PLATFORM-REFLEXIVE RECONTEXTUALISATION
This lecture explores critical video in the age of social media, presenting 2 or 3 recent works and discussing my approach and ideas.
Topics include platform capitalism and popular pedagogy, the cost-of-living crisis and higher education in the UK, and the possibilities for international cooperation in a networked age.
My work constructs speculative fictions using image, music and text to recontextualize and reimagine mainstream media. Zero budget visual and musical responses to present conditions rework available social media in a spirit of critical inquiry and play.
My recent research and video practice has begun to engage with cultural and social relations between people in UK, China and the far east. Challenging dominant ideas that position us as rivals or enemies, I prefer to imagine us as comrades and potential collaborators.
From my music video ‘You make me feel so (1917)’ in 2017 to ‘Boom, labubu!’ in 2025, recent films have told new stories and initiated new dialogues between east and west. Together critical western artists and workers can collaborate across borders and imagine other forms of freedom.
本尼迪克特·司墨的讲座探讨社交媒体时代的影像创作，本次讲座将呈现两至三件其近期作品，并阐述其创作方法与理念。影像内容涵盖了社交媒体平台的资本化与大众教育、英国生活成本危机和当下的高等教育现状主题，以及网络时代国际性合作的各种可能性。司墨运用影像、音乐与文本构建思辨性虚构叙事，重构主流媒体的语境并重新想象其形态。用零预算的视觉表达，并结合音乐创作来探究社会问题与游乐精神，作品本身对当下社会现状作出回应，并重新诠释现有社交媒体素材。
其近期研究与影像实践开始关注英国、中国及远东地区人群间的文化社会关系。司墨的研究挑战将人类定位为对手或敌人的主流观念，更倾向将大众视为同志与潜在的合作伙伴。从2017年音乐视频《你让我感觉如此（1917）》到2025年作品《轰！拉布布！》（You make me feel so (1917)；Boom, labubu! 2025），其近期影片持续探索和书写东西方新型叙事，开启跨文化对话。东西方艺术家与劳动者可以跨越国界协作，共同构想当下创作的多元形态。
HYPOTHETICAL FILMS / PARASOCIALIST (SUR)REALISM
First I want to talk about my previous work a little then discuss 2
of what I am calling these HYPOTHETICAL FILMs
pitches for unmakeable movies that remake what has been made -
2 examples from 2018 and 2025 both geopolitical pop videos:
you make me feel so 1917 AND BOOM labubu!
but first some history (inc a key prototype work in 2009)
STRUCTURE OF TALK
history
THE OCCUPATION & THE LONDON PARTICULAR (2001-4)
crisis in the uk post thatcher or before
regeneration and genetricfaction - the transfwer of wealth from poor to rich - land and capital - real estate property looting crisis
2008
olympicfield olympics big scale land grab debt issues
Screen
OLYMPICFIELD (2009)
Continuing theme of enclosures and capital as alien invasion displacing populations
Begins techniques of found footage or recontextualisation / recombination a la detournment
(Godard situationists etc)
2008 crisis
Bang! (2012) - with Matthew Noel-Tod - allegories of riots and regen species comminism
second class citizens - humans and other animals
DEAD THE END ENDS (2017)
- technique of appropriation, of found footage as a form of looting - from below
Does the recontext n detournment on grand scale using platform era forms of the meme and gif as basic units of narrative - scene and thematics - expanding montage and mise en scene thru superimposition, aggregation or juxtaposition of image and layered or collided chunks of sound n found musical motifs
always used music and sound design in my films and made several albums with petit mal antifam etc - but this becomes central again in projects in last ten years
YOU MAKE ME FEEL SO 1917 (2018)
2017/18 - anniversary of russian revolution - revolutionary defeatism militarism and race/ war
korea and n/s - trump
BOOM LABUBU! (2025)
boom labubu - advent of chinese soft power - phenomenal arrival of china on world stage of cultural power
platform critical - platform reflexisive popularism /// social media critiques - of circulation (cap)
looting returning in the form of platfrma nd cloud cpaitlaist monopoly
the question of international solidarity against race/ war and militarism
the crisis spreads as far as my work place - HE Uk
culture of stans and stars, insta etc
QUESTIONS AND PROPOSITIONS
Can we model a vision of solidarity thru reinhabiting and recombining these parasocial relations
(ie Dua and charli and the commitments and contradictions they perform) ?
