Empires Crumble, 10: Anarchy & Art (with Margaret Killjoy)

From Gods and Radicals

What's the relationship between anarchism and art? How do we create the kind of world we want to see? And how we learn to believe that we are “good enough?"

In this episode, Alley and Rhyd talk with guest Margaret Killjoy and share stories of how they became who they are.

(Recorded 10 February and released 17 February, 2019/ 59 minutes)

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Empires Crumble is a podcast on culture, politics, history and magic from Alley Valkyrie and Rhyd Wildermuth.

You can see a list of all episodes here, support the podcast on Patreon, and follow Empires Crumble on soundcloud, facebook, twitter, or iTunes.

There are 25 Comments

you know, i started listening, and they seemed nice, but i was uninterested, so i stopped. but then i read your comment, and it made me curious to see what you meant, so i listened to the whole thing. yeah, it was wholesome. it has some good life lessons based on nice anecdotes. i really wish i could get them through my head or put them into action. not that i can't, but i haven't yet, and can't see when.

down the mines so they have their OWN materials to create THEIR DIY stuff! Everything is brought to them, mined for them, delivered to them even their shit is taken away for them AND yet they BELIEVE they're all doing THEIR OWN thing independently and they SELL THEIR stuff, why not exchange it or give it away? Like so many 'anarchists' not a mention of how raw materials and the impact of extraction! As pagans, maybe it's the fairies who go down the mines! Pass me the sick bag.

i won’t defend them from these “accusations” that miss the mark to what they were saying and what they’ve done and said elsewhere.

despite all that, engaging your comment makes me ask myself some questions for which maybe you, or someone else, can suggest some answers.

i’m aware of and feel like i understand “anti-art” and “anti-work” perspectives. these positions are compatible with making stuff for personal use/enjoyment. ideally extractivism and servitude (including by waged labor) are abolished.

given that: a miner that mines for a wage, that sabotages mining; or an artist that makes art for a wage, that sabotages art; or a miner that sabotages art, or an artist that sabotages mining... is one more ethical or effective than the other?

i think i don’t find that particular question that interesting, and neither do i like “which has a greater responsibility to tend to sabotage or abstinence from industrial labor or its products?”

but i wonder -and i’m pretty sure it’s a “neither” or an “egg and chicken” scenario, or a fight were you stand thing- is the miner at a better place stop extractivism than the artist is at stopping art production, or the work realtions themselves, or vice-versa or are they equal? which would have a greater potential maximum impact or what would that be?

I know that depends of lots of specifics and cannot ultimately be definitively answered, but least it gave me something to think about while i was reading you comment while sitting on the toilet.

These ethically derived lifestyles are steeped in contradictory actions, one can either be a total semi-naked indigenous person or else a worker contributing to global warming and the impending extinction. There is no halfway compromise. We are all Celtic guards in the 21st century Western Auschwitz transporting the indigenous into the chambers Of industrial capitalist extinction.
Cave art of the future will be burning skyscrapers, oil spills and exploding missiles.

There are those few unique individuals who live in the metropolis and wear clothes who still adhere to the indigenous lifestyle and do not contribute towards the impending extinction. Thankyou!

Nuh uh

Yeah, what exactly does that mean? Gathering blackberries from the ditch next to the highway?

That would make an awful lot of people "indigenous" then. I say this as a native kid, connection to land is real enough to me but the criteria seems murky at best.

My tribal name is Bleeding Android, I am an urban indigenous person, connected intimately with the land I call home, but as you and all indigenous folk know, we are also connected by our relationships to the other beasts which share our environment. These are the intrinsic values of indigenosity, and can even be acquired by people of Celtic origin, who we used to refer to as the blue-eyed forked tongue crisis makers from over the horizon.

Blue eyes are Nordic/Gothic/Saxon not Celtic. Celts could be brown-eyed with dark hair (Iberio-Celts) or descendent
and mixed race with Viking Nordic background (red hair, blue or green eyes)... just thoughts... all lost to us, our tribal
roots by monarchy and roman empire, violence and property law... Celtic resistance to British Crown noteworthy and
long-lasting, even into the 1990's.

Welcome to the post-indigenous Nihilizt Tribal Liberation from the Forked-Tongue Empire Brotherhood ;)

Seriously though, this has been thrashed so much, the identity politics of tribal lineage, that it has become a spooky section of idpol determinism. Monarchy and Empire are the only the evolved framework of the regional biopower selection process, over time and by chance the dominant megalomaniacal leader/boss archetype ruthlessly and by cunning emerges throughout history in a variety of hierarchical cultural forms. ALL OF THEM DISPLAY THE LEVIATHAN SYSTEMS OF CONTROL, By fear and delusion the followers raise to power the charlatan king and priest to their thrones and altars.
Race or gender does not exist in the social intercourse of minds free of discrimination if there is to be freedom from Empire. INDIGENOUS OR CELT ARE IDPOL SPOOKS.

Interesting Gel, and I know from experience that the small plot out the back of my rented space can produce a huge amount of vegetables, also the community gardens, a new post-tribal pagan kinship arising in urban spaces striving for sustainable and sane local relationships rather than the old X-tian church hierarchical uclear family obedience to the strife torn capitalist State.

out front and I live in a duplex that's like a group home because we always have to know them which is pretty horrible sometimes but I guess its like in the article, city life isn't supposed to be easy. Its challenging tryng to get along with people and if we did always get along we'd probably be bored. The challenges stimulate growth, adaptability and acceptance.

It's the whole superfluous vomit-inducing content of their conversation: woowoo, look at me, I didn't go to college and i'm now 'self-employed' selling shit to people living in France. Yeah, I shagged this guy and become an anarchist...Wow! and i'm living in France too! Then I listen to, say, Peter Lamborn-Wilson discussing the possibility of a Luddite way of life (not about himself) and how connected his thoughts are to the greater picture both historically and presently and then there's the three jokers waffling on about themselves and great they are and their 'anarchist moment' ffs: it was listening to some daytime mainstream dreary show: "...and so, how do you become a soap drama anarchist?" Nothing fuckin' radical about it! Look at all this stuff that's magically appeared so I can have a mild existence selling crap and call myself an anarchist. Oh, and by the way, we will mention your name (Patreon subscriber at $20 per month) every episode because we so appreciative (and you're mug-enough $20!!) that you pay for this narcissism?

when you put it that way, i see your point. i might sometimes be inclined to think that, but when i think things like that, i usually think i'm just being bitter and envious because my life is not as fun or as cool as theirs. so in my case, the only recourse is to actually start doing any of the things i would enjoy...but when? and why isn't it now.....or now..... or now......or now.......?

Narcissists... makes sense. Tho this would apply to many more "anarchist" podcasters and writers out there. It's also pretty odd that people in France -which might include some actually living through anarchistic means without the need for money- are being misled into believing that this tiny bunch of pedants in the U.S. who can't manage to fucking get themselves doughnuts without working or selling books online are living into squats or autonomous communes and are sustaining out of dumpstering and stealing at Costco or whatev, and then train-hopping across the United Stakes (no doubt there ARE anarchists doing that... yet I'd be surprised they're related to that East Bay clique). But it's quite obvious this ain't those people giving them money.

Of course, never mention what you do to make money when talking to other anarchists. lets pretend we dont all have jobs. We're all insurgents eating dumpster bagels until the day we die.

Bonsai is the suppression and confinement of a living plant to satisfy an hierarchical culture's aesthetic!
We Stirnerians are flowering giants in full free bloom!

you missed my point.
but your joke was cute too.

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