The Politics of Vaporwave - Part Four: Negotiating Accelerationism, Networked Existence, and Pervasive/Persuasive Capitalism

At this point, after we’ve discussed the theoretical implications of vaporwave as well as its formal nuance, I feel like it’s helpful to consider its medium-of-sorts, or birthing ground: vaporwave has been, from its origins, a medium bound to the internet, functioning as a sort of networked art movement.

The origin of vaporwave on the network in the early 2010s seems fundamentally important to its practice, as the form seems to take on its own medium, although in a slightly warped format. Vaporwave is concerned with the network in two primary ways, as detailed in my previous posts: first, there exists a major concern with the idea of a global network, literal and physical (Ferraro and VEKTROID), and second, there exists a concern with the network as both a marketplace and a marketed object, functioning purely as an extension of capitalism (INTERNET CLUB and, again, VEKTROID). But speaking outside of the terms of textual analysis, there is something to be said about the network’s creation and nurturing of this genre,

To begin, I believe it’s very important to consider the affordances that the modern network allows the music producer; it is undeniable that vaporwave has benefited from these new capabilities. The internet allows the vaporwave artist two crucial opportunities not given to their forebears in, say, house music or hip-hop. Firstly, in the modern, instantaneous realm of the network, distribution has never been easier or more far-reaching; the same goes for collaboration and exchange of ideas, a major thing in a burgeoning young genre like vaporwave. One of the cornerstones of vaporwave today is BEER ON THE RUG, an independent record label/art collective responsible for, among other things, VEKTROID’s entire catalog, as well as recent successes such as Dang Olsen Dream Tape’s hyperironic reggae record MELLO MIST, or Graham Kartna’s rubbery Klasky-Csupo cartoon soundtrack Ideation Deluxe; it is, frankly, hard to imagine such a collective having the ability to exist, let alone function, without the great connecting tool that is the internet. Secondly, the internet has made it much easier to create music (via software and MIDIS, etc.), as well as to discover samples, both of which are essential, and both are almost always computerized. It makes a lot of sense that vaporwave has “succeeded” where a lot of other microgenres have fizzled out; when working with the internet, music becomes easily composable as well as distributable, and so independent, unmarketable genres such as vaporwave are given more of an equal opportunity to flourish.

One can consider, then, that the network enables vaporwave producers to actualize the anticapitalist ideas indexed in their musics by avoiding the typical revenue stream construction of the music industry, leaving them free to forge their own paths.

It can be said, also, that vaporwave’s networked configuration has helped it in the creation of one of its most interesting inherent paradoxes: its semi-accelerationist aesthetic. I tend to agree with Steven Shaviro when it comes to the viability of accelerationism: while I don’t believe that either of us would like to live in a truly accelerationist world, it is nevertheless an incredibly interesting aesthetic strategy/idea (namely, the idea that to escape capitalism, we must work our way through it, usually realized via transgressions and cruelties, economic or otherwise, i.e. to finally destroy/escape from capitalism, we must make it intolerable to the point of disintegration). However, in his essay Accelerationist Aesthetics: Necessary Inefficiency in Times of Real Subsumption, Shaviro takes note of the limitations of the accelerationist film, which, while not helpful to our divorce from capitalism, at least provide us some joy in seeing it at its worst:”Such works may be critical, but they also revel in the sleaze and exploitation that they so eagerly put on display. Thanks to their enlightened cynicism—their finding all these “sickening, ignoble, disgusting” conditions funny—they do not offer us the false hope that piling on the worst that neoliberal capitalism has to offer will somehow help to lead us beyond it” (Shaviro 2013). Thus, the contemporary work of traditional accelerationist aesthetics is not entirely attempting to escape, but instead reveling in the world-as-trash, providing a moment of levity at the dire state of current global systems.

I believe that vaporwave does not fall in the same trap of complacent disgust as these other accelerationist objects, at least partially because of its network engagement. Vaporwave, as a paradigm, is interesting in that it has no real-world representation aside from in the objects and traditions that it ridicules; its existence as a thoroughly ironic and unattached medium would not be possible without the internet and its capabilities. In addition, vaporwave’s genesis as pure disseminations of ironized sound, I believe, makes it easier to encounter as something to consider, not to act upon; for instance, I stumbled across vaporwave a few years ago (via 4chan…please don’t hate me), and because of its vaguely defined existence (as is the case for most internet subcultures), it demanded questions and considerations from me. In other words, vaporwave’s contextlessness and mystery spur the casual listener to Google it, to scour the internet for some context, to methodically input every song title into Google Translate; mysteriousness of origin, while expertly cultivated in vaporwave via its clear difference to other forms of art, is first and foremost an affordance of the network, and one that benefits vaporwave’s particular brand of hypothetical accelerationism.

The point being, vaporwave’s networked distance and independence alter accelerationist aesthetics into a peculiar variant: rather than articulating a disgust with the capitalist world, vaporwave instead compels us to consider what has been wrong with the world, and why we thought it was right.

But why vaporwave? Why is this a prominent form that contemporary Marxist aesthetics have taken?

The answer, of course, lies in vaporwave’s engagement with history; specifically, its nostalgia for a recent past. At first glance, we can dismiss vaporwave out of hand as masturbatory in the same way that “Only 90s Kids” Facebook memes are; however, vaporwave’s nostalgia is not one of fondness or longing, but one which represents obliviousness and again the false promises of capitalism. By dealing in terms of the late 80s and 90s, a time period which most to all listeners of vaporwave have experienced at least part of, I’m assuming, vaporwave draws us into a vision of our past reconfigured as future: this, in turn, mirrors capitalism’s equivalent promise of virtual, global utopia. But we are not in the 90s anymore, and vaporwave makes us all too aware of that fact; its distance from the time period which it draws from most heavily, both in terms of irony and time, opens up the time period for a true critical analysis, in opposition to a vapid nostalgia.

This critical analysis is bolstered by the fact that vaporwave seems to be designed to be easy to get into, easily consumable music, albeit weird. The nostalgia of vaporwave, in my opinion, often serves as an “in”, the way in which the consumers of vaporwave are first enchanted into taking a listen. But vaporwave’s nostalgia is also more than this. Its mimesis is one of satire, but also (eventually) becomes an escape. We wish to go back to the world as idyllic, as beautifully consumeristic, transnational: we want to experience the world of vaporwave for ourselves, as it is a oblivious capitalist utopia. We want to watch cartoons,.eat hiyashi chuka at the mall, travel in comfort; in short, we desire to live a lifestyle of blissful obliviousness, without concern with capitalist’s global grasp. We want to return to intellectual youth, to an atmosphere of changing culture, incredible speed, and the glittery progress inherent in the virtual sphere.

By articulating itself around these desires and satirizing their nonexistence, vaporwave takes a step beyond Marxist critique, that being desire for a world in which we no longer need Marxism, exactly, a world in which we are able to exist as the political equivalent of Lacan’s hommelette: existing within, indistinct from, and absolutely loving capitalism.

This is why I believe that vaporwave is important.