Rather than a simple first person mode of narrating our own so called individuated lives
maybe through these materialist archetypes (material girl boy assemblages) we can stage rehearse project new class race and gender relations that challenge the rule of the border and category and capital
So the pop video recombination becomes a tool of recomposing labour - if only In imagination - and in code before and in between movements of conte station and of international solidarity in practice
The video is at once more and more ambitious and more and more modest - in a sense here dwindling from larger critical ambitions and discursive abstraction and mapping to ‘cheering up’ the global comrades amid intensifying genocide and militarism. But the fairy tale, hypothetical recontextualised fragment or meme like montage of distractions is also a way of mapping the development and (apparent) I’m/possibilities of collective action through disintegrated spectacle.
Like Singing in the rain in the 1950s or Demy and Varda and Godard in the 60s where the political social becomes more explicit , platform reflexive recombination and dramatization might be a way to find hope and open up unspoken possibilities in the present.
The possibility of refunctioning the network effects and ponzi style dynamics of labubu as platform capitalist commodity economy is the secret of boom labubu and its inversion of the capital and market sanctioned labubu boom
(Marx’s inversion of subject and predicate; also labubu as hobgoblin haunting the capitalist spectacle)
YOU MAKE ME FEEL
2017/18 - anniversary of russian revolution - revolutionary defeatism militarism and race/ war
korea and n/s - trump
KEY TERMS
GENTRIFICATION
中产阶级化
Zhōngchǎn jiējí huà
REAL ESTATE
房地产
Fángdìchǎn
LOOTING
抢劫
Qiǎngjié
PROPERTY
财产
Cáichǎn
MONOPOLY AND MONOPSONY
Lǒngduàn hé lǒngduàn
垄断和垄断
TRANSFER OF WEALTH
财富转移
Cáifù zhuǎnyí
TRANSFER OF WEALTH FROM RICH TO POOR
财富从富人向穷人转移
Cáifù cóng fù rén xiàng qióngrén zhuàn yí
ACCUMULATION BY DISPOSSESSION
通过剥夺积累
Tōngguò bōduó jīlěi
REFUNCTION
功能恢复
Gōngnéng huīfù
RECONTEXTUALISE
重新语境化
Chóngxīn yǔ jìng huà
PLATFORM CAPITALISM
平台资本主义
Píngtái zīběn zhǔyì
MONOPOLY
垄断
Lǒngduàn
MONOPSONY
买方垄断
Mǎifāng lǒngduàn
LOOTING FROM BELOW
自下而上的掠夺
Zì xià ér shàng de lüèduó
REAPPROPRIATION
重新拨款
Chóngxīn bōkuǎn
RECONTEXTUlSATION AS REAPPROPRIATION
重新语境化即重新挪用
Chóngxīn yǔ jìng huà jí chóngxīn nuóyòng
COLLABORATION
合作
Hézuò
PARASOCIAL ANTHEM
准社会
Zhǔn shèhuì
SAMIZDAT
地下出版物
Dìxià chūbǎn wù
REBUS
谜语
Míyǔ
YOU MAKE ME FEEL SO 1917
트Generation, aka 트G, was a trans-communist italo-k-pop outfit in the 20-teens. Their commitment to revolutionary defeatism has never been more topical. 'Revolutionary defeatism is a concept made most prominent by Vladimir Lenin in World War I. It is based on the Marxist idea of class struggle. Arguing that the proletariat could not win or gain in a capitalist war, Lenin declared its true enemy is the imperialist leaders who sent their lower classes into battle. Workers would gain more from their own nations' defeats, he argued, if the war could be turned into civil war and then international revolution.' Let's make it real tho, 2022.
K-pop project: 트Generation
[Transgeneration]*
“... let's make it real tho”
Revolutionary defeatism as a pop song to learn and sing.
Starting from the present virtual state of exception (2017-18 -> ?), this music video project considers whether kpop has latent kommunist potential.
Anticipating the revolt of Korean women against still dominant gender/class & race binaries, the video reaches across the demilitarized zone (DMZ) as it follows the psychedelic journey of 2 young lovers on a magic memory foam mattress soaring beyond race, class and gender.
With the help of a cameo from the great Harisu, Korea’s first transgender pop star, the denouement pits trans love against conscripted (terf?) war.
You Make Me Feel So (1917) is a trans-kommunist anti-militarist anthem from the era of Trump 1.0 and BLM. As we segue to proxy and trade wars maybe it’s getting more (un)timely?
동무: Dongmo: Friend/comrade
K-pop = Kommunist pop with 동무- character-istics
동무may be ultimately of Sino-Korean origin, from
동모 同謀, dongmo, “planning together; complotting; collusion”). 동무 (dongmu) was originally a non-ideological, neutral word for "friend" once used all over the Korean Peninsula, but North Koreans later adopted it as the equivalent of the Communist term of address "comrade".
Music, concept, video – B. Seymour.
Research, discussion, translation, vocals – Soohyun Choi