Futurism Forever is a Union of Egoists, not a formal political group. So any of the views expressed in any article reflect the views of the person who wrote it. Not everyone who has ever contributed anything to the blog or podcast. We don't tow any political line collectively and our contributors come from many different backgrounds and lifestyles. A love for modern art in general, and especially Futurism is what we all have in common.
I have decided to end Futurism Forever, and start a new project called Beautiful Monsters. The reasons for this are numerous but the short answer to ‘why’ is, FF started out as something different from what it is now and I don’t see the point in carrying on as FF anymore.
When we started we called ourselves Futurism Forever, because the point of the project was to promote Futurism as an essential component of a true third position. We were going to promote a Third Positionism that would return to the earliest instincts of Fascism. Fascism in it’s realest and purest form. Futurism. Fiume. The Sansepolcrismo era. This is a stance that I stand behind still, but I have accepted that this won’t happen, given what modern 3P actually is. Reactionary, backwards and going nowhere. So instead of changing the movement or at least carving out a small niche of it that was tolerable, I just kinda lost interest in it, and want nothing to do with it anymore. In retrospect, I had kind of had it with the movement by the time I started FF in the first place, which is why I was as antagonistic towards it as I was from day 1. But that’s the swamp that we emerged from and a huge percentage of our audience still comes from there, despite my efforts to shake them off. Hopefully Beautiful Monsters attracts way less Third Positionists than FF did. This time around we aren’t really trying to influence anything bigger than our own group and our own following. I’m unaffiliated and no longer invested in any specific political ‘movement’ or ‘ideology’.
I have not changed my mind about Futurism at all, but I’m not really interested in promoting an Orthodox Marinettian Classical Futurism. Truth be told, this is nothing new. I have deviated with Marinetti on many points, pretty much throughout the entirety of FF’s existence. The contempt for women/volcel stuff. The fanatical pro-war stuff (some war’s are justified, most aren’t though). Plus I’m a Pasta loyalist.
The point of FF was never to revive or retvrn to Italian Futurism. The point was to use the Manifestos of the Italian Futurist Movement as a starting point to discuss what a 21st century Futurism should be about, with like minded people.
Beautiful Monsters is going to pick up where FF is leaving off, and we will build on the foundations established on Futurism Forever. The Futurism will be more internalized, and less at the centre of attention, but not that much is really going to change.
The other obvious reason is we have already covered most of the important texts associated with Italian Futurism, and since I’m just about ready to move on from that movement, the branding really just doesn’t make sense anymore. There are still 5 or so more Futurism Forever podcasts I want to do. We will still do those eventually. But I’m only able to podcast occasionally right now and I don’t feel like keeping the FF name for as long as it will likely take to get those out. So we’re switchin names now, and those will come out when they come out. Be patient.
The final reason is that a lot of retarded, toxic shit happened in, around and to FF over the past two years, and I really want to leave all that bullshit behind me and get a fresh start. Basically an entirely different group exists now, and the first year of Futurism Forever is no longer reflective of what we are anymore.
I learned a lot of valuable lessons through doing FF which should make Beautiful Monsters a smoother running and more efficient group than FF was.
Firstly, Futurism Forever was always really vague as far as how it defined itself. This allowed our enemies to define us in whichever way was convenient or advantageous for them, and we were constantly having to defend ourselves from half truths, baseless slander and straight up lies.
It also lead to a lot of internal problems, and a lot of people who were really not good ideological fits becoming involved, which made the group even more confusing for outsiders, because there was never any consistency. The only requirement to get into FF was “liking” “futurism”. Different people like Futurism for different reasons and to varying degrees. Futurism also means different things to different people, and there are strong disagreements as to what it even is. There shouldn’t be, but people like to make up their own unique interpretations of things, or hyperfixate on very specific aspects of Futurism, that aren’t actually that important in the bigger picture or to most people. This time I will define what Beautiful Monsters is about from the start (expect a Manifesto/Statement of Intent in a week or so) and people who don’t like or agree with it will not be in the group. Simple as.
*Kind of a side tangent, but we also had a lot of people with zero interest in futurism at all, who just liked coming on podcasts and promoting their own projects and interests on my platform. People like that can be guests, if for some reason I want to have them on, but they shouldn’t be “in” the group, or have influence over what subjects we cover on the podcast, or what direction the group should go in. That shit ain’t happening again. I’ve learned the hard way that these type’s of people loyalties will always be to their own ideology. Not Futurism or the group. All the things I’ve done for them will quickly be forgotten, when association becomes inconvenient or it’s no longer fun for them. We aren’t a stepping stone for our ideological enemies, and these are always the people who stab you in the back on the way out.
