POSTPOSTPOST: Reflections on a new Avant-Garde

In this introductory conversation to their 2023 publication, POSTPOSTPOST co-editors Al Hassan Elwan and Ruba Al-Sweel swim in the absolute incoherence of our time, steering away from the mistakes of yore that set out to define the most amorphous indefinable aspect of our lives today: the culture as mediated to us intellectually and aesthetically.

How did postmodernism fail us? Are we truly in post-postmodern times? Are these periodizations any more cringe now than they were in the 20th century? Will coining a new term be a concept or a practice, a matter of local style or a whole new period or economic phase? When did the grand narrative collapse? What are the merits of sincerely embracing the absurd or amusing ourselves to irony-poisoned death? Why is it all so aesthetically compromised and why is everything so much yet not enough? Instead of attempting to answer this, we invite you to the dank but sublime swamp of the current, full of non-statistical absolutes that should be taken with a grain of salt.

RUBA AL-SWEEL:

Can you get us started with a two-minute elevator “pitch” of POSTPOSTPOST?

AL HASSAN ELWAN:

POSTPOSTPOST is both the only unpitchable neologism for the zeitgeist and a meta-hyper-aware, critique-in-overdrive mode of cultural production.

POSTPOSTPOST is born from a genuine fatigue with cultural commentary that intends to zoom out beyond the vibe shift or trend reports. Also from a general dissatisfaction towards the self-efacing on-going lore and neologism-coining/brand narratives of “end times” that contemporary intelligentsia often indulge in. POSTPOSTPOST is a proposition that aspires to become a movement in an age where movements are the preserve of cult personalities or justifiably laughed at.

POSTPOSTPOST is what we should call our times, especially because it’s very stupid to do so. It’s just an ephemeral placeholder to lay out some ideas that are as close as we can get to an articulation of the cultural frontier – a frontier that should be mined for creating conceptually sound and culturally relevant work.

RAS: Fredric Jameson and Jean Baudrillard detail the postmodern moment as a new "schizophrenic" mode of space and time – how does POSTPOSTPOST change the dynamic?

AHE: Baudrillard to me is one of the first POSTPOSTPOSTers, but let me try to contextualize this position historically. A vulgar surface-level reading of 20th century discourse suggests that there was some sort of a philosophical quarrel between sincerity and irony—a reading especially notorious for its influence on design discourse. The grand narrative ideals of Modernism were rendered obsolete after the real world implications of World Wars and atomic bombs, resulting in Postmodernism’s incisively critical resonance and ironic disillusionment coming out on top, only to be moderately challenged by “post-irony” towards the end of the century; i.e. Post-postmodernism and the New Sincerity - that’s not in opposition to irony rather claims to learn from, subsume and transcend beyond it through faith.

Rereading the manifestos of Post-postmodernism today couldn’t be more alienating. Its ideas are in need of thorough revision at best, and an irrelevant return to Enlightenment era grand-narratives/nostalgic romanticization of Modernism at worst. The end-of-days vibe we’re collectively experiencing that many trace back to Trump’s 2016 election brought irony back in full force, from stock-tanking $8 fake tweets to the Uggs resurgence.

RAS: In essence, post-postmodernism  ideals now feel too dated to be relevant.  But do you think the current dizzying ubilapse on a global scale is a defense mechanism to attempt to decipher the unknown or experience reality as a joke?

AHE:

Over the past seven years we’ve lost count of how many times the question “how is this real?” echoed in our collective subconscious. The intense excess of spectacle and global-level trauma being witnessed every day are bizarrely pushing the standards of ‘normal’ beyond conceivable bounds. Time and time again bordering on the standards of ‘fiction’. Further proliferating the already ubiquitous ambivalence and ironic distance. We now only respond to disasters with smirks and “I told you so’s”, the only way we know how under the overwhelming weight of individual helplessness. The real just squeezed all potency out of Post-postmodernism’s sweet 90’s sincerity juice.

As a name, the mouthful Post-postmodernism is somewhere between laughable, uninspired and forgettable. In his book, Post-postmodernism, Jerey T. Nealon dedicated an entire preface to how ugly of a word it is. With that in mind, it seems the only unthinkable, impossibly cringey update to follow is adding yet another Post to it. This is where POSTPOSTPOST comes in. An inherently ridiculous name that challenges the system to take it seriously. A term that’s practically a bulletproof vest immune to sincerity.

