Paul Wilson: Mark E. Smith’s Handwriting and the Typography of The Fall
This paper argues that Mark E. Smith’s handwriting (and his use of a range of hand-rendered inscriptions) have been a distinct element of The Fall’s aesthetic throughout their career to date. It surveys the numerous appearances of Mark E. Smith’s handwriting through The Fall’s career—from scrawled ballpoint glyphs on vinyl sleeves to handwriting-as-typeface digital facsimile on CD covers - and attempts to articulate this particular parallel history, where Smith’s typography ‘...has ceased to be a quiescent channel for orderly, sequential argument and become an active visual medium for the complexity of thought.’ (Poyner 1999:73) From it’s first appearance as skewed, stylised proto-logotype (‘Bingo-Master’s Break-Out’ 1978) to chaotic and collapsed aphorisms (‘Hex Enduction Hour’ 1982) and, more recently, fax-paper and marker-penned out/underlining (‘Interim’ 2004), Smith’s orthographic articulation has proved as notable and characteristic as his vocal style and has often been subject to similar manipulation, transformation and reconfiguration. This perceived (visual) poetic sensibility and eye for verbal graphic language seems at odds - and a source of tension - with Smith’s admitted antagonism towards the formalities of graphic design (and designers) and his fondness for the everyday and the non-expert. Smith’s use of handwriting and elements of the hand-rendered/made (together with a perceived antipathy towards any writing technology more sophisticated than the typewriter) continually attempt, therefore, to relocate The Fall’s visual aesthetic towards a notional ‘primitive’, a concept he has professed a strong tendency towards since their earliest incarnation.
Angus McDonald: “The Lie Dream of the Pure Soul”: Mark E. Smith’s Militant Persona
Picking up on the proposed theme of antagonism in the cultural field, and cultural politics, this paper will propose that Smith/The Fall's oeuvre and project, above and beyond any individual record, concert or performance, can be characterised as the achievement and promulgation of a persona best characterised as militant, and that this militant persona is in fact what is definitive of The Fall. A reading of the militant persona will be developed in the context of Alain Badiou's text on Ethics. The relevance of this text is captured in the following: ".... the sole maxim of consistency (and thus of ethics): Keep going! Keep going even when you have lost the thread, when you no longer feel 'caught up' in the process, when the event itself has become obscure, when its name is lost, or when it seems that it may have named a mistake...." (p79) Evidently, a key factor in the Fall's status has been exactly this will to keep going, the anti-nostalgia, the unwillingness to call a halt. The paper will use the Badiou text to analyse The Fall, but will also use The Fall to analyse the Badiou text, thereby exposing some of the strengths and also some of the shortcomings of the militant persona, considering also other embodiments of this idea, such as Guy Debord.
To follow
