What I find interesting about this is the idea of perception and how our minds automatically form narratives, or make sense of the nonsensical. It’s impossible for us to accept something in the abstract, we are always trying to fit ourselves into the situation, mentally, in order to understand what our senses are perceiving. In regards to the Cambridge study, we are applying known truths (i.e. definable, recognizable words) to nonsense. In regards to art, it allows the obscure and abstract to become more accessible.

In INLAND EMPIRE, the director David Lynch toys with the idea of traditional narrative. He wrote the movie script on a day-by-day basis, handing the actors a freshly written page in the morning and filming the movie without knowing what the plot would be, framing ideas within scenes and trusting that everything would fit together in the end. The result is an intimidatingly long movie that is so convoluted that it is difficult to sit though. During my viewing, a quarter of the theater got up and left during the middle. However, as confused as you may be, once you relax and trust in David Lynch, the movie reads on the same level as a poem. Each scene tantalizing in it’s own right, single lines that force contemplation long after they have been uttered. INLAND EMPIRE is the most mentally agile film I have ever seen. It forces active audience participation because of it’s lack of cohesive narrative, both during the film and after. You, as an audience member, struggle throughout the movie to form a narrative, and each scene forces you to reevaluate the narrative you had settled upon during the previous scene. The plot is constantly shifting because you are struggling to find a plot. You need a story, and the lack of a specific story, or at least a traditional arc, only creates a more tantalizing puzzle.

I admire this ability of people to piece together a narrative, whether, as in the Cambridge study, from known absolutes, or as in INLAND EMPIRE, simply as a way to process and comprehend unrecognizable stimuli. Paul Broks, author of Into the Silent Land posits that what we think of ourselves, what we define as our being, is a story. We imagine ourselves as something, re-form our memories to reflect this, and act accordingly. Life is nothing but a story.

My present
way
of composing’s
involved with the
observation
of imperfections in the paper
on which I happen
to be
writing.
- John Cage (Silence, 1961)

. . . advice = L.L.L.oud! . . .

I’ve got nothing to say, and I am saying it,
and that is poetry as I need it.
-John Cage.

“…That there could be art without beauty is preposterous. The artists who imagine that they can accept or reject beauty have obviously never known the power that beauty wields.” -Jed Perl, The Beauty Trap

Beauty is a touchy subject these days. Make something beautiful, and its integrity is questioned. It is only when art shuns beauty and traditional aesthetics that it is hailed as worthy. Let me back off for a moment and admit that, perhaps, I am being too critical. Artists have some appreciation of craft. But it isn’t embraced; it is an option. Craft, for an artist, should not be optional. It should be a necessity. I applaud concepts and am interested in ideas, but I am more interested in beauty. My favorite artists are the ones who move me emotionally, and on a level that is not able to be picked apart and deciphered, at least not completely. There is always something within their pieces that I cannot describe or completely understand. And I get the sense that the artist was wrestling with something within herself, she was making art to discover something about herself, not to communicate something explicit and one-dimensional.

Looking at the variety of other art forms that exist, it appears that visual art is the only form where bad equals good. Within writing, authors are judged by their ability to manipulate words and juggle sentences, where no matter how modern the writing appears, basic craft and beauty is a priority. Nobody wants to read writing that isn’t beautiful, even if it is only beautiful in an ugly way. Music is the same. Talent is defined by a musician’s ability to handle an instrument, to piece together chords and generate something new, exciting, and pleasing.

I am not railing against the usage of ideas and the illustration of concepts. I am simply asking that artists consider utilizing their artistic talent and creating something that is visually stunning to draw in the viewer. Then, by all means, caress the intellect and whisper ideas and philosophies, but do it gently. Prettily. Pleasingly. The result is much more layered and lasting than an artist’s statement could ever convey.