Ideological consistency will be a lot more important going forward. I’d rather have a small circle of trusted homies, than a revolving door of flakes, opportunists and bad actors. I really can’t justify why we used to have a pretty sizable Duginist column in a Futurist group, but we did. Fuck that shit. No Conservatives. No Nazis. No Tankies. No Nazbols. No Duginists. No Trads. No exceptions. These people can follow if they like what we post, but I’m not obligated to include them beyond that. Or care when they don’t like what we post. Really I’m hoping the name change attracts way less of them than FF did.
I guess that just about covers it. If you’ve liked the direction we’ve been going in for the past 6 months, you’ll like Beautiful Monsters. If you liked what we were doing in year one, sorry to disappoint, but we’re never returning to that. Is what it is.
Thanks for following FF through the ups and the downs, and hope some of you stick around for Beautiful Monsters. Also thanks to anyone who came on the podcast or submitted articles, short stories or poetry to the blog. Even if things didn’t end well between all of us, I do appreciate the work you put in while you were involved. No hard feelings. Follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our Substack. Watch out for the Manifesto dropping next week. Peace.
New Generation is a Communist/Futurist organization led by Crux of Promethean Magazine. If you are interested in Communism or Futurism from a Communist perspective you should give them a follow on Telegram and consider joining their chat. https://t.me/NovaGeneration The following is a recommended reading list for New Generation and a guide explaining how to use it and what it is for.
https://www.unknown.nu/futurism/manifesto.html(take with a grain of salt/there are tenets in here that later Futurists rejected and so does the new generation such as Patriotism and scorn for women)
A operational Manual for those serious about being involved with TNG
Purpose of the Reading list
Structure and Local Cadres
Propaganda and Distributing
It is not simply enough to believe in something, you must be willing to dedicate yourself to it. It is Always easy to proclaim pureness for the sake of appearance and nothing else, just the appearance which millions view as real. Alas it is not, you must be all or nothing in the face of your views with no middle ground to hold you back, you must be the Daring one who is willing to throw everything away if it means absolute victory.
This is something Communists have forgotten, they have substituted Narcissism and Nostalgia for Principles as they replace Marxism with Moralism. We stand on the shore of a boundless sea but instead of looking at it they prefer to look behind them, they look for easy distractions from the Alienation they feel. How perfect it is to have that luxury, to completely distract yourself because our current future is so bleak and instead of embracing our anger we prefer to divert it to distractions and spectacles. We are standing on the shore of a boundless sea and a great wave is coming to kill us all.
It is my hope in a New Generation and in the Coming future communism that keeps me going. It is this that drives me to write this document for those who are also fed up with nothing being done, who are tired of distractions and wish to Organize a truly revolutionary organization.
The Purpose of the Reading list
No revolutionary organization is built on ignorance, it is built off education.
This is the reasoning behind the New Generation reading list. It is a mixture of Futurist manifestoes on topics such as art and music next to Marxist texts which cover basic Philosophy and Economic theory, The New Generation is a Communist Futurist organization so it is imperative to have a solid understanding of both subjects before being able to start branching out and educating/organizing.
The reading list is broken up into 3 phases. Each phase has its own name which is meant to characterize each phase to make it easier on the user to be able to differentiate and place a human-like role to each of the phases, the first phase is titled Conquest of the Sun. This is a reference to an old Futurist play that depicts a group of artists trying to destroy formal logic itself (or the preconceived notions we assign to formal logic) and this is exemplified in those whose first experience with Marxism/Futurism will be this first phase, they will be beginning the conquest the sun in the form of reading Marx or Marinetti for the first time.
Brief Interlude:
Now I will not be preaching how you should read these texts or the conclusions you take from it, I will however be contextualizing the Futurist manifesto since there are parts in it that would be off putting to people.
Examples being:
“We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for women.”
And
“We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice.”
The New Generation rejects Patriotism and scorn for women. we promote Proletarian Internationalism and the destruction of Tradition, the Tradition of the nation state being among them, why should it be the proletariat who uphold the Nation-state? Why should the proletariat worship at the altar of the forefathers of Rome and Washington? Why should the Proletariat not worship its own creations?
We have no more in common with another American than we do with a Brit or German, with a Turk or Mexican, Nationalism/Patriotism is nothing more than identity cowardice that cloaks the fear of confronting the beast before you. True pride comes from victory, True victory comes from conquering the past and building something New.
The New Generation also rejects “Scorn for Women”, if we want to destroy the past then why should we uphold traditional gender standards and opinions?
