Object Collection performed nachtstimmung with Michael Pisaro Friday 1/25, 10pm at the Ontological Theater as a part of the Experimental Music series.
------------------------
Michael Pisaro
OK, I'm online.
Travis Just
so now that that is sorted out we can have a technologically mediated human-interface (conversation)
MP
I'm ready for that, I think.
TJ
so where should we begin...? any thoughts music or otherwise that have been on your mind recently?
MP
Hmm. Let's see. I've been starting to acquaint myself with the vast network of bedroom experimental-pop composers in LA. Maybe there's something like that in NY as well?
TJ
quite a lot actually. are you finding affinities with their work? or perhaps their methods (social, organizational)?
MP
I of course learned about all this through my students. And at first it was the network itself, in its quasi-conspiracy formation that fascinated me. But in the meantime, I've found a fair amount of interesting music there, and some really great music. Sometimes I wonder if this is where experimental music is going now.
TJ
the network has a real allure of course. i guess one question would be experimental music in what sense...most of my contemporaries are drifting into bands of some sort or another if they continue doing music at all.
MP
I mean experimental music as a network that does not try too hard to articulate what it’s doing before it does it. I should immediately say that what's most encouraging about this is the sense that there are many such networks, operating more or less independently, unaware of their (cumulative, additive) power. We'll see.
TJ
this is true, though at some point the product needs to be addressed I think, not just the method. i guess there is a parallel to political systems/resistances that are displaced and in theory have a cumulative power. but I wonder. where is that cumulative power, i've hardly seen it realized in a tangible way. sometimes it feels a bit 'pie in the sky when you die'.
what i mean is what if we've all just been successfully fractured/splintered.
MP
Or maybe we just have to imagine other ways of being together?
TJ
perhaps.
MP
Having said all this, it's probably clear that as a composer, I remain dedicated to the possibilities of live performance. That's not a virtual community (even if its a small one).
TJ
yes, that seems to be something about composers. a reliance on live performance, or the construction of fixed tape pieces (we need a new contemporary term for 'tape pieces'...) that retain the quality of a live performance.
an object-quality perhaps?
MP
Do you think a live performance produces an object quality, or did I misunderstand? I'd say it disperses this quality. A good live performance is more about subjectivity, I think.
TJ
well my definitions are never accurate, but I'd say it allows for the audience members to engage the work in unique ways, that is, it is an unobtrusive object that can be observed. but that is all after brecht, like everything.
MP
george brecht you mean? (sorry I know you mean the other one.)
TJ
ha, yes. well either I suppose in different epochal ways.
MP
Concerning 'product', I don't in any sense have an overview of what's going on. I'm sure there's a lot of unconsidered under-the-covers ramblings and puerile teen-folk. But that's not all. I allow myself the luxury of liking what I like, wherever it comes from. Don't you get the feeling that there is a lot of interesting music out there that you'd like to know more about? I haven't felt that for a while.
TJ
well I don't know about too far back in an actual personal/visceral way. I do think that this is an incredibly rich and varied artistic time right now. you won't get any 60's/70's/80's nostalgia from me. (the hits of the....).
do you think this is a new climate?
MP
No. I think it's been around a while in a semi-frozen state and that it's taking a long time to thaw.
TJ
that's interesting, so when do you see this thaw as having begun? or can you place a moment when you felt a critical mass?
MP
As I think I've told you before, I think people your age and younger are responsible. Many of you seem to have a healthier mistrust of authority then people of my generation did. And many of you are acting on it. It's incredible to think about how many concert series and performance venues, etc. have sprung up in the last 5 or 6 years.
TJ
well I can't say beyond my own experience, but there just don't seem to be any other options. if you want the music to happen, that's how it has to happen. was this not the case further back do you think?
MP
Just thinking about my time in school and in my twenties, the modus operandi seemed to be to wait until Rostropovich commissioned you. If this did not happen before you were 30, you became a stockbroker or a professor.
TJ
well the stockbroker/professor model holds for my generation too. there aren't financial opportunities in this line of work.
MP
Maybe we don't see them yet (the financial opportunities). However, and this I know is presumptuous for me to say, but the poverty aesthetic seems to be about the healthiest and most artistically satisfying way of continuing. I'm thinking, for instance, about how many great films James Benning has made -- where his sum total budget for all his films is but a fraction of a single standard hollywood flick.
TJ
well sure, but we all still have to make rent. that said, I think this is a perfectly fine way to operate. there are a couple of problems that enter into it however such as the glamourization of a lack of means (artistic-production means anyway) and an establishment of that m.o. which is a blanket permit for institutions/governments to not support artwork. since the performance world will almost certainly never experience a market-boom like the visual art world did, this creates a tough climate. there was a nice john jasperse piece that dealt with this last year. (misuse liable to prosecution)
MP
You're right. One should not idealize the methods. If we could figure out a way to earn or steal enough money we'd be better off. Maybe that's where this growing network comes in. Could that be an alternate economy of some kind?
