find ourselves living not in a nation  

but in a consortium of industries

and wholly unintelligible to ourselves

the digital terrain offers  

fast time  

delete buttons  

unrestrained pleasure  

short-term advantage  

and the celebrated avoidance  

of any relationship  

that demands a commitment  

what it seems to deliver  

is empty emotional lives  

and “risk free”  

intimacy  

there’s this sense that you can have  

the illusion of companionship  

without the demands of friendship  

the digitised world has no respect  

for contemplation or reflection  

it delivers  

instant stimulation and gratification  

forcing the brain to give most attention  

to short-term decisions and reactions  

this new mode of persuasion  

has seduced people  

into chasing commodities  

and infantilised them  

through the mass production  

of easily digestible entertainment  

and disposable goods  

in many countries  

there is the emergence  

of a digitised world  

that is at odds with contemplation  

and the slowing down of time  

necessary to work through  

complex thoughts  

critical thought  

has dissolved  

into the limited pleasures  

of instant gratification

sound bites  

now pass  

for informed commentary  

and merge  

with the banality of celebrity culture  

the new web technologies  

with their emphasis on velocity  

and efficiency  

and the overabundance of data  

blur the lines  

between fact and opinion  

between news and entertainment  

there is an overflow of information  

and the emergence  

of new forms of illiteracy  

in which many young people  

cannot focus very long  

on specific tasks  

or connect  

discrete pieces of information  

to larger narratives  

this type of illiteracy  

is incapable  

of dealing  

with complex questions  

questions requiring explanations  

that are too tedious  

for a world  

with this  

short attention span

fragments  

that’s how people think now  

they make associations  

and there’s no meaning

that’s the world we live in

it seems that the heyday  

of critically informed thinking  

is over  

the war against literacy  

and informed judgment  

is made clear  

in the massive collective anger  

that is aimed at  

the educated  

and not  

the wealthy

Snowden revealed  

the real project  

was to make sure

that a generation of young people  

were not taught to think critically  

or question authority

human beings have been reduced  

to a very simplified version of themselves  

which they’ve accepted  

in order to fit  

into this machine model  

of society and the internet

a massive PR drive is persuading us  

that we are no more than simple machines  

which means we will agree  

humbly  

to be fitted  

into their stupid machine decision trees

their stupid machine decision trees

their stupid machine decision trees

their stupid machine decision trees

their stupid machine

but we are extraordinary  

and we can do extraordinary things  

we are so much more  

than what they are forcing us to accept

‍

The Spectacle of Violence

Second-Hand Time Part 3

our history

the history of our present

is a history of violence

today

we are inundated

with a pervasive culture of violence

endlessly exposed

to mass-produced spectacles

of commodified

and ritualized

violence,

endlessly exposed

to mass-produced spectacles

of commodified

and ritualized

violence,

a culture of cruelty

and barbarism

has become deeply entrenched

and more easily tolerated

the spectacle of violence

works

by turning human suffering

into a spectacle

framing and editing

the realities of violence

and in doing so

renders some lives meaningful

while dismissing others as

disposable

the spectacle of violence

assaults our senses

in order to hide things

in plain sight

the spectacle

immerses us

encouraging us

to experience violence

as pleasure

a world that is brutally reproduced

and forces us all to become witness

to its spectacles of violence

a world that demands we accept

that all things are

ultimately

insecure

by design

the spectacle of violence

harvests and sells our attention

it works at the level of subjectivity  

by manipulating our desires  

as the pleasure principle  

becomes less constrained  

by a moral compass  

based on a respect for others  

it is increasingly shaped  

by the need for intense excitement  

and a never-ending flood  

of heightened sensations

resulting in  

a fully entertained population  

distracted  

from the living nightmare  

of correctable injustices  

all around them

violence and mayhem  

have become a regular feature  

of everyday life

mass shootings happen so often

they are barely reported in the press

screen culture

has contributed  

to a violence-saturated culture  

that inordinately invests in  

and legitimates  

a grim pleasure  

in the pain of others  

secret detention  

cruel and unusual punishment  

excessive torture  

have become increasingly normalized  

in popular culture

whereas popular accounts of torture    

prior to 2001  

were viewed largely as the acts  

of psychologically unbalanced  

individuals  

or rogue governments…

in the post-9/11 climate

torture has become common fare  

in mainstream culture

from action films  

and TV dramas  

to comedies

while in real life  

torture  

has been shamelessly accepted  

as necessary  

for peace  

and security  

our societies have become  

addicted to violence

staged violence is now anticipated  

with bated breath  

victims no longer have to be looked  

in the eye  

since they often appear  

as just dots  

on an electronic screen  

many institutions  

that were meant to limit  

human suffering  

and misfortune  

have been either weakened  

or abolished  

images of state terrorism  

now serve less to indict the perpetrators  

than to instil fear  

to destroy the capacity  

for holding power accountable

to send the message

"This could happen to you"  