But what i meant to say was its time to practice writing by choosing something nearby & jotting down phrases & meaningless rhyming couplets or nearly rhyming quintuplets something or maybe anything abt or not exactly but metaphorically related to that thing i chose just a minute ago to quote write abt unquote i might hint at its color reminding me of childhood family trips & then slowly move towards how i could never relate to the phrase ‘family trip’ bc on tv movies books or even bill hicks records a family trip meant brothers & sisters & moms & dads & it was just me & mom & dad so id always just say me & mom & dad & thats who was on the trip not the ‘family’ but i wouldnt really say all that id just hint at it by mentioning the color of the thing (you remember the thing from earlier, right?) the thing’s color & maybe shape & where it is relative to others like it nearby or not so nearby maybe maybe! i could pick it up & hold it reminisce abt other things (like it or otherwise) that ive held, not everything of course bc that would go on for a long time or maybe it wouldnt, which would also be of note, & i could write abt all of the things not like this thing that i am holding that i wish i had, or in literary terms, regret having not held which to some readers might seem as overkill or excessive & in fact may seem like a cheap means of getting to the modern standard autobiographical poetic sorry-for-ourselves style many have become accustomed to in these new-millenium or even some may call it (excuse my vague politcs:) post-nine-eleven (ah! for shame!) times in which we live but lets get back to the thing eventually i would choose to put it down & certainly that would call for a simple one or two lines somehow indicating that i, the writer, & you, the reader, are now to recall times in the past or even, and likely even more sorrowful, in the future (near or distant, not that it matters much but it is relevant, i think we can all agree) that we have or will have to let go of something or someone in infinite degrees of importance, & i would likely find a way to show that really this letting go (or moving on, or even abandoning, if you will) is what is important at least for me, the writer, not so much the level of emotional (or otherwise) importance & although its quite important in the long run, for the sake of this piece of writing it would be made distinctly separate for the purpose of indicating whatever the final meaning may eventually turn out to be

Well no, i guess what i should have said was its time now to practice writing abt that lone solemn stone, wise amongst its neighbors a fading once deep red like a myrtle beach sunset, although really the sunsets better down on floridas gulf coast walking in & out of in & out of walking in & out of floridas gulf coast walking in & out of floridas gulf coast walking in & out of the surf wishing i could stay one or eight steps away from my parents man im such a nerd out here tossing each fresh smooth youthfulness out to the ocean skipping twice maybe three times crap that was a good one i should have grabbed it (instead?)
]]> http://speakingofart.wordpress.com/2007/09/16/a-serious-look-at-writing-in-a-serious-looking-language-or-why-do-you-keep-staring-at-me-like-that/feed/ 2 Chris http://speakingofart.wordpress.com/2007/09/04/just-deserves/ http://speakingofart.wordpress.com/2007/09/04/just-deserves/#comments Wed, 05 Sep 2007 03:19:07 +0000 seaheff http://speakingofart.wordpress.com/2007/09/04/just-deserves/ ]]>

Generally speaking, the concepts of ‘literature’ and ‘current events’ aren’t very likely to collide. There are exceptions: Harry Potter selling a bajillion copies, Dan Brown getting sued for hack-jobbing someone else’s hack-job, Salman Rushdie pissing off Muslims. But there’s also a new genre of literary news that has proliferated over the last few years, and it’s my least favorite yet.

I came across its most recent iteration in today’s New York Times. The headline reads, New Stage for a Private Family Drama, and the piece is about the revered playwright Arthur Miller’s treatment of his son, Daniel, who was born with Down syndrome. It is a reaction to a recent article in Vanity Fair detailing, and to an extent criticizing, Miller’s having essentially ignored Daniel’s existence after sending him off to a mental institutional. The possible implication that Miller’s work, and his status as a literary titan, should be reevaluated in light of this element of his personal life is teased by the author, and more directly stated by quoted sources.

This is just another outcry in the James Frey vein of literary newsworthiness. Though I do cringe to place Miller’s name so close to that dubious memoirist’s, and there is the added difference that some of the anger over Frey’s case from the fact that the book was marketed as memoir, not fiction. But it’s the same in both cases, really. Readers of a writer’s work feel offended, scandalized, betrayed when it turns out that the author is in some way not what they were supposed to be. It happened with J.T. Leroy, and Günter Grass too. James Frey was publicly scolded by Oprah, a fate I can’t even begin to imagine lameness of. That’s got to be one of those things that makes a guy want to sob and laugh hysterically at the same time.

But the question is, why should anyone care about the life behind the works? Is this just a product of a culture that’s seen too many reruns of VH1’s Behind the Music? Or that wants to make a celebrity out of anybody that does anything noteworthy, and then hold them to some weirdly assumed common moral code? Why the outrage?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I have no idea. To me, a writer or artist’s prime directive is to make art. Preferably, to make good art, but even that’s not essential. Hence the designation, ‘artist’. It’s what they do, and if they’re good at it, I applaud. I experience their work and I learn to see the world in a more nuanced way; I am made better by their toil. I can’t picture a circumstance under which I would feel this experience diminished if it turned out the writer or artist was a dick.

In fact, thinking back on it now, many of the people who I most respect for their work were probably reprehensible in one way or another in their personal lives. Picasso was a douche, Heidegger a Nazi, Wittgenstein a major a-hole, and Faulkner a faithless and prolific philanderer. And even if I got backstage at a Bob Dylan concert, and found him cuisinarting baby otters, I’d still think John Wesley Harding was a damn fine album.

