Vague Media  

"The magna of culture: confused traditions, mono-opinions, inconsequent 
discourses and quasi-argumentations." - Alex in "Xuxem" 

Vague media do not respond to success. They do not achieve their goals. 
Their models are not argumentative, but contaminative. Once you tune in 
to them, you get the attitude. But that was never their intention; their 
vagueness is not an ideal, it is the ultimate degree of abstraction. The 
ability to avoid specific questions is combined with answers which lack 
any depth of field. This is why vague media still manage to appear 
diplomatic and polite. Their social critique is troubled by an unsteady 
world view. For them, crisis does not lead to a new beginning, but to a 
gradual evaporation of the problem area. Doubt doesn't merely arise; it's 
a sixth sense. The senselessness of existence renders everything a 
sensible activity which can be given up whenever desired, so that nothing 
ever gets finished. Here, no one works; rather, one devotes oneself to 
taking apart and putting back together undefined objects and projects. 
The liquid being of vague-media adherents never crystallizes into 
definite forms. When beginning and endpoint have disappeared from view, 
existence can be experienced in peace. Having obliterated the factor of 
time, the vague ones distribute their concentration over n years and 
transmit their broadcasts only on homeopathic frequencies. They are no 
less present for that. 

Vague media do not depend on any network requiring construction or 
maintenance. The lines of the net are dissolved in an astral mist. In 
lieu of distribution decisions, a random selection is offered, and 
eagerly snapped up. In this post-atomic business culture, uncertainty is 
the foundation of efficiency. The untrustworthiness of agreements is not 
a result of other activities, but a sign of good will. The field of 
possibilities is left open at all times. There is a willingness to get 
caught up in anything, be it a meeting, party, or accident. Parallel to 
transparent society, there unfolds a cloud of vague structures through 
which the subject moves in Brownian motion. This nonlinearity defies the 
rhizomatic dogma that prescribes endless switching. These hard-luck 
pilots do not wander, but stumble from one discontinuity to the next. Nor 
is it a case of trees or roots. With vague media, a veiled belief in 
progressive bifurcation gives way to mist on the window to eternity. 
Undirected recreations form temporary compressions in the random 
distribution of particles that roam the vague ether. Whatever order may 
be discovered in this chaos, it fails to impress the insiders. The 
brilliant conspiracy will be heard out for a while, then forgotten. 

Vague media are impossible to follow. Their fuzzy logic frustrates 
signifiers in search of uni- or multivocality. The result is a fluffy 
sign (information value 0.34 or 2.74). Nothing is concealed or 
intentionally distorted. One simply does not know exactly, and this 
message comes through. In spite of it all, the other gets plenty of room 
to voice its revolutionary message. There is no fear of data here. The 
historical excursion is a strenuous exertion gladly undertaken, though 
the history of vagueness has yet to be written. There are still plenty of 
shadowy Greek philosophers and not-so-lucid theologians to be discovered 
who didn't quite get around to making their statements, or brilliant 
Renaissance painters who never came into their own. The B movie rose 
above pulp and started being taken seriously a long time ago; there is no 
reason why the same fate should not befall B thinkers (e.g., Russell), B 
literature, and the rest of illegible culture. Certain historical figures 
have found their natural habitat in vague media: Mao, Gysin, Manson, 
Reich, Jesus, Debord, Meinhof, Fromm, Hitler, Hendrix, Castaneda, 
Goldman, Marley, Pippi Longstocking; furthermore, cookbooks, weapons, 
children's drawings, witches, blood, skulls and crossbones, and animals 
(by all means, animals). As long as it's cut up, overloaded with text, 
dark and intense, with heavy black-and-white illustrations. 

The vague medium as object and the vague one as determinant subject are 
inseparable. Their shared foggy concept of barriers prevents man & media 
from growing apart. Comprehensibility arises only when the subject 
succeeds in extracting an object, thus rendering himself obsolete. 
Vagueness is not so much a strategy as it is a style of media. The 
matching design, as rugged as it is blurred, does not signify a lack of 
concept, but something like an essentialist approach. Media are not used 
as homes or garments, but as durable nutrition that will last for years. 
Media, housing and clothing become interesting only after they've lost 
all practical or exchange value and any hope of ever becoming youthful, 
nice, hip, or risqué - in short, modern - again. Because the vague ones 
lack the team spirit that distinguishes most fashionable trends and 
movements, they immediately recognize the foreign as their own, whereas 
the normal is alien to them. They have passsed through the doors of 
perception without realizing it and are incapable of finding anything 
normal in normality. This explains their immense rage against anything or 
anyone who tries to force things on them that are "only part of the 
complex society we live in." Far from profound, their indignation lashes 
out unreservedly, to be as quickly forgotten again - until the next 
clash. Not wishing to be irresponsible, they reject all responsibility. 
Johnsons in a mediascape full of shitheads, they subscribe to the slogan, 
"Mind your own business and let other people mind theirs." Their only 
means of attack is the boycott, the active denial of the enemy: Don't 
smoke, don't buy, don't go, don't drink, don't refuel. The achievement of 
the campaigns is to burden activists with impossible standards. 

Vague media are not out of focus, badly printed, or amateurishly edited - 
or are they? Their technological presumption is unshakable. Their 
appearance has been carefully prepared. But these nebulous media do not 
consider themselves products, but atmospheres. It's much harder to 
generate a cloud than it is to cover up in the hype blown up by fleeting 
contacts. All information is admitted to a dimension where the whole is 
not distinguished from the obsolete detail. Overload does not occur, as 
time knows no bounds and chaos is part of the mystery of the world. 
Information and noise only differ when you're in a hurry. The issue of 
hazy media results from a spring cleaning of the personal archive. In 
contradiction to Third World scrap collectors who scrutinize garbage 
dumps in search of recyclable goods, the transmitters of crap patiently 
comb the public domain for material to embellish their private dumps 
with. Another example of Grassmuck-Unverzagt's Law: Waste can be 
transferred but not destroyed. 

Ongoing research in the semi-scientific domain consists exclusively of 
sources, and is not concerned with such trivia as surveys, summaries or 
final conclusions. Vague media adhere to the teachings of Claude Shannon, 
who holds that views and opinions can be deciphered only as information. 
The preference for torn-out newspaper photographs does not mean they see 
them as illustrations or works of art; instead they are a collection of 
possible meanings, none of which takes preference over the others. Even 
the more powerful signs and symbols (such as the star or swastika) that 
keep popping up on their pages and frequencies are blessed with this 
charm. Like crystal-ball media, they are simultaneously maximally and 
minimally abstract. From the viewpoint of vague media, meaning is a 
matter best left to users. To them, the blurred relationship between sign 
and meaning is a social achievement.
 
Far from being particularly obsessive or passionate, vague media harp 
forever on the same subject. Whereas sovereign media are on a perpetual 
journey of discovery, the vague channels pitch their tents for an 
indefinite time or stick around forever. The universe is all around, so 
why mobilize? For vague media, the greatest mystery is their own 
functioning. This existential moment sees to it that individual 
expressions never take on a definite or immutable form, yet make a point. 
The travelers of the "terrain vague" find their way in wastelands where 
even the hot-spot tourists du moment get lost. Vague media are not 
concerned with forms, but with the empty spaces in between, which are 
timeless. This is why they will long outlive the rising and setting of 
other media.
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