Codex Europa download on Southwark Anthology of Noise

The recording of Codex Europa's selection for the Southwark Anthology of Noise is now online and can be downloaded here.

It's Codex's personal selection of industrialised/structured noise - industrial, power electronics gabber, techno, techstep and more.

Black Scenes: Call for papers

I.C.R.N. member Alex Nym is editing an interesting anthology and has sent the following message...

Hello,

we are an enthusiastic and professional team of publishers, Culture scientists, photographers and authors (most of us with „scene“ experience) planning to produce a lush & aesthetically designed reference book about the Black Scene (which, although primarily known in English-speaking countries as „Goth/ic“, includes Goth as a subgenre aside others considered generally as black, like EBM, Industrial, etc).

Besides offering a collection of texts by artists, promoters and audience members as well as contributions from social and cultural scientists, which aim to present and analyse the scene and its aesthetics and history, the accompanying illustrations are supposed to make this book a first rate artistic and intellectual experience – and you are asked to contribute!

What we need:
- Text contributions from/about the Scene about a diverse range of subjects. Please send texts ranging from 2000 to 10.000 characters in length to text[at]ploettner-verlag.de in odt, doc or rtf formats. Size limitation does not apply to scientific contributions, please contact the editor for details: a.nym[at]ploettner-verlag.de. Language used throughout the book will be German; texts in German or English are acceptable.
- Colour- or b/w photos from events and people (e.g. Festival-visitors – please no photos of bands onstage, except they're artistically or historically relevant, see below)
- Documentary photos (e.g. From the 70ies, 80ies..., here concert pictures too)
- Event ads, flyer- and poster-motifs, tickets in colour of b/w (original or digitized; originals will be sent back; don't forget to give return adress)

!All illustrations have to have printable size/resolution (300 dpi, cmyk)!
!Deadline for all contributions is December 23rd 2009!

Since the book is supposed to cover the Black Scene in all its diverse facets, images of all sorts are welcome, whether they be old-school, medieval, cybertech, fetish, industrial, EBM, neofolk, neoromantic etc in nature.
Due to the fact that the book should be considered a kind of documentary exhibit catalogue of the Black Scene, the prime of artistic value in the illustrations cannot be stressed clearly enough; hence artistic works are expressly welcome.

What we offer:
Aiming for a total of 250 pages, we're unable to pay individual fees, but will gladly compensate you with free review copies, ranging from one to five depending on the amount of your contribution. In addition, you'll receive further copies at subscription rate, thus cheaper than in stores or at amazon ;)

What you should consider:
The rights to the text/image has to be the authors/the photographers, so has to be yours; in case we publish any, you'll have to provide us with a consent to print, but in any case we need image captions, e.g. „Tamara, 23, transvestite from Giessen“, something along that line. In relation to historical photos, please relate event, location & date, e.g. „German gothpunk meeting, Cologne, pentecost 1990“ – without such references, we're unable to use the picture.

There is no entitlement to use for print of sent materials – it'll be impossible to use *all* material; please be not disappointed if your material should not have found consideration in the final product. We will keep you updated about the project's progress.

In case there should be too much outstanding material for merely one book, if this one's sales allow, there even might be option for use in a possible sequel.

Contact address/-form:
Digital images of up to 20 MB size can be sent directly to images[at]ploettner-verlag.de.
If you have online-photo-galleries, you can also send link adresses to images[at]ploettner-verlag.de; in case we select your picture(s) we'll get in touch with you. Otherwise, you can send images in printable size/res on CD/ DVD/USB to:

Plöttner-Verlag, Red. „Schwarze Szenen“
Marbachstr. 2a, 04155 Leipzig/Germany

Please note that unrequested data carriers, manuscripts, etc cannot be returned (unless you provide ample return postage).

The best of luck,

Alexander Nym & Claus-Peter Paulus, ed.


„Black Scenes“ – Table Of Content


- Preface: What is black?

