Perpetual dialectic between counterculture and mainstream
a cura di Nicole Albanini and Lisa Magnoli
To be honest, I am not very familiar with this term. Also from the point of view of sociological theory, I find concepts like “protest” or “movement” much more suitable to interpret socially significant events. This is also so because the term counterculture may lead to the misunderstanding that countercultural movements could be something outside society, while it is clear that if they are “social” they are part of that very society they are protesting against. From a semantic point of view, the term counterculture leads back to all those protest experiences that originated in the 1960s and 70s. In those years, the West saw a genuine cultural revolution led, especially, by the youth intolerance and rebellion that found shape in a collective and shared ambition. Young people went from silence to activism and universities became places where a culture of dissent and protest would develop. In these years the protest movements represented the idiosyncrasies of advanced modernity, i.e. the tips of extreme sensitivity in which society reacts to itself, its effects and most crucial problems. Widespread tensions developed with respect to the acknowledgement of civil rights, sexual emancipation, women rights, and dissent on issues of peace, consumerism and the environment. Music and art in general were media through which the countercultural movement expressed its own messages and appeals to society worldwide. Many of these appeals are today part of ordinary language and therefore part of the collective heritage, although their origin is not always known.
The readiness to protest appears to still garner considerable force both because of the presence of new topics and for the introduction of new viewpoints on old ones. This year we have seen people take to the streets in many countries, for decisions of a mostly national nature which see the involvement of specific tiers of the population. The yellow vests have turned Paris into a place of guerrilla warfare to protest against the economic and social conditions of the lower-middle classes in the suburbs and rural areas, seeking a range of measures from a higher minimum salary, to pensions and increased public services. In Hong Kong thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest against a bill that would make it easier to be extradited to Beijing. In Iraq the protest movement started in Baghdad and has spread almost to the entire Shia-majority south of the country, thanks to social network appeals. There are demands of work for young people and the sacking of “corrupt” leaders. There are then protests marked by a form of widespread involvement and which concern a good section of humanity. The #MeToo movement has organized demonstrations and marches in various cities around the world to report sexual harassment against women and put an end to all forms of sexism and male abuse of power. Last September we saw the largest ever mass gathering on climate change in history. Over 7 million people, mostly very young girls and boys, took to the streets of Jakarta, New York, Karachi, Milan, Amman, Berlin, Kampala Istanbul, Québec, Guadalajara, Asunción, Berne. The Fridays for Future movement, thanks to the Internet, has reached large cities as much as small villages, uniting millions of people to demand immediate policies that put a stop to climate change, end the era of fossil fuels and the devastation of the Amazon and Indonesian rain forests.
It would be unthinkable today to talk about love, sex, protest, ecology, civil rights, gender rights, leaving aside the cultural heritage produced in those years, imbibed to the point of losing the specificity that gave it the label of antagonist culture. Body piercings and tattoos have lost their original sense to become ornaments of daily life that span through generations and social classes. Street art, born as an illicit practice and against the institutions, now sees some of its works assimilated by the art market, museums and mainstream tastes. The abolition of compulsory military service, the legalisation of cannabis, the spread of environmental issues, the defence of LGBT rights are acquired practices albeit in a mixed and varied way in a number of countries around the world. Vegetarianism, acupuncture and yoga are all by now widespread activities that have been adapted to the needs of the Western market. Sex, largely secularized, is represented without censorship and practised more easily also thanks to the spread of contraception and the invention of apps such as Tinder, Meetic and Academic Singles.
One more piece of evidence, in spite of the protests and contrasting views, comes from Bob Dylan winning the Nobel prize for literature in 2016.
It is hard for a “non designer” to give advice that wouldn’t sound impertinent. I would still venture to give one piece of advice – cherish your own cultural awareness, as visual communication, too, is first of all a social everyday occurrence where clients, users, designers and designs are always part of a cultural, economic, political and social flow which is set in time and space. In other words, do not confine yourself to common sense, but welcome, study and understand the changes with an openness towards the new and the construction of alternative explanations and meanings. I would like to end, on the other hand, by hoping that you will be able to take part in projects, and many at that, which have social and ethical significance while respecting the environment and others.
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As was said earlier, the 1960s and 70s counterculture became largely standardized and assimilated by the generations that followed it. And yet new countercultures continue to emerge and feed the eternal debate between counterculture and mainstream. Therefore I do not think we can talk about the death of counterculture. However, in a fluid, interconnected and delocalized society is perhaps precisely the debate between dominating culture and counterculture that appears diminished. On the one hand, it is increasingly more complicated to define today what the dominating culture really is, while on the other, countercultures are ever more taking shape as fluid, changeable, temporary and standardized.