INTERVIEW: Douglas Rushkoff - Breaking Through - Pt. 1
Interview conducted by Jonathan Ellis

Introduction
Interview - Part 1
Interview - Part 2

Cover

Is the use of teenagers affecting consensus reality in the dream world of Club Zero-G reflective of their effect in our world? When I hear ‘Teenagers affecting consensus reality’ it brings to mind your Merchants Of Cool documentary.

In some ways, yes. Teenagers have become so much the focus of everybody else. In a certain sense - at least as far as marketers and parents and maybe law enforcement are concerned - teenagers are the centre of the universe. But it's not the kind of attention any human being needs. It's attention trained on how to market to them, predict their behaviour, and, at worst, turn them into compliant mindless consumers.

The strange part is that all this marketing seems to work better on the adults than the kids. That's why adult women wear all those pathetic childhood dresses, and why adult men lust after their daughter's high school friends. Everybody wants to be in the world depicted in an A&F catalogue, out in the woods enjoying those bisexual Nazi youth fantasies. As if age 19 is the end of life - then you go over some sort of cliff.

So Club Zero-G is about a similar phenomenon, in that everyone - adults, the military, as well as some sort of interdimensional beings and their enemies are all focusing on the teenagers in this story. Observing them, getting into their dreams, and so on. In the story, they represent the last generation of humans before the genome gets corrupted; but that's really more of an allegory for a stage of life, and a stage of civilization. Adolescence of the species.

Which sort of brings up the question of whether or not the species is adhering to the ‘Live fast, Die young’ concept, as more seem to be predicting its downfall rather then its evolution.

Even the 'live fast, die young' ideal is a bit more romantic than what we're doing. Indeed, it appears we might not live through our puberty as a civilization, because we still think girls have cooties, if you will. We've gotten to the stage where we need to develop a certain amount of cross-cultural intimacy, instead of just fear.

To me, it looks less like a rock and roll adolescence than a childhood addicted to Ritalin. Yes, things are speedy, but in a terrifyingly self-reinforcing cycle. The West is now depending, literally, on chemicals and faith to push us through. But our behaviours and perceptions seem quite analogous to those experienced by an individual in the final stages of amphetamine psychosis.

Page 1

Years ago I did an essay wherein I basically said humanity had chosen comfort over evolution. Opting for ‘more of the same’ if you will, much like the comics medium…

Comfort in the short-term. It's like drinking too much coffee. It can get you through the afternoon, but then you're more tired the next day. Everything in the West is short-term - as a result of industrialization, mass-production, and the need for more rapid consumption. We have to burn everything up really fast so as to need to produce and purchase more. It's the problem with end-stage capitalism in a commodities-based economy. There are ways out other than bloody revolution, of course, but our addiction to the quick fix, analogous to corporate culture's obedience to the short-term quarterly report, makes that a lot harder.

You started this project a while ago, since its inception has your approach to the ideas in Club Zero-G changed in any way? I notice many of the themes present here are also the basis of discussions in your NYU class.

Well, I always saw Club Zero-G as a way to express some pretty esoteric ideas in a very simple, and tangible way. So while the thinking might be inspired by Hegel, de Chardin, or Foucault, the story and characters are really straightforward. On the other hand, the premise for the story came to me in a dream - so while my dreams are probably affected by the kinds of stuff I read, this notion of a world we can all access together while we're asleep came from my subconscious. Really, for a few days after this weird dream, I was convinced that I had been to a real place, inhabited psychically by hundreds of people I knew.

So that idea was there from the beginning. Originally, I wanted to do this as a four-volume set. It started as a serial in BPM magazine, and I figured that would be enough to sell it somewhere, or to get BPM to sponsor the books. When Disinformation finally stepped up to the plate, they wanted the thing to be finished in a single volume - so I had to do a lot of thinking on how to simplify the story. There's definitely a lot more to be told - so that's either going to happen in some additional books that explain some more about these characters and their worlds, or in the screenplay or novel if there is one.

Page 2

What was the appeal of starting this story in a sequential format? While comics are mainly an entertainment medium, I know you see comics for their potential to teach and impart as well as entertain.

Well, first, writing in a serialized format felt like a challenge I hadn't tried before. Novelists like Dickens did it, and I was interested to see what it was like to get to the end of a story when you can't go back and change anything at the beginning. So it's kind of like drawing a line. I was also interested to see what it would be like to engage with an audience, back and forth, over a period of years.

As for tackling a sequential medium, that has to do with the story, itself. It's not a story I wanted to tell in a novel or screenplay. It's about sequence, itself, in a way. Multiple time periods, attempting to affect one another. Multiple states of mind and consciousness. Sequential media lets you juxtapose realities quite naturally. It also forces a kind of audience involvement in relating the panes to one another. So since this is a story about the audience taking charge of the story, it seemed sequential narrative was the only way to go - if I wanted to practice what I was preaching, and convey this with the medium rather than just the content.