TJ
hard to say. while I am excited by all of the band-postpop activity I see, I think most of them would be quite happy to be picked up by warner brothers. and i fear a co-opting of those methods (or at least the image of those methods) by, oh i don't know, radiohead.
and of course what about those of us who don't have guitars or 3-minute songs, noisy or otherwise?
MP
I suppose I harbor some kind of a dream that one day the newest 10-hour piece by Manfred Werder will enter the top 40 (as we used to call it). strange things have happened.
TJ
but never that strange...
MP
"God Save the Queen, she ain't no human bein', we love our queen." OK, that's a clichéd reference. But: Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Merce Cunningham, Sun Ra all made it work, no? We're talking about new methods of political organization and I feel I'm getting out of my depth, theoretically. Let's keep going and see what happens.
Maybe you know one of Deleuze's last articles about societies of control : which says more about all this than I ever could. (Postscript on Control Societies)
TJ
yes but i wonder about the aesthetic application of this. does it mean something that composers can't talk about music for more than 2 minutes without getting into bands and guitars? do we just want to be a part of a thriving culture? does that culture have any legitimate interest in music that uses different reference points?
MP
I have no problem with bands, but haven't been in one (unless that's what you call wandelweiser) for about 30 years. but, no, I agree with you. it's good to keep the options open ... writing two hour pieces for non-bands (even non-musicians) ... insisting that this is possible (and important and enjoyable) too.
TJ
i guess i should try and tie this in to what we will be doing in a couple of weeks. what are your thoughts on the piece you are working on for the 25th?
MP
I'm thinking a lot about the details now, since I'm finishing the piece. In general it's something like an hour and half of sustained murmuring.
TJ
vocal and otherwise I think, yes? there is something about murmuring that attracts me too, what is it about it that is interesting for you?
MP
Another word for murmuring might be silence: I love these silences that are full of sound -- something that seems to lie on the border between the all or the nothing (as if you could tip from one to the other with passing any of the stages between).
TJ
does this apply to the edge of rhetorical content as well?
MP
rhetorical content? do you mean the words I'm using or something else?
TJ
yes, the presence (or near-presence) of meaning, of linguistic content.
MP
OK. Oswald Egger says that in literature, in order to have silence, you have to fill the page (or the time) with words. There's so much in one of his works that you find yourself adrift in the sea of words, and the content (or meaning) is curiously, profoundly, beautifully empty.
TJ
there is something about the physical actuality of murmuring that renders some of these words unintelligible of course. the method of production blurs what might otherwise be a stable text. is this an element of your work?
MP
Yes, absolutely. The half-said is important to me. Mal vu mal dit.
TJ
is there an equivalent in the instrumental parts as well? or perhaps a parallel between notation and performance?
MP
Yes. The intrumental parts are more indicated, hinted at, suggested than truly given. Whatever it is that I want to happen, will take place below (or beyond) the level of notation. There is therefore a danger in giving too much information.
TJ
how do you negotiate things like precision and accuracy (either in this work or in general)? both in methods of sound production (or action/text etc..) and in relation to form?
MP
I'm not worried about either precision or accuracy (strange as this may sound). I want to give very strong suggestions for how something might be, and then see what develops when we start to play it.
TJ
both in individual performance methods and the piece as a whole?
MP
yes, both, more or less. of course, I write notes. give timings. take care that the thing is shaped in some way. select words, instruments, staging. you know, composition. but all of this is for me like a well-prepared canvas, waiting for color. sometimes I think this is the way things have always been. for Ockeghem: (who sings?) for Beethoven: (who plays?)
TJ
and for you, how would you phrase that question? "who ____?"
MP
who is there.
TJ
this is the strategy that perhaps does relate to bands and improvisers. i remember talking to jürg frey and he was so fascinated that people my age were so involved in improvisation as a matter-of-course. the old battles of composition vs. improvisation just seemed to not apply anymore (at least outside of the grant arenas).
MP
I think I know what you mean. I've been thinking a lot about where our work is. It's the sum of what we do isn't it? The decision to write something or not (or to find something in between). The decisions about when, where, who and how to make music.
There is a difference between having a score and not of course, (just look at the difference between the things that Radu does in the two realms), but I don't see this as an ideological question.
TJ
yeah the ideology question is (hopefully) exhausted. though I understand the suspicion each side had, it should be over now. i mean who has the time for those arguments when there is so much to be done?
MP
There's no substitute for listening. I think that this ideology was a way of not listening.
TJ
yeah. well in honor of one of our themes today I am off to earn some scratch.
thanks so much for your time.
MP
good luck. nice talking with you. look forward to seeing you soon!
conducted online 01.13.2008
No comments:
Post a Comment