We Love Telly

The talk show host is happy that the girl on youtube is imitating him imitating his gestures he invites her on to his talk show this makes the girl happy they both grimace and gesture wink wink a gestural politics but the wrong kind affective gesture and language grimace don't worry its nothing serious 'what did you do on December the --th? it's blank in your diary' talk show host tears the pages out girl laughs studio audience laugh guests grimace and contort their losing gestures fully embodied in the screen

subtitles tell the story (soundtrack) slow and spasmodic a Tourettes (soundtrack) wink wink grimace contort couples in sofa adverts exhibit the same tics and grimaces empty diaries wink wink smiles liberated from any affective intent gestures that are nothing but an end such as a new kitchen unit or boyfriend girlfriend all the same in the end an echo chamber of images capturing gestures binding language replacing anonymity with transparency refusing any intimacy

(Being an imaginary collaboration between Agamben, Mark E. Smith and 23 Skidoo recorded in December 1981).

Everyday Laughter

Laugh and laugh
at the sun
at the nettles
at the stones
at the ducks
at the rain
at the pee-pee of the pope
at mummy
at a coffin full of shit.

'Laughter' G.Bataille

Guess I'm not religious enough to laugh at the Pope's pee-pee and never seen a coffin full of shit but now I think about it they're both pretty funny. Much more hilarious topics come to mind such as politics, love, art, science and dogs pissing in the lift.

Howls in Favour of Bordiga

Invited to address a conference of Greens and Socialists he could not think of anything to say. His mind revolved around the words of almost forgotten Italian Left Communist Amadeo Bordiga:

"To exploit living labour, capital must destroy dead labour which is still useful. Loving to suck warm young blood, it kills corpses."

Ecological desecration by capital was nothing but a side product of the endless cycle of the destruction of dead labour in order to extract value from the labouring bodies of the living. What environmentalists termed nature was almost nothing but dead labour reified into new shapes by the self valourisation of capital.

Mountains destroyed to extract minerals, genetically modified crops, climate change, wilderness as tourism... all of this was produced through the wage relation and part of a process of continual production and destruction of dead labour rather than the rape of nature. Most Greens did not grasp this. They remain locked in the arsehole trap of reformist single issue politics, a hard working feel good activism that wants to enlighten the plebs as to the error of consumerist life styles.

In order to enlighten the conference he decided to perform a piece entitled 'Howls in Favour of Bordiga.' Discourse simply became trapped in the entrails of chatter and activism- something more performative was required. Something like howling, screaming, yelping. After reading aloud Bordiga's succinct one line summary of dead labour he would howl for 10 to 15 minutes and then say quietly 'Howls in Favour of Bordiga' before silently leaving the stage...