Poetic terrorism, the ARIA’s and Spotify

This article is a double-decker that stems from the writing I’ve been doing for uni and also from scrolling Instagram. The first part is my very rough attempt at unpacking what poetic terrorism is and how we might think about it in-relation to media (theoretical and boring). The second is an application of this train of thought contra the ARIA’s/Spotify (grounded and annoying). It’s a pseudo-intellectual, ham-fisted piece that I am reluctantly publishing. Unfortunately, I intend to continue writing blog posts with the aim of compiling these into a physical zine down the track. Fortunately, the ones after this will be more about music itself, rather than all this stuff I perceive it to be couched in. 

Part 1: Terrorism stuff

Poetic terrorism is a term that, as far as I know, was popularised by Hakim Bey. The definition that Bey provides of poetic terrorism is, in-part:

“An exquisite seduction carried out not only in the cause of mutual satisfaction but also as a conscious act in a deliberately beautiful life — may be the ultimate PT. The PTerrorist behaves like a confidence-trickster whose aim is not money but CHANGE. Don’t do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art. Avoid recognizable art-categories, avoid politics, don’t stick around to argue, don’t be sentimental; be ruthless, take risks, vandalize only what must be defaced, do something children will remember all their lives — but don’t be spontaneous unless the PT Muse has possessed you.”

T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, 1985, 

p. 5

Mmm myes, good stuff. It reads well on its own and is a lovely sentiment. I’m interested in poetic terrorism because I think it’s a more radical, less gentrified axiom for DIY than the ever-present ‘cultural resistance’ that I’ve been guilty of citing in the past. Resistance infers a struggle, something to push against and something to do the pushing. Resistance can’t exist without both these forces. To overcome, to actually destroy the object of resistance is, in the same move, to destroy the resistance itself. This is why resistance inheres a logic of tit-for-tat, of simulated exchange (we’ll get to that shortly), of incremental action in-response to something total. Those that resist will imagine the annihilation of what they oppose, fantasise about kicking it into a heap and walking into a better reality, but deep down, this is troubling. To achieve this would also be a negation of themselves. It’s the whole co-constitutive batman/joker situation. Most of us are content to live with such – there’s undoubtedly lots of meaning and purpose to be derived there.

But this is why Bey, in the above quote, says the ‘ultimate’ form of poetic terrorism is an ‘exquisite seduction’ that transcends the mutually satisfying joker/batman dynamic in the name of ‘a deliberately beautiful life’. In other words, we aren’t subverting power with power, for the sake of power. Nor are we transgressing power through the traditional forms of art-as-politics or politics-as-art. Instead, we are undermining power through a sort-of desirable sacrifice as vandalism in-order to remain autonomous for the sake of life’s beauty. The by-product and practice of that is political, but arguably not inherent to the perception of the PT itself. Now, that’s fucking sick lad! It brings to mind ideas of guerilla permaculture, or uploading video essays to pornhub, or the reappropriation of road signs. Yet there is a sheen of romanticism to it all that isn’t helpful when thinking about the media, and also runs the risk of being interpreted as hippy-dippy bullshit — especially when we start talking about the beauty of life and such. So it’d be good to supplement Bey’s sentiment here with some cynicism/fatalism to make it more palatable for our contemporary situation. To do so, let's turn to Baudraddy. Now through my sparse engagement with Baudrillard, I’ve perhaps written a lot more about 9/11 than my supervisors at uni would like or can understand. Especially given that my focus should ostensibly be on Instagram and local music. But I beg of them as I beg of you now: hear me out big dog.

To figure out how Baudrillard’s writings might aid our understanding of poetic terrorism we need to poke around at how he thinks about straight-up terrorism. In order to do that, we gotta unpack his thinking about media and communication. So, okay, Baudrillard’s approach to media generally begins with an understanding of communication as gift-giving (ala Bataille, Mauss, etc). Authentic communication for Baudrillard hinges on unadulterated reciprocal relationships, situated in a cultural context, wherein signs and meanings are transacted: one speaks, the other responds, and a ‘symbolic exchange’ occurs. There is a gift and counter-gift which cancel each other out in mutual reception, eliding any classic sense of ‘profit’, and instead centring an unproductive expenditure. Baudrillard posits across his early writings that mass media has negated the ability for the counter-gift and is thus essentially a form of inauthentic ‘non-communication’. Mass media gives, but cannot be repaid; they transmit in a manner that excludes the possibility for response and therefore hold a totalising power. Such an idea is easily applied to disseminations of the broadcast era, with audiences passively receiving information through radio and television sets, but Baudrillard also anticipated the rise of supposedly more ‘interactive’ forms. Developments like social media, Web 2.0 and a class of ‘prosumers’ that are lauded for creating active audiences are, in Baudrillard’s estimation, merely simulating the possibility of actual communication. Consider this quote:

