Namings As Portals
Mark Fisher
Speaking of postpunk autodidacticism,
Owen Hatherley picks up on what I too thought was of the most
interesting lines in Mark Sinker's Sight & Sound review of
Grant Gee's Joy Division film:
Sometimes the names condensed more than one reference: 'Colony'
invoked Conrad as much as Kafka's 'Strike Kolony'. Sometimes the
references were unintentional misdirections; 'Atrocity Exhibition'
is surely one of the least Ballardian tracks that Joy Division
produced. In any case, construing these allusions as 'portals' that
led somewhere – rather than as citations in a seamless postmodern
circuit – is highly suggestive. Such portals could take the
listener into formal education, but were also doorways beyond the
school and the university, an alternative curriculum.
(Also well worth looking at on Owen's site:
this essay on Neu!, published in honour of the recently
deceased Klaus Dinger.)
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