ISSN: 1705-6411
Volume 4, Number 3 (October 2007)
Author: Dr. Alan Cholodenko

In 1984 Edward Colless and I invited Jean Baudrillard to Sydney to be keynote speaker at FUTUR◊FALL: Excursions into Post-Modernity, Australia’s first conference/art event on postmodernism. FUTUR◊FALL consisted of four nights of performances and three days of papers at five different venues, with over 1200 people at the Opening Night, 1200 at Baudrillard’s first lecture and over 700 registered for the event. What a celebration it was! For FUTUR◊FALL I wrote and taped with Emmanuel Gasparinados this rap, a rap picturing the world as I thought accorded with Baudrillard’s vision. It was played at the end of the performances on the Opening Night of FUTUR◊FALL, a night called by me ‘The Eve of Distraction’. I offer it to The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies as a different kind of ‘obituary’ to Jean, and I dedicate it to him now, as I did then.

In the difference between difference and in
Difference is seen as the scene to be in
But what is difference at the end of the trip
When difference meets the indifference of the strip.
What are lines of flight
At the end of the light
When the only attraction
Is the Eve of Distraction.
FUTUR◊FALL: where the night never ends.
In the era of simulation
Nothing’s left but fascination
No production
Seduction
All across the nation
It’s computerisation, satellization,
Miniaturisation, orbitalization.
Walt Disney’s in suspended animation(!)
The Retro-Neo-Mise-en-Abime
Transistor-No Resister Sister-Mise-en-Obscene.
No subject, no object
No future, no past
No text, no context
Presence’s absence at last.
The death of the author
The death of the reader
Contra Barthes
The death of art.
No referent, no sign
No cosmic design.
Tell me: what do you feel
‘bout the death of the real?
Tell me, what do you feel
‘bout the death of the real?
Polarities implode
At the end of the road.
Radical eclectic
Retro aesthetic
History’s end’s
Just around the bend.
Catastrophe
Is all that I can see.
It’s Apocalypse Now
Hyper-real
Tell me, what do you feel
‘bout the Hyper-real?
Zarathustra
Had the news to
Tell the nation:
I feature
Nietzsche.
I feature
Nietzsche.
I feature
Nietzsche.
Deleuze and Guattari
Mitsubishi Atari
Body without organs
Deterrence machine
The episteme
Has run out of steam.
The epistemé
Has had its day.
Lévi-Strauss
Raus raus.
No no, no no
To Foucault (and Donzelot).
The episteme
Has run out of steam.
Lyotard’s dream
Is a passeist scene.
No passion.
Fashion.
No loophole.
Black hole.
In the difference between difference and in
Difference is seen as the scene to be in.
But what is difference at the end of the trip
When difference meets the indifference of the strip.
Tell me,
What do you feel
‘bout the Hyper-real?
The post is the most
From coast to coast.
All across the nation
A brand new sensation.
Affirmation, negation
What is the equation?
Do the FUTUR◊FALL.
Do the FUTUR◊FALL…