Cracking the Movement - ADILKNO

ADILKNO's Movement Teachings makes no attempt to legitimatize crowd spectacles after the fact by giving them a social twist. Neither is it a history book, though it's chock full of bizarre and absurd anecdotes; it is above all a textbook in which the concepts of mass and movement are set against each other chapter by chapter according to the method of applied casuistry. The Teachings are thus prevented from turning into social therapy. This is also how they have escaped being theoretical acrobatics. The theory, the Movement Teachings, is radically raked away and swept together in the opening and closing chapters. What remains of theory in the chapters in between is the manner in which certain events are or are not described, and the connections between the different descriptions. Through this »absence« of theory the engrossing stories which thus arise achieve a remarkable clarity. At the same time the Movement Teachings are distinguished by a swift pace. They produce a racket bringing to mind the bells and whistles of the squatters' acid house parties, while in contrast the new social theory prefers the silence of the funeral chamber. The smoke which the Movement Teachings (like any good theory) expel smells not of incense, myrrh and gold dust, but of tear gas, tires and mattresses. The smoke of the movement is not a cloud masking its shortcomings, but a signal that something's going on. And we are there.

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