RAS: How is POSTPOSTPOST immune to the pitfalls of its predecessors though?

AHE:

 “As soon as you enter the system to denounce it, you are automatically made a part of it.”

- Jean Baudrillard

This quote is central to the project because it grapples with this question of system co-option. Ideologically, POSTPOSTPOST is an acknowledgement through denunciation of Post-postmodernism. It is the rejection of the rejection of postmodernism. Yet, it is not a return to postmodern irony, nor an oscillation between irony and sincerity. It starts by throwing any modernist, materialist, solution-oriented thinking out the window. To fully dismantle this 20th century successive system of thought, POSTPOSTPOST just deliberately adds to it - ultimately, revealing and laying bare its failures. It embodies some form of testament to why those binary systems of thought cannot continue. A live demonstration of a degenerating reality and discourse mirror one another. This is that one horrendously buggy update that finally convinces you to delete the app.

The final post in POSTPOSTPOST is simultaneously signaling the end of linear and solutional forms of criticisms, while representing the possibility of an infinite polydirectional number of posts that embrace more non-binary, non-dialectic and coexistent courses of thought. The last thing that can be expected from POSTPOSTPOST is answers, because the first thing we need to learn about a game is not how to play it, it’s how to break it.

RAS: So the emphasis on narrative structure and self-referentiality is a salient tool in the POSTPOSTPOST arsenal.

AHE:

Yes. Instead of irony or post-irony, POSTPOSTPOST adopts meta-irony as an active agent. Meta-irony hosts that edge where multiple truths can reside - and there’s a sense of an increasing collective literacy in such domains. Never before in history have creators and audiences been so aware of each other’s presence. Fiction is having a hard-time catching up to reality in the attention economy. According to Google Trends, the word “simulacrum” was googled more than ever in 2022. Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal is renewed for a second season. Spike Art Magazine editor Dean Kissick said this about the zeitgeist:

“There’s metafiction in the air here. Writing about each other, writing about writers. Everything’s a column about yourself. Everyone’s just telling stories about one another, making movies, staging plays in friends’ houses in the city — plays about scenes that don’t really exist that aren’t really about those scenes that don’t exist anyway — writing blogs, publishing literary magazines and newspapers, hosting galas, hosting talk shows, having readings, running meme accounts, making video games, playing versions of themselves in others’ fictions and their own, and doing so in public. It’s what happens all over the internet already, but with higher artistic pretensions, more Dadaist aspirations, more obscure literary references, more interest from the legacy media and right-wing cultural agitators. We’re all characters in one another’s fictions.”

Meta-irony is free from the absolutist judgment of binary positions. So to escape the confinement of zombie modernist grand narrative benevolence and PR straitjackets, POSTPOSTPOST believes the time is perfect for seizing meta-irony as a tool. The incoherence of self-referentiality can allow us to take the hit, and even recover from it. In 1964, Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, an AI chat originally built to parody the responses of psychotherapists in initial psychiatric interviews. It was modeled after psychologist Carl Rogers, who was known for simply repeating back to his patients what they just said. ELIZA users however, despite knowing the primitive AI doesn’t understand a single word, were hooked. Many reported sitting for hours typing in their most intimate and vulnerable details only to have them relayed back at them as self-armation. “In an age of individualism, what made them feel secure was having themselves reflected back at them, just like in a mirror,” said Adam Curtis in commentary on ELIZA in his film Hypernormalisation.

RAS: What else does POSTPOSTPOST offer as a neologism? And how does the self dissolve and/or multiply?

AHE:

POSTPOSTPOST is a direct call-to-action. The imperative to post, post and post (and perhaps endlessly post) to exist. Just like the ELIZA patients, we look at our posts to see ourselves reflected back at us. We might not be aware that we’re being meta every time we post, but we’ve all confided in our pixel form selves. That is only scratching the surface of how much posting has changed us, as far as “the human condition” goes. Despite the efforts of many in the online world, the subject remains largely unaddressed by the mainstream academic establishment. POSTPOSTPOST by default attests to how internet culture can no longer be considered an outlier to mainstream culture, rather what drives it.