Back to the Manual:
Structuring wise it is mandatory to have read Phase one and at least half of the second phase before being allowed to start Local Cadre’s(I will touch on this later). This is to safeguard the appearance of the organization from ignorant mistakes of those who are under-educated in the Beliefs of said organization, this is what i will refer to as the “Self-Educational period” if you have already read most of what’s included in the first phase and second phase then you are well on your way out of the self educational period.
The self-educational period should take more than two or three months, the overall reading list should take at least five to seven months, two to three if you are reading it nonstop and with zero interruption. After the self educational period is done, it is important to begin building a local reading group and cultivating a sense of camaraderie amongst the members of it, help the newcomers with the reading list while also continuing your way down the list.
If you already have a group of people who are interested in the organization or futurism then merge the self education period with the reading group period and read the text together which will build camaraderie early on, it is recommended you do this if you are not comfortable with helping educate groups of people.
The last two Phases are the longest and the most dense content wise and where you will find most of the meat of the reading list, Phase 2 being titled “long interlude” and Phase 3 being titled “the light at the end of a dark tunnel”, out of the two it is the latter that is the longest and in my opinion the most satisfying, it is the end of a journey.
Structure and Local Cadres
A Cadre in the Marxist definition is any small group that is still in the process of learning, and is still trying to organize itself as the local section of a larger organization/party; there must be at least 5 members before being considered a cadre. The cadre is of course the nucleus of every new revolutionary org. So to TNG it is also the nucleus for our organization, education and agitation are imperative to our operations and will be the main tasks of each Cadre in the foreseeable future, but what do these actions look like?
The first one is organizing reading groups, as discussed prior. That is one. The second is the creation of propaganda, we need to be able to get the word out about our Organization and our beliefs (what is the point of screaming the love of danger if nobody can hear us?). Creating posters and fliers that convey our messages, Zines that carry our poems and manifestos calling for the great fire that is to be set to the current world.
The creation of a Leadership council(the number of members will be determined by the number of members) that runs on popular sovereignty within the group is how the cadre’s shall be led, instead of a figurehead it will be led by a council that is revocable at any time. To prevent corruption leadership meetings are to be held openly, Heads of propaganda and other infrastructural matters will be led by a Head who is chosen by the Leadership council and picked from volunteers, if the volunteer is incapable of fulfilling the duty they volunteered for they will be allowed to step down, if they falter or procrastinate while still proclaiming their willingness to the task they are given. Then they will be kicked from the organization for lacking the convictions needed to maintain their position.
Bylaws will be decided by local cadres but must be approved of by the National Committee for the sake of consistency and to avoid any opportunistic bylaws that put the integrity of TNG in jeopardy.
Below the cadre there will be Pre-operational agitation groups for those who have not reached the 5 member minimum that will be led by the founder of the group and will step down from their leadership position as soon as the Pre-op Agroup has become a Cadre.
Propaganda and Distribution:
On the task of Propaganda and Distribution, it is the duty of every serious member to create and distribute propaganda related to the organization. This can take the shape of anything from posters and stickers to zines and flyers, the national organization will create propaganda with the purpose of being distributed as well. Do not worry if you are not prepared for the immediate production of localized material.
Some tips for creating propaganda
Make it look crisp
Make it catch the eye with snappy designs
Look to the Agitprop of the Russian Futurists like Alexander Rodchenko for inspiration
Try to push the boundary of every piece you do. Do not fear the new
Use free graphic design software programs like G.I.M.P
Use a varying degree of colors but do not fear using simple black and white, it might not seem eye catching at first but the use of interesting design mixed with the contrast of the two colors will catch the eye
Some tips for distributing propaganda
Use wheat paste instead of tape when putting up flyers
Focus your propaganda at high points of traffic like parking lots and alleys
In rural areas place your propaganda on light posts outside of churches and other meeting places
If there is a community board put your propaganda on it, do not be afraid that people will get mad (attention is attention after all)
We do not wish to simply deceive people as that would be stupid, it would be a waste of time. We wish to pull the wool over their eyes and pull it off the show them the mirror they have been ignoring, the feeling of pure euphoria to trick a Stalinist into agreeing with Nazis not because we want them to become nazis but rather to show them the flaws of Stalin and his opportunist ideology, we want to trick a nazi into agreeing with Trotsky because we want them to see that the only way forward is through Communism(with an extra irony that it was a jewish man who they were agreeing with).
Propaganda and other related actions will be our main source of recruitment and attention gathering.
