and debate goes on... part1

-- Primary Sources on the
International Performing Arts,
September-October,1979

Words: Igor (Steve Wright) + editing by Green. PART 1 of 3.| Part 2 | Part 3 |

INTRODUCTION

Scritti Politti are a self-managed beat group who have their own record label, St Pancras Records. From this position of control (over their own practice) and strength (the extent of the interest stimulated can't be ignored), they are able to operate relatively independently of, and in opposition to, the repressive ideology traditionally associated with beat music. Scritti Politti are wary and self-critical. They are embarking on discovery born less of experiment (conducted within a traditional framework) than of discourse and criticism. They are encountering and tackling the problematics of beat music production on the way.

Igor:	I know you don't like personal biographies but I think a biography of the band would be a reasonable introduction--whatever's important to you about the formation of the band, your activities so far.
Green:	There's nothing especially interesting, secret or mystical, or worthwhile about the manner in which we came together, other than it was very ramshackle. We got together initially for the purpose of making a record before we had a set. Two of us were living in London, one in Leeds, and Nial learnt to play the bass guitar in a matter of weeks. Those are the most salient points. I don't think at this point it's even especially interesting to say why you form a group, inasmuch as I wouldn't want to put it teleologically: i.e. you form a group in order to effect this kind of...
Tom:	I don't think there was a lot else to do. There wasn't anything else for me to do.
Green:	Whereas once we would have said that was a miserable reply because it didn't say 'Well obviously you form a group wittingly knowing that there are these sorts of problems and these numbers of things that can be achieved by being in a group--these numbers of things that can be achieved with music', and I think while an interest in the properties of music-making survives, we initially did see it very much in terms of a project that was somehow index-linked to a large social upheaval.
Bob:	You can sit around all day talking about the reason you choose to get involved in it. I don't think it's particularly worth it. How is it you can possibly salvage useful...I'm not sure...all the things people get...the conversation you throw up. It's not worth talking about. Your intentions. Being there.
Green:	I think it is, you see, because you're arguing now about the insignificance of intentions, intentionality, as a point when they are insignificant when they are not the subject of discussion. When, for instance, you are given a song--that's what you've got. Then intentionality is not something that you either have access to, or you should attempt to get at. But we're talking at the moment about the procedure of decision-making, in which case the disjunction between intentionality (our intentions) and what actually happens is very interesting. Inasmuch as it's fair enough to say that we began with big cultural/political ideas--that kind of language for talking about rock music, in terms of democratisation, in terms of disorder...it was thought of in a very ramshackle way. What's interesting is the way that we've found that to be untenable. I don't think there are any intentions that are any better than any others, in which case, so what? We can say that we do it because we love it or we don't know why we do it. Whether the Gang Of Four see the history of their involvement as good fun or as class struggle is immaterial to me upon finding their practice. And who sorts out the scale of most to least favourable intentions, anyhow: it gets nonsensical.
Igor:	Would you say that intentions described in cultural/political terms make more sense than when described in historical terms?
Green:	Initially we placed great stress on talking about what we were doing in cultural/political terms, but this discourse no longer dominates in a very clear or clan way what we think we are doing, whereas tat the same time we still loved beat music, but it really doesn't count for very much. At the moment, things have changed.
Igor:	Your decisions are more determined by the numerous opportunities that are arising?
Nial:	I don't think we're entirely sure of what our decisions are informed by at the moment.
Green:	They're informed by an interest in carrying on to sort them out. That might sound a bit Alice-in-Wonderland-ish but that's what it is.
Nial:	I regret the extent to which our decisions are conditioned by, informed by, and in response to the opportunities that are presenting themselves.
Green:	I don't think so, I disagree there because I think we're dealing in a way that in the past has disparagingly been called 'ad hoc' with what's going on, which basically means that we're not carrying around with us all the time an ideology, a fixed body of ideas, no matter how extended, with a firm basis, a fixed language, to sort out all our problems. And it never is just the struggle to stay afloat, to tread water. There are different animals that you can tread water as. You can tread it as a group after a career, or...
Igor:	What are you treading water as?
Green:	That's interesting, actually. I think we're treading it as very suspicious animals at the moment. I think it so happens that along with our interest in beat music we also have interests in certain bodies of ideas, which seem to be useful to us in one way or another, in sorting things out for our own good, there are certain ideas that help us, for instance, sort out what there is that stands in our way, what there is that represses us. Why are there these limits on our practice as individuals attempting to make music? What are they like? Why is the language around beat music like it is? We've already found to a great extent that we don't like it, in its closedness. Why are the relations such that they are? Trying to make sense of that in order to do it, and to make doing it, 'doing it well' (because I don't think anybody's interested in doing things shittily)--It's a question, in that respect, of trying to be a bit 'harder than the rest', not necessarily in a competitive way, but...
Igor:	But you don't have a fixed body of ideas with which to tackle these problems?
