Surplus Matter

Tom McCarthy and Simon Critchley publish the International Necronautical Society’s Interim Report on Recessional Aesthetics in the June 2009 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

A link to a Russian radio (Svobodanews) feature on the International Necronautical Society.

Really good art and literature is always political—perhaps all the more so the less directly it seems to be. In a way (I’m being provocative here, but I believe this, too), engaging with the symbolic order directly, with the realm of meaning, hacking right into its source code, is more radical than taking meaning for granted in order to simply make a statement.

Tom McCarthy takes part in a roundtable in the latest issue of Bookforum.

I’ve been working with Tom McCarthy for nearly ten years now. It began as this strange project of trying to construct an avant-garde group along the lines of the Surrealists and the Futurists, and to do that in an impersonal form, to write collectively and construct manifestos and develop a Soviet-style aesthetic we’ve used in the events we’ve done. It’s fascinating to inhabit the persona of society, when me and Tom write, it’s genuinely interesting. He’s a novelist, I’m a philosopher: we pull in different directions; it’s very interesting. In many ways, we’re going back to what we were speaking about, we’re trying to do for death what the Situationists did for sex, that’s one way of looking at it. How serious is it? It’s serious, the ideas are absolutely serious, if you read the declaration we did at the Tate, it’s shot through with ideas I’ve developed elsewhere and ideas Tom’s developed elsewhere, but we do it in the form of a conceit, using actors to play us. Because they might actually be better than us. That’s the awful truth.

An interview with INS Chief Philosopher Simon Critchley from 3:AM Magazine.

The Joint Statement was presented at Tate Britain this January and revolves around the notion of “originary inauthenticity” — the trauma of materiality which prevents us from feeling at one with ourselves or the world. Art and literature frequently try to deal with this problem by sublimating matter and “elevating it into form”. Necronauts reject this temptation — they are “modern lovers of debris” who choose to “celebrate the imperfection of matter”. McCarthy points out that “what makes the trajectory of Yeats’s work so fascinating is the shift from early idealism to late materialism, And that’s where Joyce begins: debris, detritus, fragments, Stephen Dedalus squelching rubbish on the beach. That’s the landscape that has to be navigated, here, now — and celebrated, not transcended.”

Andrew Gallix on the International Necronautical Society in the March issue of Dazed & Confused.

The video of the controversial Tate Declaration is now up on the Tate’s website.

The two actors slip out of character and profess not to know very much about the whole thing. The real Tom McCarthy is beaming with delight, having watched from backstage. “We could franchise this,” he tells me. “Imagine Keanu Reeves and Brad Pitt standing in for us!” Everyone is relieved; it all worked out. The press people, the technical staff, and the rest of the INS staff slope off to the pub. In the emptying lobby, a spray of crumbs and crushed cups coat the floor and the sofas, like a punch line: “the brute materiality of the external world,” waiting around for the cleaners to turn up.

Ben Street reviews the International Necronautical Society’s Tate Declaration on Inauthenticity in Triple Canopy.

Pictures from the Tate Declaration on Inauthenticity by Tod Kesselman.

It has been rumoured, post event, that McCarthy and Critchley hired a couple of actors to impersonate them up on the stage in front of the packed auditorium. Contrary to popular opinion I can confirm that it was, in fact, the artist/novelist Tom McCarthy and Professor of Philosophy Simon Critchley before us, thus solidifying the event’s authenticity for those in attendance. This, some of you may recall, is not the first time the INS has caused such controversy.

Lee Rourke reviews the Tate Declaration on Inauthenticity for 3:AM Magazine.

According to the INS, we are all dividuals – the self is divided, split, is inauthentic, we are comic, incomplete; the art we make, which informs our existence, is fake, a forgery, is indeed the there of our thatness. Our journey to death (Necronaut) is a way to navigate existence – there is no transcendence – our matter matters. So: Beckett, Blanchot, and Bataille as drawn by Chuck Jones.

Steve Finbow reviews the Tate Declaration on Inauthenticity for 3:AM Magazine.