HAKATAK Manifesto
SIX PRINCIPLES
- There is no Cool
- Fight Fire with Fire
- Fly Low; Fly Fast; Eject Early
- Metamusic for Ephemeral Global Undergrounds
- Better to use Machines than to Become One
- Everything is Music; Nothing is Music
There is no Cool
Every possible protest, perversion, and peccadillo known to man, or likely to
be known, has been studied, analyzed, categorized, sanitized, and adopted by the
corporate purveyors of teenage aspirations. The old men in suits have an
absolute and preemptive lock on even the most minute and twisted subculture, and
use each one as nothing more than marketing categories to be co-opted and
exploited.
The producer, advertiser, consumer, and market researcher form a recursive,
self-consuming feedback mechanism dedicated to one goal: maximization of profits
for the owners of intellectual property. It is impossible to stay “ahead of the
curve” in this cycle, to be “cool”. The more one attempts to opt out of the
mainstream, the more one becomes an unwitting generator of next month’s
mainstream. (Zapatista burritos coming soon to Taco Bell! A taste of old
Chiapas!) No style or sentiment is so subversive or nihilistic that it cannot be
packaged for mass consumption.
- 1965= I Wanna Hold Your Hand
- 1995= I Wanna Fuck You Like an Animal
Same companies. Same motives.
Fight Fire with Fire
It is impossible to subvert the dominant paradigm when the dominant paradigm
is subversion. If sincerity is impossible, irony is the next best thing. Capture
and encapsulate the mainstream message; change the context. That is subversive.
At least for now.
Since every form of protest will inevitably be packaged and sold as
entertainment, entertainment itself can become the tool and the medium of
protest. The regeneration, reconfiguration, and regurgitation of the mainstream
is the only possible form of underground communication. Without the background
noise of mainstream culture sampled and recycled, the interference patterns of
the underground cannot become apparent.
Fly Low; Fly Fast; Eject Early
As world culture becomes a more and more homogeneous system, the hacker’s
methods, the hacker’s tools, and the hacker’s goals become applicable to wider
areas of endeavor.
Can you hack popular culture? Think musical worms, musical cuckoo’s eggs,
musical trojan horses. Any system can be hacked, but the would-be hacker (or
culture jammer) must fly low and fast enough to avoid being subsumed by the very
system s/he would hack.
When the time is right, or when it becomes inevitable, accept being devoured
by the gaping maw of pop culture, but release escape pods that can return to
lower levels to begin the hack anew.
Metamusic for Ephemeral Global Undergrounds
Any use is fair use. Recycle the old to bring forth the new, creating
metamusics to be consumed and comprehended (only) by the ephemeral global
undergrounds that dissolve and reconfigure as each pattern becomes assimilated
into the mainstream.
By their technique shall ye know them. Metamusics can rise faster, fly
higher, and contain an entirely new level of meaning that will be lost on those
for whom they are not intended.
Better to use Machines than to Become One
From those to whom much is given, much is expected. Use what the mainstream
has provided to show what the Mainstream can never be. Use technology to expose
what is truly human. Those who cannot control their tools risk being controlled
by them. Irony without technique is simply sarcasm.
Everything is Music; Nothing is Music
Musique Concrete indeed! All hail the prescient St. Russolo, who foresaw what
was coming, and what was needed to make sense of it – Music that radiates like a
searchlight from “The Victorious Realm of Electricity.”
Become your own ad. Advertise your freedom from advertising.