The Avant Pop Manifesto: In Memoriam to Postmodernism by Mark Amerika & Lance Olsen— Critical Essays from San Diego State University Press (SDSU Press)

Welcome to the age of technology where one should expect new forms of art to spring alive from the electric wiring. We are in the new age where both entertainment and daily life circulate around digital information. On a daily basis our brains are processing images and data from the internet, mass media, video games, movies, and everything else that our modern society has created. Due to such stimuli our society has evolved both in its art and outlook.

“Now that Postmodernism is dead and we’re in the process of finally burying it, something else is starting to take hold in the cultural imagination and I propose that we call this new phenomenon Avant-Pop” —The Avant-Pop Manifesto by Mark Amerika

The creation of Avant-Pop is proof that times are changing, and with it art. Focusing on what can be created with the new inspirations of today. What exists (mass media, internet) now and has never been able to be an influence to artists until now.

As Mark Amerika asks in his manifesto, “[w]ho are we sharing the cultural toilet with” and “what are we filling it with?” What are individuals and artists alike contributing to our society. The trash of the past is discarded and in its stead it’s filled with the movements of our generation, only to repeat the cycle with each new generation.  

To learn more of the Avant-Pop phenomenon taking hold in our modern age check out In Memoriam to Postmodernism.

One rather new avant garde expression, or as Mark would say avant pop, is the music called dubstep. Sounds taken from a wide variety of sources, mixed and reproduced to create new sounds.

Check out the video Is Dubstep Avant Garde Musical Genius on Youtube for a short 6min lecture for more.

aVANT-pOP: Weakening the Ideologies that Keep the People Calm.

 "The emerging wave of Avant-Pop artists now arriving on the scene find themselves caught in this struggle to rapidly transform our sick, commodity-infested workaday culture into a more sensual, trippy, exotic and networked experience."

-Mark Amerika & Lance Olsen

In Memoriam to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop is a collection of works by some of the main proponents of the Avant-Pop literary art movement. If you need another reason to fuel your passion for the protection and freedom of the internet, this collection will give you a real good one.




Avant-Pop recognizes the popular media for what it is: a vile monster of distracting misinformation and zombifying"entertainment" that holds a tenacious grip on the minds of a majority of people, insidiously defining them from without and diverting their attention from more important things like the revocation of their rights and freedoms. The Avant-Pop artist believes it's too late to fight against it, so he or she gears up for a journey into the heart of the beast in an attempt to change it from within.

Ron Sukenick writes it best in his essay aVANT-pOP, sUR-fICTION, hYPER-fICTION:

"...actually what we have here is a reversal of the old consumerist tactic of 'co-optation' -i.e., if some rebel-rousing movement comes along, defang it, package it and sell it, absorb it into the mass market, render it harmless -Avant-Pop, on the other hand, co-opts mass-market schlock, twists it and tortures it till it becomes dangerous and injects it back into the market as a virus that destroys its host from within...where monolithic mass market was, many mini-markets there shall be, making clear the difference between consumerism's 'free market,' and a democratic market which offers the consumer a wide spectrum of choice." 

That "spectrum of choice" may become much more difficult or impossible to offer if Congress passes SOPA. It would limit the people's choices even further, decreasing their amplitude of vision and insight by serving up only the few narrow options provided by popular media.

Avant-Pop wants to widen and enrich our options, encourage individuality, and support the sharing of our ideas and art.

To learn more about Avant-Pop and get inspired to create art that keeps communication open purchase a copy of In Memoriam to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop from SDSU Press.

Also, check out the editors Mark Amerika and Lance Olsen.
And to learn more about the Stop Online Piracy Act click here. 

In Memoriam to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop | Also, an Etiquette Question to be Answered by You, Gentle Reader

Yes, it's true. Postmodernism, or "pomo" to its friends, passed away. Avant-pop killed it, ravaged its corpse, devoured its innards, slurped up its philosophy and tossed it on a funeral pyre. Sadness.

My question is this: just what sort of condolences does one send to a deceased school of thought? A card? A muffin basket? Is it crass to just send cash?

Emily Post has no answer, nor do Mark America and Lance Olsen in their compelling book, In Memorian to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop.



Still, don't let its appalling lack of a "Guide to Manners" section deter you from checking out this slick book. It's, honest to [insert your deity here], one of the most fascinating essay collections I've ever come across.

Not sure what Avant-Pop is? Don't worry, our own Larry McCaffrey (Professor Emeritus of San Diego State's Department of English and Comparative Literature) will help you out with his essay, "13 Introductory Ways of Looking at a Post-Post-Modernist Aesthetic Phenomenon Called 'Avant-Pop.'"

Other gems in this book include: a fantastic essay by Harry Polkinhorn (Director of this very press) entitled "Avant-Pop at the Border," Steven Shaviro's "Strategies of Disappearance: or Why I Love Dean Martin," and from the incomparable Raymond Federman, "AVANT-POP: YOU'RE KIDDING! or THE REAL BEGINS WHERE THE SPECTACLE ENDS [a manifesto of sorts]." This book rocks. So buy it here!

Shaviro recently invaded the Reality Hackers seminars at Trinity University--more info here.