"This could happen to you"

what is forced  

upon its spectators  

doesn’t offer anything  

that may break the cycle  

violence is now  

not something to be condemned  

but to be appropriated  

as a productive source  

for higher Nielson ratings  

and more advertising revenue  

we need to live in a world

in which we are alarmed

rather than entertained

by violence

the level of ‘familiar’ violence  

below which  

the cruelty  

of cruel acts  

escapes attention  

is constantly  

rising  

the sheer numbers

and monotony of images  

have a ‘wearing off’ impact  

and to stave off the ‘viewing fatigue,’  

they must be increasingly gory  

shocking  

and otherwise ‘inventive’  

to arouse any sentiments at all  

like the horror movie genre  

and its endless sequels  

the audience’s appetite  

can only be quenched  

with more ingenious  

and sophisticated  

ways  

of killing  

unfamiliar violence  

such as extreme images  

of torture and death  

become banally familiar  

while familiar violence  

that occurs daily  

is barely recognized  

the spectacle

is the bad dream  

of modern society  

in chains  

expressing nothing more  

than its wish for  

sleep  

the lines between  

the spectacle of violence  

and the reality of everyday violence  

have become blurred

he or she who looks at the spectacle  

remains motionless  

on his or her seat  

without any power of intervention  

the normalization

of violent spectacles  

renders political violence  

increasingly acceptable

the more brutal and consuming  

the entertainment becomes  

the less we are forced to consider  

the true depths of suffering  

faced by many  

on a daily basis  

we fail to see the plight  

of those living in our midst  

as we become increasingly insensitive  

to violence and suffering around us  

even the apocalypse  

has become a spectacle  

even the apocalypse  

has become a spectacle  

catastrophe is so overpowering  

that the issue is no longer  

how might we address  

and rectify  

a crisis  

but how do we endure  

and survive it  

we are in the midst of something new  

democracy is losing its appeal  

fascists are gaining  

in popularity  

around the globe  

if we don't come to terms  

with how dangerous this is  

then it can just happen  

and people won't realize it  

until it's too late

what must be remembered  

is that totalitarianism  

destroys  

those zones of memory and experience  

that offer up  

alternative views of the world  

it removes any sense of vision  

that suggests education  

is really about  

constructing a future  

that doesn’t repeat  

the worst dimensions  

of the present  

this new authoritarianism  

is driven by a criminal class  

of powerful  

financial and political elites

who refuse  

to make political concessions

the new elites  

have no allegiances  

to nation-states  

and don’t care  

about the damage they do  

to workers  

the environment  

or the rest of humanity  

they are unhinged sociopaths  

far removed from the 99 percent  

they are the new gated class  

who float above national boundaries  

laws  

and forms of regulation

they are a global elite  

whose task  

is to transform all nation-states  

into instruments  

to enrich their wealth and their power

in George Orwell’s 1984  

people are controlled by inflicting  

pain  

in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World  

they are controlled

by inflicting  

pleasure  

Orwell’s is the stuff  

of government oppression  

Huxley’s is the stuff  

of distractions

diversions  

and the transformation of  

privacy  

into a cheap and sensational  

performance  

for public display  

Orwell feared  

that the truth  

would be concealed from us  

Huxley feared  

the truth would be drowned  

in a sea of irrelevance

Orwell feared  

we would become a captive culture  

Huxley feared  

we would become  

a trivial culture  

Orwell feared those  

who would deprive us of information  

Huxley feared those  

who would give us so much information  

that we would be reduced  

to passivity

Orwell feared  

those who would ban books  

Huxley feared  

that there would be no reason  

to ban a book  

for there would be no one  

who wanted to read one  

people will come to love their oppression  

to adore the technologies  

that undo their capacities to think  

repression is now on the side of entertainment  

and the readiness of the public  

to amuse itself to death

‍