Cowards refuse to adapt and that’s why they fail but we refuse to fail and that’s why we will win. Outsmart the enemy and use their own tools against them by tricking and hoodwinking our way to the top, this will not happen overnight and it sure won’t be an instant success and we should remember that we must also focus on building ourselves up as a legitimate organization. We must remember that for every action we take we learn from that action and for every lesson we learn we will continue marching forwards with commitment towards victory.
Pretend to be someone you are not, worship at the altar of fake gods and pray to their feet with the purpose of usurping them. Sneak into a theater under the guise of a happy couple and then throw leaflets of another organization with the intent of making the audience hate the other organization, pretend to be a Maoist and only speak in Deng Xiaoping quotes to mock their belief in Red Capitalism. Who cares? It is not you who is being tricked, it is those who would wish us to stay irrelevant and those who directly are our competitors , but we Futurists aren’t very good at being quiet or lively. What we know is conflict and hollers.
If there is anything that I want to come out of this is to inspire those who are hesitant about becoming serious to finally take the step across the shore and fight the incoming wave, The New Generation has so much potential. Both the organization and the actual generation of young people who do not wish to continue deluding ourselves into thinking the coming revolution will not come, that it is our place to die in the office and assembly line, on the battlefield and the hospital bed. What I want is to inspire genuine action rather than the cynical clout chasing that has become the norm among socialists, and if it is just me then I’m fine with that, because even then it meant that I would have tried and continued fighting for myself and my class.
Françoise Pascal in The Iron Rose (1973), Dir. Jean Rollin
Her body laid on the forest floor,
Wilting and withering at every passing second,
Her eyes of a marble doll, with still the energy of youth,
Rolling in the bath of blood, puss, mucus, and aqueous humor
Looking past the sharp corner of the tree’s tippy-top, to the sky
Where Sin stared back into her eyes, as her right one began melting into a primordial soup
Flowing out of her socket like a reverie, the soup poured out onto the green grass,
Staining it to make a darker green, ripe for Demeter’s harvest,
Sin stared into her left eye, sinking in like an anchor falling to the bottom of the ocean,
As her left eyed jumped from corner to corner of its socket, the glare of the moon lit up
Her ribcage, with her heart, lungs, and intestines revealed much like the smile of hooker,
Flowers with the colors of a rainbow bloomed, delightfully facing towards Sin
Right before the mouths of their pistils opened up and consummated her lungs,
Flowers blooming everywhere, only to then consummate her,
As she tried to open her mouth to ask for a resounding “why,”
A centipede crawled out of her mouth, and began taking sips like a cat drinking milk,
Of her eye, all the while Sin continued to look at her left eye, waiting for her to fixate
With maggots eating her uterus from the inside out, she felt an extreme pain
Upon when she felt, she fixated directly into the eye of Sin like a fortune teller in their ball,
At that very moment, Sin began to lower herself to her as fire engulfed Sin’s eyes
She looked up at her, with pure seduction, with the maggots creating entry for Sin,
As Sin came closer and closer to her, the flowers danced and pranced to twilight’s moon,
She prepared her lips for the union of Sin’s lips, and as Sin reached to her,
Eloping her hands on her check, gently feeling the rotted flesh of her cheek,
Caressing it much like a mother with their newborn, she pulled her head towards hers
With her head detaching from her body like the petals of a dandelion,
With blood spewing out of her neck and her eyes still locking in place with Sin’s
And with the fluid of her eye flowing on her hand like a river,
Sin embraced her
you are the pattering rain tapping at my window pane or the scent of a red rose remaining yet on my clothes and you are the rising sun you are a flower filled gun you are the light of the moon or the birds, chirping at noon
Futurism is an avant-garde art movement that was put forward by Filippo Tomasso Marinetti in 1909 and mainly deals with the subjects of speed, dynamism and technology. In their founding manifestos, the futurists cursed museums, academies, all manner of antiquities, moralism and passeism. The Italian Futurists, who are very familiar with the concept of “Destruction”, one of the main lines of anarchism, were not only connected with Anarchists. The founder of the movement, poet Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, was in a utopian semi-anarchist art group called Abbaye de Créteil for a while in Paris. Marinetti had close contact with several Anarcho-Syndicalist leaders and was a regular guest of Anarchist groups. He contributed financially to the anarcho-syndicalist journal “La Demolizione”, as well as publishing a few articles of the movement. Futurist painters Boccioni, Carrà and Russolo served as graphic designers for several Anarchist publications and were heartfelt supporters of Marinetti when he delivered his most important Anarchist talk – The Necessity and Beauty of Violence. Carlo Carr à depicted the chaotic funeral of anarchist Angelo Galli, who died as a result of police attack, in his painting “The Funeral of the Anarchist Welsh”. Another of the most famous futurist works is the painting “Revolt” by Luigi Russolo.
