It’s January 10th… of the year twenty twenty six… and there is a punk show at a dive bar in Johannesburg, South Africa, named Smoking Kills.
You wonder what’s with these old photos of white people eating records? What’s with the price of RAM chips? What’s with our silicone valley tech oligarchs pushing AI on us? Don’t they know that the internet is cats and cats have no use for AI?
…
You wonder what Failed States // Creative Resistance is? You wonder if it’s a project to short-circuit the centralised flow of neo-colonial culture by opening space for punk communities in diverse parts of the world to express a collective identity of their respective scenes via dialogue and vinyl compilations? You wonder if by exploring how things look different in the margins we may reshape our understanding of “global punk”? You wonder if this gig will be kicking off that process for showcasing punk in our unique context? You wonder if you should come and have a chat with Dr. Jim Donaghey (punk rock anthropologist from Ulster university)?
The answer is yes. 
Now repeat after me,
“The internet is cats…
The internet was cats…
The internet will be cats…
I shall accept nothing less…”