RAS:

I post, therefore I am. I’ve tended to shy away from viewing the internet self as an extension of one’s IRL self, rather a complete ego death where body is no longer a question and in that nothingness, rendering everything possible.

AHE:

POSTPOSTPOST’s existence as an urge is what we can build a brand around. Being a brand absolves POSTPOSTPOST from having to present consistent opinions or an irrefutable philosophy of life. For positioning purposes, this makes it better equipped for the ephemeral spheres of resonance and attention rather than factual correctness or academic rigor. The uppercase stylization is a way to make LARPing as a brand more eective for POSTPOSTPOST; taking advantage of the valuable screen real estate like HYPEBEAST and KAWS always have. Last but not least, the -modernism appendage is chopped off POSTPOSTPOST’s tail; cementing its grave irrelevance to the world today.

RAS: So what is the POSTPOSTPOST agenda (if there is any)?

AHE:

An agenda did indeed start to feel too real when close friends and peers started actually uttering the words “this is so POSTPOSTPOST” whenever they experience or come across those uncanny dumbfounding moments of hyperreality. POSTPOSTPOST aspires to become an audacious, albeit unwelcome, stoppage to a hypernormalized desensitized existence. An attempt to design a tool that brings back anxiety. A tool dense enough to cloak all attempts at meaning or modernist transcendence, rather an interruptive, formless, obtrusive, hot-headed, loud, vibrant, quirky dance of non-sense. A tool perverted and insidious enough to evade appropriation and commodification, and accelerated enough to escape algorithmic prognosis. Here’s to taking not-taking-things-seriously, very seriously.

Welcome to POSTPOSTPOST times.

RAS:

Buckle up! The temporality at which culture moves makes keeping up with it not only impossible, but a failed critical theory project. What drives POSTPOSTPOST?

AHE:

One term is mainly being investigated here - and that’s the so-called “avant-garde”. It is what ties my personal experiences to what I’m trying to put forward. Back in 2007 Cairo, 13-year old me played Spochan, a somewhat niche Japanese padded-sword-combat sport. I was about to turn 14, which meant I’m going to move to the big leagues, and fight in the 14-18 age group in tournaments. One training day, I had a match with Sara, I think she was around 16. After she kicked my ass, I vented about being insecure that I’m not ready to move up to the next tier. She said: “It’s always better to be the last horse in a horse race than the first donkey in a donkey race”.

Until this day, I cannot verify if it was an idiom or if Sara had made it up, but it really resonated with my-then-mullet-rocking-self. It’s relatively similar to a lot of universally known idioms like “if you are the smartest person in the room, leave the room” or the “big/small fish in a big/small pond”, but something about being in a race struck a chord. I cannot pinpoint when and how I was introduced to the avant-garde as a concept, or rather a notion, but that’s the earliest I can remember. And my understanding of it is very closely tied to how the term originated; the military vanguard who dive headfirst into battle, taking the biggest risk for the most valuable chunk of “forward” progress.

This way of thinking has informed my work for as long as I can remember. Coupled with naive ambition to make it as a cultural producer, I followed the mirage of a physical frontline, that exists somewhere in the world, the ‘edge’, where all the true revolutionary thinkers are meeting up and producing together roadmaps for the bettering of society. Like 17th century English coffeehouses or whatever Brian Eno called a “scenius” in 20’s Paris or 60’s New York.

Now with the imposed worldview that civilization is in the West, I moved to Los Angeles. That’s got to be the horse race, I thought (of course, there are multiple counter arguments to that notion, especially in terms of the future). So now it’s time to produce work that gets put up to the highest levels of scrutiny. I intend for this to be more than a witty retelling of my experiences and observations in insight-form, because to be honest, that is not what I’m interested in. But I truly see conversations being left out of whatever the “public discourse” has come to mean that I very much want to bring attention to.

When I discussed POSTPOSTPOST with philosopher and Rice University professor Timothy Morton, his critique was that I’m “trying to say everything all at once”, which is a “writer's trap” he admitted he had fallen into himself. I convinced myself that saying everything is ultimately still saying a thing, just so I could put it on paper.

Interview excerpt from POSTPOSTPOST: Reflections on a new Avant-Garde (2023).