The Revolt by Luigi Russolo 1911The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 1910-11, Carlo Carra
In his founding manifesto, Marinetti extolled the “destructive actions of anarchists” and blessed “strong individualism that does not prevent you from opening your arms to the anarchist of every country”. Marinetti prophesied that “Humanity is marching towards Individualistic Anarchism, which is the goal and dream of every holy spirit.” In his article titled “The Necessity and Beauty of Violence,” he stated the following:
“You may still not understand who we are and what we want. Tired of nostalgia and academic pretension in a republic of arts and literature steeped in melancholy and soullessness, ambitious for a dashing originality, it will cleanse the Italian soul of all this heap of prejudice, unpleasantness, respect and exaltation called passeism. “Think of absolute rebels and destructive youth who aspire to an adventurous, energetic, casual, valiant life. After all, Futurism is Anarchism in art.”
Marinetti constructed a fantastic utopia based on the glorification of individualism in his articles “Futurist Democracy (1919)” and “Beyond Communism (1920)”. Italy; He would be liberated from the pope, the monarchy, and the institution of marriage. Parliament was to be replaced by a government of technicians led by young people. He demanded the abolition of the army, the judiciary, the prisons and the police so that the genius race could create strong, free, hardworking and modern individuals. The country was to be led by art and artists, in other words, a kind of “genius proletariat” that would realize “a marvelous anarchist paradise of absolute freedom, art, humor, progress, heroism, enthusiasm and speed”.
When Nazi Germany and Italy formed a political alliance, the cultural norms of the Nazis slowly began to permeate Italy. Totalitarian cultural notions such as censorship law, anti-Semitism, “degenerate art”; Marinetti and the Futurists were among the first to oppose them when he began to gain ground in the Italian bureaucracy, and they did their best to combat it.
We might wonder if it’s an “oxymoron” for these ultra-nationalist futurists to sympathize with anarchism. As a matter of fact, we have to keep in mind that the Futurists were influenced by philosophers such as Gabriele d’Annunzio (We will talk about this multicolored figure who was the commander of the Arditi division in a different article), Georges Sorel, Bergson, and Nietszhe. Marinetti explains this situation with these sentences:
“You have become accustomed to thinking that patriotism and war are completely opposed to anarchism, in which many lives are consumed by the passion for freedom. I declare that these two obvious opposites, the collective and the individual, are closely intertwined. Is not the development of the collective, in fact, the result of the efforts and undertakings of many individuals? Its well-being is shaped by the antagonisms and harmony of the multiple organisms that compose it.”
“Do not the anarchist’s subversive acts represent the absurd but beautiful longing for an ideal of justice that may never be realized? Aren’t these acts a rising barrier against the invading arrogance of the ruling classes? Personally speaking, I would say the anarchist’s bombshell is directed against the sly attitude or country of the bourgeois hiding in time of danger. I would rather the despicable selfishness of the peasant who deliberately injures himself than to serve.”
Libertarianism, is a deceptively simple and promising doctrine of maximizing the freedom of the individual, absolutely and utterly fails to actualize any freedom besides a bourgeois conception of freedom, which, in reality, suppresses the individual in favor of capitalism. While there are left-wing socialists who are opposed to capitalism and take a more Egoistic approach to justice & economics (Bataille & Stirner), they are not as large as right-wing libertarianism which is the most popular & viral form of libertarianism; therefore, right-wing libertarianism, which includes all the way from the classical libertarians to anarcho-capitalists, and why their conception of freedom ultimately fails to be actualized & is actively counterproductive to any form of actual freedom.
The libertarian conception of freedom usually follows the simple formula of letting the individual do whatever they want without the interference or impediment of the State and people. On the surface, it is the most maximizing theory of justice: letting the individual do whatever they want without any intervention so long as it does not hurt or impede others. Yet this conception of freedom fails to live up to itself in two ways: the atomization of the individual and the negation of others and the role of society as a whole within its impact on the individual. Within the idea of libertarianism, everyone keeps to themselves, everyone is themselves, and every individual is free to do whatever and society cannot stop it. Yet even in the very idea that everyone is inherently separate from everyone else–is in itself a serville idea.
