Angel mutants
So here’s my schema for classifying some of the communiques/occupations/actions of the last few months: The Invisible Committee’s The Coming Insurrection is Situationist, the New School Occupation is autonomist, and the Communique from the Absent Future is anarchist. Okay, that’s pretty silly, and reductive of course, since I’m not really sure what any of those mean. But it does at least explain why the first of these is my least favorite.
The common logic of these “movements,” especially the last two, pivots around two points: occupation and the insistence on not demanding. Occupation, as the communiques make clear, isn’t a tactic for reprivileging the territorial or producing a new commons on top of the old. Instead it’s a disruption of the current functioning and a revealing of fault lines — a way to “blast the mindless structure.” Demanding, on the other hand, is just another way of asking for something, of recognizing someone else’s right to ownership. Occupation does the opposite of demanding: it takes, without worrying over how the action will be represented or asking for permission — it “needs no introduction, no visas or carte blanche.”
So, the occupiers aren’t really Situationist, autonomist, or anarchist. They are, to put it in punk rock terms, Teenagers from Mars:
We land in barren fields
On the Arizona plains
The insemination of little girls
In the middle of wet dreams
We are the angel mutants
The streets for us seduction
Our cause unjust and ancient
In this “B” film born invasion
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
Well, we’ve seen your 3-D movies
In violent abduction
We blast your mindless structure
Inferior connection
We take your weak resistance
Throw it in your face
We need no introduction
For mass annihilation
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
Well, we need no introduction
No visas or carte blanche
Inhuman reproduction
We’re here for what we want
We want, we need it, we’ll take it
We want, we need it, we’ll take it
We want, we need it, we’ll take it
We want, we need it, we’ll take it, baby
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
Teenagers from Mars
And we don’t care
And we don’t care
And we don’t care, we don’t care
We don’t care, and we don’t care
And we don’t care