When you say ‘Multiple states of mind and consciousness’ I think of Alan Moore and how he creates his performances so as to stimulate all the senses. Did you think of Club Zero-G as a performance at all? Maybe a Club Zero-G soundtrack?

Steph, the artist, has been asking for this for a long time. He wants to create a set of dance tracks that would correspond to various points in the story. I think that would be great fun. I did write this story for this particular medium, though, so I don't know that I'd need to go Wagnerian, if you will, with this material. If I had the ability to do a full-fledged performance with this, I'd probably be into something more spatial than performative. Some kind of immersive experience - a walk through. Or even a ride of some kind, like in Disneyland.

Have you had any contact with any of the mainstream publishers about writing for them or perhaps working with their characters and properties? With your connections to Grant Morrison and with the additional of Jonathan Vankin to editorial, Vertigo seems like a natural choice for your work.

Sure, man, hook me up. Vertigo, pre-Vankin, wasn't interested in Club Zero-G based on the first couple of episodes and a plot outline. They thought it was too superhero, I think. Go figure. It wasn't fully written at the time, so I don't know how they would have reacted to the finished book. But I'd certainly be interested in taking a crack at re-interpreting the Eternals or a DC narrative.

Page 3

As a writer you’ve made quite an evolution, from Media Virus to Nothing Sacred is quite a journey. Had you always planned on coming this far? Where do you see your work in the sequential field fitting in, in the grand scheme of things?

There hasn't really been a plan, other than to participate in the 'great conversation.' And I think I've gotten to do that. If I had a plan, I'd probably be a wealthy guy. My problem, such as it is, is that I'm interested in a whole bunch of stuff, so I don't really become a super expert in anything in particular. The Rushkoff Brand isn't too well defined, at least not in the traditional way.

I do feel like I've been saying one thing, all along: reality is up for grabs, so learn the codes through which the narrative is crafted and participate in its unfolding. It's the great psychedelic insight, as well as the thing people realize when they get involved in computers, systems theory, fantasy role-playing, or even a rave gathering, or media making. Turns out it's also the central message of Judaism - "you will be a nation of priests" really just means that what would make the Jews special is that they'd be the first literate nation. So I wrote a book on Judaism to show how Judaism isn't about race or religion, it's about overturning those obsolete notions and getting involved in writing the story of our reality. They didn't react to well to that - at least not most of the ones going to synagogue, and all. Scholars and very literate rabbis got it, but most of them wrote to tell me "yeah, you've got it - but it's not the Judaism people are ready for."

And the graphic novel says the same things, but in a different way. I don't want to give the whole story away, but it's basically about breaking free of the story. That's why I used a conventional format and structure, and then twist it up a bit. It's two comic books, or maybe three, that collide: a realistic one, an anime story, and then a more hyperdimensional thing. But the main character eventually calls the other characters out on their adherence to traditional plot structure.

It is also comes back to the matter of control and reality creating the question of who’s really in power.

Yeah, but the people who are "really" in power are dead. They're not actually in power, they are in service to their idols and institutions. But they can't see it. Fertile life is not sitting in a chair being rich, or having a title or a bunch of cash. But those symbolic rewards are enough to make most of our smartest and creative people surrender their very lives to very dead institutional forces.

Page 4

In the past we had announced here at PopImage that Grant Morrison, Genesis P-Orridge and yourself would be collaborating on a project together. Is this endeavour still underway?

I suppose not. Not that one, anyway. That first weekend we were supposed to get together, in upstate New York, Grant's mom got sick. So he cancelled his flight, and Gen and I met alone. We made a bunch of recordings of our conversations - Gen has them, somewhere.

Then I invited Grant to a strange conference I did out in Aspen, and we had some conversations, there, but Gen wasn't around for that one. Grant has since gotten even bigger - he's doing stuff in Hollywood, now - and doesn't really have time for such an open-ended thing. And I've ended up joining PsychicTV - Gen's band - as the keyboardist. So there's all sorts of associations happening, just not the book. We're all in Richard Metzger's Disinformation Interviews book, but in different chapters.

Oh, and Grant and I will be teaching a spiritual workshop together - yeah, you read that right - spiritual - at the Omega Institute this August. I don't imagine this will be a trip for the feint of heart.

That should be very interesting. Have you decided on the sort of approach you’ll be taking for the class? I also wholeheartedly recommend the Disinformation Interviews book, which is just filled to brimming with genius and talent.