“It is far from true that, as Enzensberger affirms, "for the first time in history, the media make possible a mass participation in a productive social process;" nor that "the practical means of this participation are in the hands of the masses themselves." As if owning a TV set or a camera inaugurated a new possibility of relationship and exchange. Strictly speaking, such cases are no more significant than the possession of a refrigerator or a toaster. There is no response to a functional object: its function is already there, an integrated speech to which it has already responded, leaving no room for play, or reciprocal putting in play (unless one destroys the object, or turns its function inside out). So the functionalized object, like all messages functionalized by the media, like the operation of a referendum, controls rupture, the emergence of meaning, and censorship”. –  For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, 1981 [1972], p. 171

There is no 'new possibility of relationship and exchange' within the affordances of something like Instagram, rather, it is a continuation of media’s functional indistinguishableness. The possibilities for communication, for the ‘counter-gift’ within media – no matter how sophisticated or liberating the interactions may be – are already foreclosed by the functionality of the media-object itself. This foreclosure is defined by our inability to reverse the gift offered by media, to address where its ‘actual’ power resides. Instagram may allow for more radical content to be shared on its platform, or elevate the visibility of marginal producers, or give greater distributive power to users, but fundamentally, most of our communication on the platform is never truly received by Instagram itself. They facilitate communication, mediate our engagement, and analyse data to change the platform’s design, but there exists no real reciprocal relationship between the user and the platform. Although ‘interactive’, we have essentially the same relationship to social media as audiences did with their television sets in the 60s. Users can start grassroots movements or boycotts to change certain aspects of social media sites, but such modes of discourse are immanent to the ‘simulation’ of exchange unless we can ‘destroy the object or turn its function inside out’. 

Such a view is certainly pessimistic, perhaps overly media-centric and deterministic – but regardless, we’re here to figure this out in-relation to poetic terrorism. And it is through the lens of terrorism that we start getting some juice. One of Baudraddy’s ideas is essentially that we must get the system of media to accept the one gift that it can’t give: that of its own death (or sacrifice). This is why terrorism and 9/11 has such an important place in his thinking (imo). 9/11 offered the ‘gift’ of a terrorising, spectacular collective sacrifice/suicide to mass media and the media had to receive this due to the nature of the event – both in terms of its material ‘newsworthiness’ and all-consuming symbolic importance. Through 9/11 we witnessed an actual symbolic exchange take place. The towers fell, and the ‘simulation’ of their destruction, that is, the broadcasted images of their fall, proliferated like a computer virus across the entirety of the world’s interconnected media system. For Baudrillard, this is constitutive of a true dialogue as it largely took place in ‘reality’ (which for him is the simulation of reality as such) and was a mutually unproductive expenditure (the counter-gift offered by the media is proportionate to the gift offered by the terrorists so that ‘profit’ is obfuscated). In other words, the terrorists managed to reverse the flow of information so that their deaths had to be received by the media writ large, thus constituting actual communication. They managed to ‘turn its function inside out’. This is what he’s getting at in the quote below:

“Never attack the system in terms of relations of force. That is the (revolutionary) imagination the system itself forces upon you – the system which survives only by constantly drawing those attacking it into fighting on the ground of reality, which is always its own. But shift the struggle into the symbolic sphere, where the rule is that of challenge, reversion and outbidding [...] The terrorist hypothesis is that the system itself will commit suicide in response to the multiple challenges posed by deaths and suicides”.

The Spirit of Terrorism, 2002, pp. 17–18

Now let's think about this not through 9/11 or terrorism in the traditional sense, but through the notion of poetic terrorism. There’s some clear compatibility between Bey and Baudraddy. Bey reckons that we should aim for an ‘exquisite seduction’, and Baudraddy reckons we should carry this out in the ‘symbolic sphere’ with the goal of ‘reversion’. That is, if we can offer a hegemonic system rooted in media a desirable, seductive gift (that has to be returned) then we are on our way to communicating with that system, and thus doing some tasty poetic terrorism. Because we’re doing it ‘poetically’, we don’t need to think about actual suicide – that is, the loss of human life. Rather, by combining Bey and Baudraddy we can think about our exquisite seduction, our sacrifice, in-terms of poetic vandalism and symbolic action. It is through these ideas of seduction, reversion, communication and gift-giving that we begin to conceptualise a praxis which transcends the now all-too familiar process whereby ‘resistance’ is absorbed by the system and sold back to us as advertising. 