Green:	The idea of a well-formed ideology--'the solution'--is something that's suspect at the moment ( in a way that's quite a new discovery) and at any given point what we're about is going to be incredibly confused. You can be in such a mish-mash of attitudes and ideas, but I think it's important not to let yourself get awash in that...y'know...we're careering down the road at 90 mph and you'd better believe it, it's real. You've got to take hold, and it's travelling very fast and history's being made very rapidly and we're at the wheel, and you've got to acknowledge that there are a lot of features that need to be dealt with, but you can't allow yourself to slide into a morass of...endless relativism. ...endless relativisms--'well you know' I might be thinking this, but blimey, it's all got so confusing'--The landscape, the terrain that we're driving over isn't necessarily given in a straightforward way--it's very much constructed as a result of choosing a certain set of practices, like beat music. A lot of the bumps that we're going over in our little truck at the moment could not be talked about necessarily as objective features of the landscape. We're having trouble hanging on to the wheel because the going's getting a bit rough for us. Basically, there isn't a knowledge of what's going on prior to an involvement...it's difficult...
Nial:	Saying that the bumps we go over are in part constructed by us is very different thing to saying the terrain over which we travel is that of our choice. The conditions in which we operate are not of our choosing, but the way we understand those, the way we construct our understandings of those, are to do with very definite choices that we make. We exist in a world, a lot of features of which we have very little control over, and what we make choices, decisions about, is the way we see that world. We construct our reality through our language, and through the theoretical framework we bring to bear on that.
Green:	It's dependent on our sets of interests...
Nial:	...and they determine what sorts of bumps you're gonna have to...
Green:	Yes, because if, for example, we were a political party and we were committed to parliamentary reform we would see certain features on the landscape. For instance, the way we would calculate what the International Marxist Group were up to (or if we're Scritti Politti--with our commitments to certain things--the way we calculate what the Pop Group are up to) would depend on those practices we were involved in and what we saw as our interests. As a party involved in and committed to parliamentary reform as a goal, other features on the political landscape will look like big bumps (e.g. the IMG)--we will construct a map that way--'There are the badlands, here's shit creek, there's the IMG, here are some big bumps, here's Tony Benn(quite a big feature on our map), here's whatever else, this is what this is, it's an objective feature. The social relations of production are like this, the way Marx said they were'--we actually believe the world to be constructed in this way. Over here the Anarchist Black Cross, or whoever they are, the world is literally very different. What they can discover about the world is very different because their way of organising themselves is very different. What they will discover when they go out and wander round the world will be different. We're wary of fixed bodies of ideas because they're traditionally the means of insulation, the means of strengthening yourself; a means of attack is to have a consistent corpus of ideas that you can almost go around hitting people with--Whaaap! In order to find your way around the world, in fact, in order to feel that you actually have a world, you need language, and you need a pretty consistent language. It's true that the moment you rob people of their conceptual 'bikes' they've got no way of getting around, the moment you find that your whole way of talking about the world is redundant you actually do feel a physical sensation of unease...but it's natural to gravitate towards a consistent and coherent theory of what you're doing, and I think it's very necessary, but it should never remain fixed historically. It can never, truly, be rigorous without being repressive. But in a position such as ours, where it's necessary for us to compete for space, we need a consistent argument just to enable us to tread water.
Igor:	Don't you think there's a danger there of clinging to any fixed body of ideas just to make sure you get a look-in?
Ian:	It has to be a DYNAMIC body of ideas.
Igor:	Don't you think there's a possibility of contradictions creeping in when you have a 'dynamic' body of ideas?
Green:	You betcha! I think that's the big problem. One of the problem is, you really do need, in order to survive, the means to be articulate, the means to be able to think your way around the world and compete around the world, but you've got to reconcile that, somehow, with the fact that the world is not a homogeneous place that can be met with a homogeneous body of ideas. You do not have a homogeneous consciousness that provides you with homogeneous sets of ideas, there are not homogeneous problems. The whole thing is heterogeneous it's stratified. Unless you're gonna end up in the nuthouse, the only way around it is to have I suppose what would best be called 'cohesive bodies of ideas'. Something like caterpillar tracks. Inasmuch as your body of ideas will have to keep shifting in order to survive--to both tread water, to keep your head above the surface, and in order to go on and achieve a certain number of things, it will have to undergo a number of conditional shifts.
Igor:	So, if your body of ideas is changing strategically, what is behind it, powering it along?
Green:	If it's articulated in terms of 'What do you get back to?' that implies that you do all this, but somewhere fixed in the background is the powerhouse...but the powerhouse doesn't stay there, whatever it is, it's fucking jumping around with you. And it might mean that you go down at one moment, or you sidestep, or...the whole thing is incredibly unquantifiable.
Nial:	You have to sidestep in order to avoid being crushed by the powerhouse which is about to come down on top of you!
Green:	Yeah. You're dragging this powerhouse along fast and if you stop to think it can hit you in the back of the neck!--that's happened to us recently.

article continues in...| Part 2 | Part 3 |