Within every individual, there is an individual Dasein that connects them to other Daseins and greater society (Heidegger, 1927); libertarianism negates this. Instead of affirming everyone’s Dasein and relation to each other, libertarianism completely neglects it and actively suppresses the unity of Dasein. Within Heidegger, the conception of Verfallen, which designates the inherent fallenness we as individuals face when quite literally thrown into this world, is the constant state that libertarianism is in. Instead of having a grounding to the individual’s culture, people, country, land, religion, etc etc everything that binds an individual to various things in the whole of life libertarianism violently throws the individual out of all of this. This has two major impacts: the failure to distribute justice based on things out of an individual control (i.e. centuries of oppression, slavery, poor family,) and the blaming of the individual for things out of their control. Take for example a poor person descendented from slavery: this person is not responsible for being poor, having a disadvantage of being from a long generation of slavery (this causes horrendous issues for descendents many many years down the line), having less access to public services that are available in richer neigborhoods, and even less access to education resources. For a libertarian, instead of correcting this injustice through the use of the State or public resources, the libertarian places it all on the individual. It is purely the individual fault, not society’s or history’s fault for them not making their own decisions. Rather than seeing humans controlled by desires out of their control–it instead posits a free-willing desire that everyone is in control of, instead of the other way around.
It is ironic that libertarianism is pro-drugs, something that oftentime causes people to be absent of so-called free-will, yet positing that allowing them to use such drugs enhances an individual’s freedom. When we strip a person of everything that binds them to others, we completely destroy any capacity for justice to occur. For justice is always depended on circumstances and if we posit every single individual responsible for their circumstances and actions, then we cannot distribute justice; what is distributed is slavery.
Graphene. If you’ve heard that word at all, you’ve probably heard of it as some futuristic wonder material, but never got an in depth explanation of what it is or what it does.
Graphene is a lattice of carbon atoms, only one atom thick, made into a hexagon pattern. Aside from being one atom thick, that might not seem too special, but this material can do strange and wonderful things. Graphene was first theorized in 1947, discovered in 2004, and we’re just starting to figure out how to make it in quantity, and not even very large quantity.
Graphene is made mainly out of graphite, but it can be made out of coal, rubber, and even wood.
Personally, I believe that coal may be the most economical thing to make it out of, due to its relative abundance. Hence the title
So, what does this stuff do?
Computers. A computer made with graphene transistors, is 1000x as powerful and uses only 1/100th of the electricity, compared to silicon computers.
Computers of various kinds use up 10% of the world’s energy, and graphene can reduce that to 0.01%; if we don’t just decide to dump that energy into more computing power, that is. A real miracle, both for for climate concerns, and for your electric bill
I shouldn’t even need to explain the benefits of making computers work 1000x faster, but I will. 1000x the power for intensive scientific research, 1000x the power for AI, 1000x the power for electronic trading, 1000x the power for web hosting, and yes, 1000x the power for playing video games on maximum visual settings Your smartphone’s processor on graphene, would be able to compete with record breaking trillion-transistor computer chips designed for advanced AI.
Also, graphene data storage can hold 10x more information than traditional drives. There are already 1TB MicroSD cards with traditional data storage tech, so why not have 10TB of graphene storage on your phone? As a data hoarder, this would be a dream come true for me, as well as many others.
Flexible screens and tech
Imagine a touch screen so flexible that you can fold it like cardboard or even normal paper. Now, imagine the variety of software tools, art programs, controllers and mobile games that could be based around reshaping the device itself. Graphene offers the potential for flexible electronics.
Batteries
Someday, your phone or laptop could charge in seconds, and last much longer off that one charge.
They could also make batteries that would be woven into cloth. Imagine having a shirt or a coat, which could act as a (hopefully washing machine safe) battery pack to charge your electronics.
There’s even the potential for systems whereby this battery-wear could be charged by absorbing your own body heat.
Fresh water, Fresh food
It’s not just electronics, though that’s definitely where graphene excels the best.
Let’s start with water. Graphene membranes for water purification and desalination, could provide water for millions in the developing world.
Food. A layer of graphene in packaging can stop air and water from seeping in, extending shelf lives for packaged foods.
Medicine
Graphene and other 2D materials offer a wide open space for innovation in pharmaceuticals and other medical devices. It is an especially versatile material for use in drug delivery.
A shining (rust free) future
Paints made with graphene could prevent rust from forming on vehicles and buildings.
Feather light flight
Planes and other aircraft could be much lighter, allowing them to go much farther, faster with less fuel.
How is it made?
Let me fill you in on a secret. You can make a small amount of graphene in your own home. Probably not usable quality, and definitely not in usable quantity, with a small amount of money and some time to kill, it’s doable. If you’ve got kids, this would make a great science fair idea.
Recipe one
The first graphene, made in a lab in 2004c the graphene that won a Nobel Prize in 2010, was made with things found in the average American elementary school classroom; scotch tape and graphite (which can be found in pencils).