This might all sound like a lot of bullsheet and fair enough, I have waffled on a fair bit and my understanding is limited. But I think we can really ground a lot of these ideas when we consider the (probably lost) potential of subverting the Spotify/ARIA partnership as understood through a recent Instagram post.

Part 2: Tummy stuff

Gut Health is a good band. A very good band. I’ve seen them play live a handful of times, penned words of praise for their singles and album, and am a bonafide fan. It was unsurprising to see them nominated for a ‘breakthrough artist’ ARIA. What prompted my gears to start turning was the post they made alongside the nomination in which they criticise the ARIA’s partnering with Spotify. For those that don’t know, audiences can now vote on the outcome of the ARIA’s through the Spotify app in a three-year partnership deal. This follows the music awards’ previous partnership with YouTube from 2021 – 2024. 

Now I found this thought-provoking not because I’m one to defend the ARIA’s, let alone Spotify, but because, at face value, I’m wholeheartedly aligned with what Gut Health said in the post. Their critique centres on two main points: the immense financial exploitation of artists through Spotify’s royalty distribution, and its now ex-CEO Daniel Ek’s huge investment in a military AI tech company. The link between these dimensions of Spotify (and thus the ARIA’s) is obvious and troubling – profit from the labour of artists, and invest that surplus into a company whose bottom line is contingent on war. Contributing to the perpetuation of war so directly is, for most artists, an understandable non-starter. Most of us intuitively know that the next gen of weapons which are funded via people like Ek, and deployed against foreign actors today can easily be turned onto domestic populations tomorrow. And in a general sense, Ek’s capacity to invest in Helsing is founded on Spotify’s hegemony over streaming, one fuelled by major rights holders who were otherwise genuinely on the back foot when faced with the possibilities of an open, decentralised system of peer-to-peer file sharing in the early 2000s. That’s not even getting into all the emergent AI and ghost-artist fuckery. But anyway, yeah, Spotify represents all that we ought to oppose as far as the corporatisation and financialisation of culture goes.

With this in mind, I am 100% in agreement with Gut Health’s stance: Spotify = bad, the ARIA’s partnering with Spotify = bad, conversations about how to change this = good. The beguiling dimension comes when we see all Gut Health’s music is still on the platform. It is surprising to me that a band can be so aware and I guess, ‘resistant’ in their approach towards Spotify and the ARIA’s, yet unwilling to really drive the hilt, to capitalise on the moment beyond a social media post, to do poetic terrorism. Falling short of such, it seems to imply for the countless other bands that could’ve been, but weren’t nominated, that: it is nigh impossible to ‘breakthrough’ as an artist without Spotify, that bands are locked into a situation where ambivalence on this issue is assured, and there is no option except ‘navigating contradictions like this’ through being based on Instagram. The sense I got from Gut Health’s post is that you can be fully aware of all the issues with Spotify, yet as a nascent artist, you are still inseparably dependent on it. 

Lets imagine for a moment if Gut Health took the opportunity of the nomination to make the post AND delete all their music from Spotify. Holy fuck what a statement that would’ve been. They could still get to say ‘ARIA nominated artist’ which I’m sure is helpful for grant applications, PR and the like. Yet it’d create a dynamic that directly challenges the very partnership they oppose – with some leverage! How do the ARIA’s react? What precedent does it set? Do people flock to vote for you on the website because of the boycott? What happens if you win with no music on Spotify despite Spotify being the main partner? What type of message does that send? Now this is pod-racing mate. Dare I say that’s the type of poetic terrorism I’d be happy to throw money and support behind. It’d be borderline ‘actual’ news in that it extends far beyond those who already agree on that matter. As Bey says: “don’t do PT for other artists, do it for people who will not realize (at least for a few moments) that what you have done is art”.