Somewhere, William James has a quote that what we call ‘genius’ is really just an intensity of focus (he used the metaphor of a light focused to a burning point) on something that excludes everything else as irrelevant. This seems pretty right on to me. I found it amply illustrated when I once tried to read a biography of Borges, getting a couple hundred pages in before I realized I was reading a book about the life of a man who pretty much read during every waking moment in which he wasn’t writing. Not exactly material for a John Le Carré novel, I tell you.

Anyway, in the other direction, what makes Arthur Miller a genius, what makes him great, is his writing, is his sheer mastery of his language and human conditions. His greatness does not care about his ability to dance a jig, and it doesn’t care about his child-rearing sensibilities either. In fact, it seems impossible that there wouldn’t be some fairly glaring deficiencies in a life that was given almost wholly to crafting the written word.

This is not to excuse him, or to deny whatever ill effects his attitude might have had on his son (though, by the given accounts, he’s lived a very happy life without his father’s presence). But it is to say, to anyone who thinks that said attitude should be reflected in treatment of Miller’s work, get over yourself. Go stress out over Shakespeare-authorship conspiracy theories, or something.

Anyhow, let me apologize for this half-baked consideration and get back to the issue raised above: I’m still left wondering what makes people so morally outraged when a work’s author doesn’t live up to their expectations. Any ideas?

The Hurdle

    The first major hurdle one encounters when preparing to write about The Laurence Rassel Show is as follows: How does the author of any reasonable critique appropriately review the work in question while properly maneuvering around the fact that one of the main themes within the work being critiqued is the fetishization of the entire concept of authorship to begin with?

Let me take a step back…

    The Laurence Rassel Show is the newest audio release from Public Record, an internet-based record label founded by the activist art organization, Ultra-red. Specifically, The Laurence Rassel Show is a collaboration between cyberfeminist Laurence Rassel and musician/trans-activist Terre Thaemlitz, both, arguably, well-known and un-known masters of their respective fields.

Let me take another step back…

The Context

    Almost as a follow up on our recent discussion, as initiated by Spk.Art.’s own Tempest, regarding the freedom of information available through the use of the internet(s), Public Record is

… the internet-based archive of the Ultra-red organization established for the distribution of work by Ultra-red members and allies. … Born in 2004,…Public Record expands on the group’s mission statement: first, to facilitate cooperation between artists and social movements; second, to occupy the borders between art and organizing; and, third, to radicalize the conventions of electronic music and sound art.

Seems to be right up our alley, eh?

    On the main page of the Public Record website, there is a brief tip o’ the hat to the relevance of artistic expression which attempts to live within the world of social or political subjects. This message, in its succinctness, is the crux of the Ultra-red organization.

[A]rtists who assume the mantle of revolutionaries would do better engaging actual political struggles than promoting their individual artistic careers.

    Public Record and the Ultra-red organization attempt to address social issues not by simply creating obtuse works with vague political titles, they dive in head first and Get Involved with social change. This is seen in the various releases by Ultra-red in the years prior to the inception of Public Record as well as what has been produced since its creation in 2004. (For example, Structural Adjustments (2000) is based on protests that occurred in reaction to the Los Angeles Housing Authority’s attempt to displace 1200 homes in the name of neighborhood reconstruction and BLOK70 (2006) addresses the recent expansion of the European Union into Eastern Europe and the effect this has had on the migrant policies of those countries.)

The Release

    Stepping forward to the topic of The Laurence Rassel Show again, we have the latest release by new collaborators to the Ultra-red organization, Laurence Rassel and Terre Thaemlitz performing the radio-drama, The Laurence Rassel Show. The press release for The Laurence Rassel Show goes a little like this:

Public Record is thrilled to announce the release of Terre Thaemlitz’ sixteenth full-length album, and his first for the free-download online label. THE LAURENCE RASSEL SHOW began as a specially commissioned collaboration with cyberfeminist Laurence Rassel of Belgium’s Constant organization. Commissioned by German public radio in 2005, the Thaemlitz and Rassel collaboration set its sights on the politics of copyright ownership. Critical of both corporate property laws and the copyleft movement, the project ran into an unexpected roadblock when it was pulled from broadcast for being too controversial.

A joint-release with Thaemlitz’ own Comatonse label … and Constant, THE LAURENCE RASSEL SHOW is cabaret for theory-queen revolutionaries. Subtitled “the post-feminist radio drama assassinated before broadcast,” THE LAURENCE RASSEL SHOW weaves together gender-queer analysis, mis-taken identities, liberated citations … [.]

Or rather, in Thaemlitz’s words:

[Laurence and I] wanted to counter this notion of fetishizing the recognized or “authored” body with a story about the corresponding way in which the patriarchal notions of authorship also extend to the fetishization of the invisible, or the non-author.

