Vaporwave and Hardvapour

Alternative temporalities, territorialities and identities after our holiday from history

Bibliographic Data

ID4304812
AuthorsJonathan Lovell (0000-0001-8120-5953, The University of Melbourne, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume43
Issue4
Pages422-442
Publication date2024-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePopular Music (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0261-1430 • E-ISSN: 1474-0095
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0261143024000515
OpenAlexW4408203335
LanguageEN
References cited18

Vaporwave provides a hauntological reflection on the capitalist excesses of the 1980-1990s, a moment that Francis Fukuyama declared as The End of History. To this task, Vaporwave replays the most memorable hooks of pop songs, commercial jingles and elevator Muzak, within visual scenographies of abandoned malls and virtual realities, dotted by Miami palms and Tokyo neon. However, these decades hold another significance for Eastern Europeans, who remained haunted by their own ghosts, not of ideology, but of identity. This article contrasts Vaporwave to Hardvapour, a violent mutation that does not avoid Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, but accelerates towards it. To this task, Hardvapour collectively identifies as having Eastern European origins, and fixates on the political volatility of the region, including the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, inviting comparisons with Baudrillard's theories about the unreality of the media-military complex. Despite their different agendas and aesthetics, both Vaporwave and Hardvapour are haunted by ghosts of time, and a disappearing territoriality, architectural and geographic

Aesthetics · Art · Genealogy · Ideology · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Temporalities · Cinema and Media Studies · Cultural Studies and Postmodernism · History · Law · Nostalgia and Consumer Behavior

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