Tomorrow (December 4) sees the release of the first single accompanying the reissue of Mark Stewart’s seminal 1983 album Learning To Cope With Cowardice. The video for that track, ‘Liberty City’, can be viewed above.
In the creation of the video, Stewart and Sander were inspired by the philosophy of Michel Foucault. Stewart explains that they wanted to “take the principles of total physical and audio liberation to its endgame, even if we arrive at that point through the means of excess and overload.” The video articulates the exploration and exceeding of expectations, the ‘action-architecture’ choreography of Sander mirrors the visceral physicality of the song.
Stewart describes how, going against Classical readings of dance: “What Foucault pointed out was that the production of the ‘subject’ – which both me and Mehmet believe is crucial in this age of discipline, punishment and negative entropy – is, in fact, our ‘carceral archipelago’” The video is an expression of this philosophy, giving new meaning to the pioneering industrial-dub and post-punk track.
Learning To Cope With Cowardice. will be reissued on Mute alongside The Lost Tapes, a newly discovered cache of unreleased material on January 25. You can pre-order the reissue here.
