Situationism


Sonic Youth’s new video for the single off their recently released new album The Eternal shows a sassy group of girls pulling a fun stunt on a bourgeois group at a roof party. It’s been compared to the band’s 1990 video for ‘Dirty Boots’, in which a rock and roll fantasy plays out in a grunge club, kids swoon over eachother from afar and then make out on stage, before being ripped apart by security and stage diving into the crowded mosh pit. While the two videos are obviously different thematically and aesthetically, SY keep to their DIY grassroots with ‘Sacred Trickster’ and sort of make fun of capitalism. As Stereogum pointed out, it’s rather in keeping with Situationism, which began with a sort of anti-capitalist, Marxist/Surrealist-inspired art revolutionary movement from the late ’50s called the Situationist International. They advocated passionate and alternative life experiences, aiming to “fulfill human primitive desires and pursue a superior passional quality”, which you could say Sonic Youth do rather well.

Sonic Youth- Website

 

Posted by Sarah Gooding under New York