Mark Stewart has revealed the official video for “Liberty City” ahead of the definitive reissue of his groundbreaking debut solo album Learning To Cope With Cowardice. A guerrilla-style transmission combining the volatile soundsystem music of Stewart and the influential “Action Architecture” dance practice of avant-garde choreographer Mehmet Sander, the video realizes a collaboration between two transgressive figures who are longstanding admirers of each other’s work. The industrial dub of “Liberty City,” one of many landmark moments on Learning To Cope With Cowardice, is visualized here by a troupe of dancers whose unorthodox feats of movement mirror the track’s momentous physicality. Watch the video now at PopMatters. Expounding on the interplay at work in the video and in their collaboration as a whole, Mark Stewart identifies a shared intent to explore and exceed limitations, a creative mission significantly inspired by the ideas of the philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault: “Me and Mehmet are keen collaborators reimagining zones for performing bodies. In this piece we 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. Classical readings of dance purport that all movement is made in relation to form. 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 “Liberty City” video is the first ever visual document to accompany material from Mark Stewart’s debut solo album Learning To Cope With Cowardice and “Liberty City” is the first single to be taken from the definitive reissue of one of the most enduring and pioneering records ever made. Learning To Cope With Cowardice will be released on Mute alongside The Lost Tapes, a newly discovered cache of unreleased material. The release is out on double vinyl, double CD and as a limited edition double clear vinyl (with a percentage of the vinyl sales going to the Mercy Ships charity) on January 25. Pre-orders are available here. Learning To Cope With Cowardice is a vital chapter in the legacy of Mark Stewart & The Maffia, a project that would prove to be a revolutionary benchmark for many, from the innovators of the “Bristol Sound” (The Wild Bunch, Smith & Mighty, Tricky, Massive Attack) through to the likes of Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails. Collected together, this set realizes an expansive restoration of one of Stewart’s most audacious statements. As it was in the early 1980s, so it is now, Learning To Cope With Cowardice is a masterwork of mutant design and a rude awakening of extraordinary bite.
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