Honestly, I've got no idea whatsoever of what's going to happen. I'm assuming we'll get some sort of individual units, or lecture/workshop periods. I'd use my time to show that literacy and spirituality are the same thing. That pretty much every religion starts by giving the participants power over the narrative - and then the religions turn into institutions that discourage this kind of authorship.

I imagine there will be space for us to get into some deep conversations. I just hope it isn't one of those situations - and these happen a lot - where the coolest conversations occur between the 'leaders' away from the official events. Lots of times, the kinds of people coming to these things are rich dilettantes looking for a quick dip into heavy thinking, without any threat of actually being changed. And when that happens, those of us leading the thing end up feeling a bit alienated, and end up talking to each other rather than with the people who have come to engage with us. The challenge is to resist this.

But yeah - these guys are about as smart and weird as anyone alive today. So it's a great honour to be on the same bill. I hope a big mass of people show up, so it gets kind of wild. I could use a shake up.

Page 5

In the publisher outline they make a note of referring to this graphic novel as ‘American’. With an oppressive force trying to control consensus reality at the centre of this story, is this perhaps why the American part is accentuated?

When I wrote the original story, back in 2000 and 2001, the whole 9-11 thing hadn't happened, yet. So I was less concerned with oppression of bodies and behaviours than a more subtle oppression of mind and spirit. And I figured that if corporate America and government were so very fixed on being able to predict and direct human thought and action, there really was a threat to free will. It's a lot of what I talk about in my book, Coercion.

So yeah, it's about the replacement of a collectively rendered landscape of possibility with the centrally devised reality of maximum profit. And that effort, these days, finds its direction from America. The premise of the story is to look at what happens when a civilization succumbs to the enforcement of 'consensus,' however oppressive things need to get. But I wanted to give the reader a set of countermeasures more hopeful and potentially useful than kung fu or appointing a messiah, like in the Matrix.

But the real origin of "American" in the publicity materials probably comes from my early contention that America needed to answer Japan's anime with a story and style of our own. That's why I picked Steph Dumais to draw the book, instead of some anime artist - which could have seemed like a more logical choice. Steph's work is a bit more rough and tumble. Gregarious, and even funny. It's definitely not manga.

Another important aspect is approaching ‘rave’ as a culture and not just a party.

Well, I hate to call it a "rave" story because the word - the meme - has suffered of late. Most kids think of it as a failed movement, when it's probably one of the only music genres that has resisted co-option by the MTV machine. I mean, even hiphop is owned by Sprite.

Rave wasn't just about electronic music, but about an alternative to a top-down music industry, economy, and social environment. Rave is an effort to generate a collective experience that still respects individual autonomy. Not an easy task.

But I don't use the word rave in the book, even though these giant, organismic parties clearly take their cue from rave. While I didn't want to alienate people who are 'over' rave or who never got into it, I do help explain to people what was really under all that energy. What I do in this story, however, is try to extend the metaphor of collective organism to the next level. What does it really mean to be creating reality?

Page 6

Raves of course are not as prevalent as they were a few years back, perhaps because the ravers are too preoccupied with reality television, do you think the lessening of the rave culture is a loss for today’s youth?

Systems find ways of balancing. Rave - real rave - was launched in the early cyberdelic era. It was the thing after grunge, actually. The next form of resistance, this time through celebration and communion. What may have hurt rave the most was its migration to legal venues. Rave began as an appropriation of space and time. It was a political act, which then pushed a cultural identity forward.

So while the diminution of rave in youth consciousness may not be a loss, in itself, I don't see very much that's arrived to take its place - at least not in the same way. I think the resistance is being fought right now more in Blogs and WTO protests than in dance parties. But all the people involved in those activities will need the occasional infusion of energy and positive reinforcement. Hopefully, this little book can do some of that.

Introduction
Interview - Part 1
Interview - Part 2

Jonathan Ellis is Co-Editor in Cheif of PopImage and would like to graciously thank Douglas Rushkoff for this interview as well as Patrick Neighly, Anne Sullivan and Gary Baddeley for their assistance.

Jonathan Ellis can be reached at ellis@popimage.com.


PopImage Forum - Discuss this message at the PopImage forum.
Rushkoff.com - Official site of Douglas Rushkoff
Disinfo.com - Official site of The Disinformation Company
Disinfo Store - Disinfo books, DVD's & More
Raisin Love.com - Official Site of Steph Dumais
Mad Yak Press.com - For more work by Patrick Neighly
Merchants Of Cool - Watch the full Documentary Online
The Omega Institute - Douglas Rushkoff will be appearing here in August along with Grant Morrison, Richard Metzger, Howard Bloom, and Paul Laffoley

Industrial Archive - Read past Industrial articles