If Pere Ubu was a response to post-war industrial america, what is Pere Ubus response to post-industrial information age or digital age america?
Pere Ubu is not a response to post-war industrial America in the way I suspect you mean to suggest. Pere Ubu is a celebration of post-war industrial America. We have to this day a deep and abiding affection for its consumer society. But we were, from the beginning, acutely aware of our place in the stream of history. We were the last of the Americans… like the last of the Mohicans. We were the last ones to have known the Golden Age and we saw the dimness come, and we knew what that meant, and yet we could not find it in ourselves to weep. Still we had seen for ourselves how the sun used to shine off its polished surfaces. So clearly and pure. (After us come the barbarians.) I don’t recognize any “information age” unless you are using the term ironically. The Datapanik Manifesto (1977) dictates that information will become a weapon to be used against us as notions of value and meaning are ridiculed in a storm of confetti. Is that what you mean? If so, silence is the only adequate resp