- Adolescence of a youth culture: History and development
~ From punk to post-punk: The 70s
~ New Romantic, New Wave, Gothic Rock: The 80s
~ Between bambam and campfire romanticism: The 90s
~ Grown-up subculture: The 21st century


- Genres and sub-scenes
~ Batcave, Gothic rock & -metal
~ Synth-pop, Electronic Body Music, Technoise
~ Industrial & Neofolk music
~ Medieval & Neo-classical music
~ The most important festivals – WGT, M'era Luna, Amphi, etc
~ The scene in the DDR
~ The scene overseas: USA and Japan

- Between Avantgarde and assimilation: Themes & influences
~ Death, Transience, Apocalypse
~ Mysticism, Spirituality and Religion
~ Literature, Art and History
~ Sex and Fetishism
~ Transgression and Taboo-breaking
~ Ethics of DIY – from (self-)destruction to Cultural Engineering
~ Outward boundaries, inward elitism – tolerance and strife for identity

- Self-images and representation
~ From Avantgarde to Apocalypse – how progressiveis the scene really?
~ Roles and rituals – Gender relations
~ „Gothic“ in the media – stereotypes and prejudices
~ Between Indie and commerce – the black music industry
~ Fashion & styling – the aesthetics of the abysmal
~ Creativity in action and the Gesamtkunstwerk: summary

- Authors and photographers

- Literature, Films, Musics (sources)

- Register/glossary

Industrial morality: a contradiction in terms?

How can anyone involved in industrial music criticise its worst excesses and abuses? The genre was in large part based on the expression of ambivalence, disgust, social tension, and the systematic violation of repressive taboos. Industrial music that does not generate some form of unease or ambivalence, even among its core audience, is simply another form of electronic sound. That we should have reservations about it is essential to its effectiveness and in this context Laibach's statement, "In art morality is nonsense; in practice it is immoral; in people it is a sickness.", is particularly relevant.

Once we accept the value or significance of industrial it is already ridiculous to speak in terms of "morality" in the usual banal sense. If we allowed morality to dictate our aesthetic preferences we would not be following or accepting the existence of industrial culture in the first place. Moreover, a society governed by mainstream morality would be as totalitarian as one governed by the agendas of some openly Fascist industrial groups. So in the context of industrial culture morality is certainly a "nonsense", or at least it is faintly ridiculous to invoke it.

Just as we cannot easily speak of morality in the industrial context, neither can we talk credibly about the “corruption” or “perversion” of a genre that departs from an acceptance or diagnosis of corruption. However, some of us now believe that we can speak about the attempted appropriation and political normalisation of industrial culture by forces that are ultimately as conservative and censorious as the liberal mainstream that industrial producers and listeners find to be so oppressive.

With these issues in mind we want to start a debate to explore some of the questions often posed of industrial and its listeners:

How do you reconcile buying music by or attending shows by acts whose politics you despise but whose aesthetics interest you?

How do you explain to those outside the scene that aesthetic identification or appreciation is not always the same as political identification?

Do you still listen to such acts but refuse to buy their music or watch their shows? Which ones?

Are thre any acts you boycott completely on political grounds? Which ones?

At a time when acts from industrial and related genres as well as their fans remain subject to violent hostility we believe that discussing these issues openly will make a valuable contribution to the debate.

Please add your comments here (bear in mind that for obvious reasons comments are moderated, they will appear here as soon as they are processed...)

Alexei Monroe/ICRN.

Klub V.E.B. II at The Others, July 2nd. FREE

LIVE

Sz. Berlin
(Extreme electronics from the Warsaw Pact)

www.virb.com/szberlin

Graan
(Granular synthesis meets ritualistic droning ambience)

www.graan.org.uk

DJ’s:

Codex Europa (Dark Electro Industrial)
Kriegslok (Power Electronics)
Floressas (Esoteric/ritual dark ambient)


Stage times:

2000 - 2030 - Codex Europa

2030 - 2100 - Floressas

2100 - 2145 - GRAAN

2145 - 2215 - Kriegslok

2215 - 2245 - Floressas

2245 - 2330 - SZ BERLIN

2330 - 0000 - Codex Europa

FREE

Thursday July 2nd, 20.00 – 00.00

Top Floor, 6 - 8 Manor Road,
Stoke Newington
London N16 5SA

Video and news from Laibach Kunst exhibition, Łódź

This Polish site has a short film which has a clip from the opening performance, similar to the one given at I.C.R.N.’s RoTr event in 2006.

I.C.R.N. member Alexei Monroe will lecture at the exhibition on June 23^rd at 6pm. Codex Europa and Wiktor Skok will DJ in an industrial vein afterwards.

Read more here about this major exhibition, which presents the most comprehensive overview of Laibach Kunst works yet staged.

I.C.R.N. Member Alexander Nym lectures on NSK in Nuremberg

Alexander Nym will give a multimedia presentation on the work of NSK (Neue Slowensiche Kunst) at the Dokumentation Center in Nuremberg on April 28th at 19.00. Entrance is free and the lecture is in German. It will discuss the traumatic legacies of the Partisan struggle against the Nazi occupation of Slovenia and how NSK has worked through these issues artistically. Details of the lecture can be found here.