That’s right, ladies, gentlemen and nonbinary folks! You can replicate a Nobel prize winning experiment with school stationary! Just take the tape, apply it to the tip of the pencil, rip it off, and you’ve just produced a very very small quantity of graphene, now attached to the tape.
Recipe two
For a slightly more involved recipe, provided by New Scientist, is noted as the recipe which could soon be used in industry for manufacturing graphene in bulk (take note, prospective graphene manufacturing tycoons)
Step one: buy graphite powder. As of my writing this article, you can buy a quart of it on Amazon for $18.99.
Step two: Pour it in a blender.
Step three: add water and common dish soap
Step three: blend at high speed
New Scientist notes that, scaling up this method for industry, a 10,000 liter vat in a factory, could create 100 grams of graphene per hour, which may not seem impressive, but laboratories are used to only producing ½ a gram per hour using previous methods.
Newcomer: Graphullerite
Late in 2022, while this article was still in production, a new material was discovered. Graphullerite. Graphullerite is a sort of combination of the molecular structure of graphene and fullerenes. The potential uses and application of this new material are unknown, as it has just been discovered. May it yield plenty of good for us in the years and decades to come.
It was midday, and I went as usual to the town at the foot of the mountain during school break. It was a clean day when I went into the train station and took the next train to Russia. It only took 30 minutes from Switzerland on a Swiss-quality train to the Steppes of Russia. I stepped outside the train to find myself in a random metropolis in God knows what part of Russia. Instantly, it was the strange brutalist shapes of the nearby houses that fascinated me; every structure was the same dark grey that exists in Bosnia, but every building could have been shaped by hand by a giant sculptor. As I walk down the street, the more and more I see Communist Symbolism from Decades ago that stares down at me, as if they wanted to see me pass some sort of test, and the more and more the buildings make less sense. Somehow I managed to find the big open market. A peaceful place at first, until multiple armed men stormed the place and raised their unknown white and red flags. The men shot into the air and were shouting something I could not understand. I immediately left the place and searched for a way back to the train station. Other divisions of the revolutionary group also occupied the train station, and rifle shots could already be heard all over the asphalt jungle. I ran through the Slavic Chaos while every brutalist structure was reforming its shapes, as if they were collapsing and rebuilding themselves into new bulwarks and the old Leninistic sculptures were their masters. Finally, I found some Italian friends that just happened to be here, and we all got into their car and left the beautiful battlefield. By that time, it had also become dark while we were driving back to Switzerland. We talked, talked, and talked—we talked so much that the driver took a slightly wrong turn and drove straight into a gigantic concrete castle with an Adidas logo on it. At the exact moment of the crash, everything turned black; I couldn’t hear or see anything; there was only darkness—the exact same darkness I witnessed when I passed out months ago. I had the marvellous and calming feeling that my mind was completely disconnected from my body for a short period of time. It only took a few seconds until I woke up.
i know i’ll never be missed, nor do i have a will to live, and yet, every night, the sun sets in this cruel world of regret. time just passes, moves forward, and the world goes on without me. i’m no soldier, nor a victim. i can’t even blame ‘the system’. all of this pain, this sorrow, it’s all mine to bear, mine alone, and i have no one to blame but myself. i have no life to reclaim. but, tomorrow morning the sun will rise, and I’ll continue to live this life i claim to despise.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Sculpture, The Rape of Proserpina
Two weeks ago, I published a poem by a regular contributor of ours Ezra S. It was a love poem that he wrote for his girlfriend, so I thought using Salvador Dali’s the Triumph of Love as the thumbnail picture would be appropriate. Unfortunately when I posted the link on twitter, the use of the image was deemed unsafe for human consumption, due to the nudity in it, and the link was censored. I thought “Well, this is fucking stupid.” There is nudity in the painting, but I couldn’t see any sane person seeing this painting as pornographic. A week later I published another poem by FF regular Jackson. I used some Hans Bellmer photography for the image, as the poem was intentionally transgressive and I thought that Bellmer captured the vibe perfectly. Again when I posted the link on twitter we were censored due to nudity (there is no nudity in the image) and again I was taken aback. “Who in their right mind would consider this pornographic?” Bellmer’s work is disturbing, for sure, and some of his more graphic work, I suppose could be deemed pornographic, but the image I used does not fit the criteria. This leads me to the topic of this article, and kind of confirms my fears of rightward drift on twitter. The pornography question and why I don’t support calls to ban pornography.
