Samuel Barnett Quotes

All art is based on non-conformity.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

I am interested in work that jumps boundaries, and that makes trouble. Part of me is comfortable with that: with being a bit of a troublemaker.

Bohemia isn't somewhere an artist runs to escape society. It's a place where like-minded artists gather to plot the downfall of dogma and ignorance.

Part of the heart of anarchy is, dare to go against the grain of the conventional ways of thinking about our realities. Anarchists have always gone against the grain, and that's been a place of hope.

I hate good taste. It's the worst thing that can happen to a creative person.

To rebel or revolt against the status quo is in the very nature of an artist.

There is still such a thing as subversive. Subversive makes hip people nervous. It's something new that scares you in a good way. I mean, subversive to me is a compliment. Subversive is something that influences people to do something against society that they haven't thought of before.

Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

I grew up in Berkeley and my parents were hippies, obviously, since my name's 'Jorma.' I didn't watch much television growing up because they weren't into it at all.

A lot of singers find a musical genre people like and stick with it. That's being a conformist. I sing ballads, rock, salsa, rap.

I was the hero of the young insurgent working class art movement.

Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.

Ideally, musicians belong outside the Establishment. When they cross that line, it's like something in them has died.

I mean, I was always interested in people like Lenny Bruce, people who are breaking the old rules and making new ones.

What makes bebop legitimate is the fact that when it was done, it was illegitimate.

Punk was defined by an attitude rather than a musical style.

To be able to create fully, it's maybe fine that you learn the rules, but you have to forget and to rebel against those rules.

Modernism released us from the constraints of everything that had gone before with a euphoric sense of freedom.

When I was a kid, the avant-garde to me was boring because it was just the flip side of being really successful.

I like people who push the envelope.

I think being a wealthy member of the establishment is the antithesis of cool. Being a countercultural revolutionary is cool. So to the extent that you've made a billion dollars, you've probably become uncool.

The creative individual has the capacity to free himself from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. He is capable of questioning the assumptions that the rest of us accept.

Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?

It's never popular among young people to be part of the establishment.