Shock Factory (Book)

The Visual Culture of Industrial Music

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

Category: Music
Series: Global Punk

Edition

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 introduces the visual and aesthetic elements of 1970s 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 in the New Media Department of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. 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 

  1. “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 

  1. 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 

  1. 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                       

  1. Future Tense: Reinterpreting Futurism

         Manifesto Culture 

         Rupture 

  1. L’Ordre par le Bruit: Constructivist and Suprematist Precedents

         Influence of Propaganda 

         Constructive Destruction 

         “Mechanical Eye”: Organic Machine 

  1. 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 

  1. Imaginary Surrealists

         Dark Surrealism: Altered Reality 

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

  1. 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

  1. “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 

  1. 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  

  1. 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  

  1. Industrial Catharsis: Psychological Mechanisms and Cognitive Tests

         Shock Impressions and Historical Boundaries 

         Overplaying Totalitarian Brutality 

         Human Atrocities: Countering the Inhuman 

  1. 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 

  1. 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 

  1. 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  

  1. 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 

  1. 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 

  1. Third Esoteric Revival

         (Revolutionary) Social Utopias of Magical Awakening 

         (Re)discovery of Occult and Artistic Practices 

  1. Crowleymass: Rehabilitated Contemporary Occultism

         Magia Sexualis: Influence of a Magical System  

         Writing and the Language of the Occult

         Astral Explorations and Queer Mysticism  

  1. 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 

  1. 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 

  1. 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 

 

"A history of industrial music needed to be written. Nicolas Ballet has accomplished this. Thoroughly. This is the book's greatest strength. It explore the significance of noise as a reflection of a world in decay and screaming as a need. And doing it so it reveals a significant connection between industrial music and contemporary art. This is also what makes it an essential book: its contribution to dismantling categories and rethinking history from mixed creative territories."

David G. Torres, art critic
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