Laurence Rassel

    In its essence, The Laurence Rassel Show is a 100+ minute audio work which combines conversations between Rassel and Thaemlitz about the previously mentioned topics, historic and practical, as well as various guest voices reading stolen excerpts from select philosophers and authors discussing variations and extrapolations on these topics.

    The project began with Thaemlitz and Rassel spending a week in and around Thaemlitz’s home in Japan recording themselves discussing the project and the guests reading from text. Afterwards, Thaemlitz took control of the audio and interspersed the dialogue with stolen audio clips and layered it all with his signature audio processing techniques, thus giving the piece its final “electro-acoustic” quality.

    The main difference between The Laurence Rassel Show and anything found in Thaemlitz’s previous work is that because it was intended orginally as a radio show, he went to greater lengths than usual to ensure that most of the dialogue remained relatively understandable. The final result being that this is less of a musical release and more of an audio essay covering themes of social norms and history as they relate to the ideas of authorship and feminism.

The Leap

    So we have enough of the background to take that final step forward and jump the ship specifically addressed by The Laurence Rassel Show. I’m going to go ahead and openly act as author here in order to discuss the piece. Obviously that flies in the face of an issue The Laurence Rassel Show specifically addresses, but shit, thats what I’m going to do.

Long story short: The Laurence Rassel Show is brilliant.

    Fair warning for those of you inclined to discourage against or shake your head at heavy-handed theoretical discussions: The Laurence Rassel Show is extremely heavy handed. Its thick in theory and certainly way over the top when it comes to in-depth discussion of the causes and effects of underlying social issues in the realm of feminism and patriarchy, authorship and copyright. But lets be honest here; thats what we all came for. In addition to Thaemlitz’s numerous socially charged audio releases, he also has written a number of articles which address the same or similar issues in much greater detail (mostly because he uses ‘words’ in the articles instead of that pesky confusion-inducing medium, ‘sound’). Certainly then, the topics discussed in The Laurence Rassel Show should come as no surprise, but the degree to which they are dealt with is impressive.

The Subjects

    Most of The Laurence Rassel Show is structured around monologues or the back-and-forth banter between Thaemlitz and Rassel, in which they both casually run away with the conversation depending on the subject. I think what intrigues me about these heavily theoretical discussions is the fact that whether or not I agree with their conclusions, or even if I think they may be taking the analysis too far, or are becoming too abstract, I find I am always left affected by the discussion. There is always something to take away from a discussion of this magnitude.

    Also of note is the fact that along with the audio available for download at Public Record, a complete transcript of the show can be downloaded. This is essential. I can imagine no way that this work could simply be listened to in order to fully grasp everything contained in it, if for no other reason than I do not speak fluent French and therefore the monologues spoken in French happen to slide right by me…

Terre Thaemlitz, c.2000

The Sound

    Anyone who writes about a work which involves Terre Thaemlitz must, of course, discuss the actual audio within the work. That’s what the man is famous for, right? Similar to Ultra-red, Thaemlitz’s work lives in that slippery realm of ‘electro-acoustic’ social commentary which straddles the line between abstract, arrhythmic sound collage and ‘minimalist electronic music’. If you are expecting this from The Laurence Rassel Show you will, like me, (at least initially) be disappointed. Although there is a great deal of audio processing occurring under the surface of this work, almost none of it is structured into the form of songs which occasionally pop up on his albums. This was a major turn-off when, about 20 minutes in, I came to the realization that this work was something altogether new for Thaemlitz. Luckily, by then The Laurence Rassel Show had grabbed me and I just didn’t care about the past anymore.

    The Laurence Rassel Show is a radio-drama first and foremost; leave your favorite ‘minimalist electronic music’ hat at the door. Rest assured though, there are plenty of moments in The Laurence Rassel Show in which Thaemlitz employs wonderful acts of sabotage on the somewhat straightforward dialogue by confusing the audio and layering too much at one time or mixing beyond comprehension. As expected, those moments work beautifully in the context of the show’s theory and in its practice. Thaemlitz uses these processes to audibly reduce the spoken words to abstract sounds, thus robbing the words themselves of any distinguishable origin, or author.

    In this specific process can be found the genius of The Laurence Rassel Show. It is a grand work that, by using multiple layers of form and function, both discusses revolutionary social issues while at the same time it becomes an example of those very acts being discussed.

The Conclusion

    The Laurence Rassel Show is a phenomenal new work by Laurence Rassel and Terre Thaemlitz. Anyone interested in the previous work of Thaemlitz, Ultra-red, or the subjects of patriarchy, feminism, gender, authorship or copyright would be well served to give it a listen. And hell, its free to download; what do you have to lose?

As the original Public Record press release states: “Listen for a change.”