It’s interesting to think about as, even on a cynical level, I wonder just how much more publicity, clout, interest and hype Gut Health would’ve generated from such defiance; from using their spotlight and platform to start a broader ‘conversation for change’ based on material action rather than an Instagram post. Beyond questions of righteousness consider Deerhoof and how much they’ve been mentioned/talked about in the last year from boycotting the platform. Hell, Gut Health even cited them! If Deerhoof just made a post condemning Spotify but kept all their music up, would Gut Health have ever mentioned them? Probably not. What’s the price tag on the extended mass publicity and coverage Deerhoof has received from their boycott? How many more tickets have they sold because of that? How many more people have looked into them? Although I know that’s missing the point, surely the net gain in that regard is at least equal to whatever they got from Spotify. We can also put this idea in-context of the poetic terrorism discussion above. The seductive sacrifice of Deerhoof boycotting Spotify (gift) has been met with widespread acknowledgement and discussion of such (counter-gift), leading to something approaching an symbolic exchange between Deerhoof and the media system they sought to subvert. But anyway, I think there is a small delta between doing nothing and saying Spotify is bad, and a massive delta between saying Spotify is bad and actually boycotting it. From the perspective of artists, it is in the former that I believe lies the potential for change.

Nevertheless, Gut Health’s post did extremely well on Instagram, with 200+ entirely positive comments as of writing, but honestly, it feels like an advertisement for Spotify’s unassailable role in local music, the significance of the ARIA’s, that Gut Health are nominated for an ARIA, and that you can vote for Gut Health’s ARIA through Spotify (regardless of how conflicted you may feel about such). This is not poetic terrorism. This is resistance that ends-up affirming the sense that ‘Spotify is a necessary evil’ and that we shouldn’t actually undermine it, so much as be happy to push back against it. 

I don’t have a five-digit follower count on Instagram, nor a Spotify page with all my music, so I obviously don’t have any real sense for the sunk cost at play (thank gawd). Yet, from my no-stakes take-with-a-grain-of-salt (read: privileged) perspective, I’ll say this. I might listen to artists who I’ve seen at local gigs, or listen to my favourite albums on Spotify, but it’s never Spotify that has really driven my big discoveries (nor relationship) with music. It’s a tool, a convenience, there is no actual culture or experience one can have ‘of Spotify’. Spotify does not ‘do’ anything within our music scenes aside from arbitrage. Music has existed long and prosperously before Spotify and will do just fine without it. Spotify was founded by advertising executives and built by euro-tech bros and therein lies its eventual downfall. If a significant portion of my favourite artists were not on Spotify, I wouldn’t use it either – music is more important to me than the media by which it manifests. Further, I’m sure many bookers would agree that the truly vital digital metrics are more linked to your socials than your Spotify numbers. But perhaps I’m woefully ignorant or too rosey-eyed. Personally, I’ve never attended a local gig based on someone’s Spotify nor had my life changed from an album recommended to me by the platform. The same can not be said for word-of-mouth/random social media posts/weird YouTube videos/barely functioning blogs. 

I’m not saying that we should necessarily hold artists to pious standards where we look down on those that don’t boycott Spotify. I’m saying that it isn’t really that influential for my experience of music – hopefully others can relate. I think if we are to have a conversation about Spotify’s role in Australian music then it shouldn't start from a place where it’s implied bands have to engage with it. Our criteria for artists ‘breaking through’ should not hinge on their ability to balance the ambivalences of Spotify with their own ethics/politics. I mean, what the fuck does ‘breaking through’ even really mean? Does it mean being nominated for ARIA? Does it mean getting 100k+ plays on Spotify? I sincerely hope not. A Melbourne-based band like Vampire can extensively and successfully tour Europe not only without Spotify, but without an Instagram account!

There’s a politics and pathway to follow in-terms of achieving musical goals without these god forsaken platforms, especially in a place like Melbourne which has ostensibly the most infrastructure and support for artists to-do so in the country. That’s not to imply that it’s easy, or that everyone can do it, but if we are to seriously talk about change on this matter, then we should work backwards from rejecting the platforms outright rather than our ability to accommodate the embedded interests of billionaires. Such a rejection is at its most powerful when situated in the ideals of poetic terrorism, an ethos that I felt Gut Health were on the cusp of, but perhaps too concerned for one reason or another to drive the final nail. Understandable as we are in undeniably tough times to scratch a dollar as an artist. But nonetheless, there is still the possibility to carve ya name into the annals of PT history! There is still leverage to offer a gift that has to be returned, to inject silence into Spotify via the ARIA’s and carry out that ever-so exquisite a seduction!