First of all I don’t think that pornography can be defined in a clear cut way that wouldn’t result in things that most people wouldn’t consider pornographic also becoming subject to censorship. I’m talking about erotic art, fashion photography, music/films/literature with sexual themes. The list goes on. A ban on pornography would lead to a slippery slope, where anything that might cause someone to have sexual thoughts, being subject to censorship or banning outright. According to Oxford dictionary pornography can be defined as “printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.” So it comes down to artistic intent, something that is difficult to measure and is entirely objective. Are Amadeo Modigliani’s nude portraits artistic or pornographic? It really depends on who happens to be viewing them. Is a film like Cronenberg’s ‘Crash’ pornographic? There is a lot of graphic sex in the film, but I wouldn’t say that the intent is to stimulate the viewer in the same way as the stuff on pornhub is intended to do. Fact is I have zero faith in right wingers (the people who usually call for porn to be banned) to make the distinction. They are hostile to the arts in general and are incapable of drawing the distinction between something that has artistic merit and something that does not.
Perhaps Wilhelm Reich can help explain why reactionaries always define pornography in the broadest possible terms.
“The reactionary of any kind condemns sexual pleasure because it stimulates and repulses him at the same time. He is unable to solve the conflict within him between sexual demands and moralistic inhibitions. The revolutionary refutes the perverse, unhealthy kind of pleasure, because it is not his kind of pleasure, because it is not the sexuality of the future, but the sexuality which results from the conflict between instinct and morals, the sexuality of authoritarian society, a debased, smutty, pathological sexuality.” ― Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism
When a reactionary sees things depicting sexuality or eroticism, their mind see’s something dirty. It doesn’t matter how graphic the images actually are, the chemical reaction in their brain is the same. It takes their mind to places that they don’t want it go, so it has to be stamped out. It always becomes very clear whenever talking to these people that their call to ban porn is not limited to what you might find on pornhub, but is extended to anything at all sexual or erotic.
Personally, I think it should be harder to access the really raunchy stuff on pornhub (parental controls are a thing and there is something to be said for personal responsibility) but I wouldn’t even support that stuff being banned. First of all it would push the industry into the underground. Demand for this stuff wouldn’t just go away and a criminal element would arise to capitalize on that. This would put more people at risk, than keeping it above ground and regulated would. Furthermore, porn provides an outlet for sexual frustration. These frustrations again wouldn’t just go away, but could potentially manifest themselves in much more destructive ways, in pornography’s absence. Not that I think people SHOULD watch porn, but it shouldn’t be considered criminal activity either. That seems retarded to me.
Banning porn would also set a dangerous social precedent beyond just the issue of artistic expression, when your allowed to have sex (only in marriage), with whom, for what purpose (reproductive purposes only), what clothes women are allowed to wear and so on. A repressive society that I would rather avoid. Sex should be a private manner, that moral puritans and the government stay out of. That’s not to say that there aren’t problems with modern sexuality, but the commodification of sex and it’s consequences is a topic for another article.
This isn’t a matter of futurist vs traditionalist. Older art styles are full of nudity and sex, while sexuality and nudity are not very common in futurist art at all. Marinetti attributed D’Annunzio’s erotomania to his traditionalism in “Futurism’s First Battles” and Evola wrote an entire book on sex called Eros and the Mysteries of Love, where he talks about Tantra and Crowlian Sex Magic among other things. Trad doesn’t necessarily imply anti-sexuality. This is actually something that Futurist art accounts and Trad art accounts should be able to agree on, as it affects both of us. It’s a specific type of puritanical American traditionalism that takes on these attitudes. At one point these people had banned Christmas because they associated it with sinfulness. They have always been a pain in everyone’s ass, and nobody should take them seriously.
And to be clear, if you are actually addicted to porn, you should get that checked. Porn shouldn’t be used as a substitute for real sex. Moderate usage, in times of need, isn’t going to hurt you, just as moderate alcohol use isn’t going to result in alcoholism, but chronic porn use can become a problem and damage your ability to enjoy real sex. So be wary. With that being said, I am absolutely opposed to prudish people that say that your sexuality and desires are evil, and I oppose all efforts to suppress something as healthy and natural as sex. I will close with a quote from Valentine de Saint-Point’s Futurist Manifesto on Lust.
“Lust, when viewed without moral preconceptions and as an essential part of life’s dynamism, is a force.
Lust is not, any more than pride, a mortal sin for the race that is strong. Lust, like pride, is a virtue that urges one on, a powerful source of energy.
Lust is the expression of a being projected beyond itself. It is the painful joy of wounded flesh, the joyous pain of a flowering. And whatever secrets unite these beings, it is a union of flesh. It is the sensory and sensual synthesis that leads to the greatest liberation of spirit. It is the communion of a particle of humanity with all the sensuality of the earth.”
Futurism Forever 