Occupy 2021: POSITHETICA: The Final Art for Humans MEGAzine by Paul McLean
Five years ago [September 2021] I posted Posithetica on the Art for Humans nexus site, which was called Mystic Novad. In America alone, the Covid-19 pandemic had surpassed 47 million cases and claimed 700,000 lives. It was the 10th anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, in which I participated, as the co-organizer of Occupy with Art. It was also the 20th Anniversary of 9/11. I had devoted much of the decade [2011-21] to doctoral studies at the European Graduate School, a course I would finally abandon, for several reasons. In the studio, I was focused on the VyNIL Cycle of paintings. Concurrently, I was publishing a series of virtual exhibits and essays online, using several Web 2.0 platforms and the AFH constellation of sites.
The MEGAzine format evolved over two decades of distributing content on the Net, starting in the mid-90s. It became my preferred mode of multimedia exchange, often serving as a complement to IRL creative projects and a vehicle for critical writing on art, culture and much more. By the early 2020s the capture of the World Wide Web by Big Tech, its pervasive enshittification (Doctorow), reduced the online experience to addictive anti-social/-democratic doomscrolling, hot-takes, and the grotesquerie of the influencer phenomenon. Relentless and consumptive commercialization, part of a neo-fascist program of exploitation and extraction, attached directly to the industrial surveillance state, had basically strangled the early promise of a globally integrated Internet society. Posithetica is a bittersweet, book-length reflection on this era.
To revisit this material today is more poignant, as a stroke survivor, because it accentuates the realization that creative production is finite. I doubt I’ll ever be able again to devote the energy and resources such a massive project demands. Furthermore, my perspective on Occupy 2021/Posithetica is colored significantly by the accelerated unraveling of my beloved country’s democratic experiment, since the MEGAzine’s publication. In 2021, I remained hopeful that an effort like mine could reach a sufficient audience, gain traction and have positive impact. I suppose even today that still is true, because I follow the good works of New Models, Angelicism and Joshua Citarella/Do.Not.Research and others. It is my fervent appeal to you to take the time to read and explore Posithetica, though you might find it challenging — noting that I would be disappointed, if you weren’t challenged by it. After all, that was its purpose! And be so kind as to share it, because that is in keeping with the spirit in which it was composed.
Love,
PJM
September 2026
SELECTED PLATES
[For image info, follow the link to Occupy 2021/Posithetica, by clicking the cover illustration at top ^]
