Object Collection

Kara Feely / Francesco Gagliardi: January 30 2011, part two

2011-02-10T11:32:00.003-05:00

Kara Feely: I'm interested in the relationship between this kind of developed specialized virtuosity and your acting training in Italy.

Francesco Gagliardi: "Specialized virtuosity" I like that.

KF: It is uncommon for someone of your training to switch gears like that, yes?

FG: I suppose so... I don't know - I never really wanted to be an actor - I trained as an actor because I was interested in directing and I wanted to know how things "felt" from the "inside"... if you see what you mean - it was always instrumental to creating pieces with performers in them. I enjoy performing immensely - but it never had that thing of "I want to be an aktoor". I guess I was always very attracted to virtuosity in acting and in singing - opera, that was a big influence believe it or not (which is something we should also talk about in relation to your work, at some stage).

KF: Was that motivation related to you getting involved with film? It's interesting that your work as taken so many forms, and that translation has been a major theme throughout, translating ideas from one medium or practice to another. It makes me think of a lecture I heard from Rosalind Krauss about 70's artists and the idea of a 'technical support' running through their work rather than medium specificity.

FG: Oh yes, Krauss - she has things to say about medium specificity… I’m not sure I fully understand it though.

KF: Me neither. Except that it has to do with Ed Ruscha and cars.

FG: I must re-read that book about Broodthaers.
But anyway yes, translation - that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I suppose I first began to use video to do something I wanted to do and couldn't do otherwise: the Short Sentences project. I just wanted to realize that play, and there was no other way.

KF: I've always felt that Stein was writing for the digital age...

FG: Then, after a rather long time, I began to think about video again in relation to performance documentation - and those video performances came about. And really there I was working very consciously for the first time with the idea of translating - translating performance into video, rather than representing the performance through a video. I think that to conceptualize the relation between performance and documentation in terms of "translation" rather than "representation" really changes things entirely. In "representation" you have an ontological hierarchy: original - copy. In "translation" the two terms (two languages, two mediums, etc...) are equal. It's a completely different situation. Also translation goes back and forward: you can't really translate a performance into video without re-thinking what performance is. So if you think about it as translation, documentation turns out to be a process, to be open-ended, and to have an impact on your way of thinking about the live piece itself...
This really makes me want to go back to making videos.

KF: Did the translation films begin as performances, and become translated, so to speak? I'm thinking of the one with the German translator and the Chinese dinner...

FG: They were actually performed in front of the camera. That's partly why I wanted the videos to have that real-time structure: no edits. It's one single slice of time. I should send you the whole pieces - did I ever give them to you? The dinner is 48 min long, the German translation 35 or so.

KF: No, please do.

FG: I hesitate to call them "performances for camera" as that seems to conjure up a very specific type of work. All those highly produced "performance films" and "dance films". I generally really dislike that stuff.

KF: They're more about representation as you say, rather than translation- which is active, progressive, productive.

FG: They just use the conventions of narrative film and apply them to dance or performance: close ups, shot/ reverse shot, little tricks. They try to make it “interesting” - it always feels like they don’t trust the work. “This is kinda boring, but we’re going to make it exciting!”. I’m trying to re-think the structure of the film in relation to the timing and structure of live performance.

KF: You made some films of invisible mental tasks- I'm thinking about the logician at the chalkboard. The movement of her hand really becomes the focus, the Barthesian "punctum" maybe.

FG: With those performances of mental tasks there is again the same idea of translating performance into video - live into digital. But also the joke of "showing" these mental, private performances. It all began with a video of myself doing one of my reading pieces: I read the first chapter of Moby Dick skipping every second word, and of course it's just this long shot of me sitting and reading silently. I was interested in the idea of authority- the artist's authority. You have to believe that that's what i'm doing (silently reading Moby Dick according to these pointless rules) because I say so. It’s like: You have to believe that this is art because I say so.
I was very satisfied with the title. It was called: Call Ishmael.

KF: Excellent!
Sorry my cat is going bonkers here.

FG: Is it still freezing in NYC?

KF: We are in an ice age, apparently.

FG: Ugh.

KF: I'm trying to figure out a way to characterize the different experiences of watching these mental tasks on video and live in performance, and failing at the moment... But somehow it seems that my focus goes to different things- more focused in the videos on the particular actions relating to the tasks, and in person to the aura of the experience, the feeling present in the room, and the objects themselves...

FG: Mmmm... It's a good point. I guess I’ll have to send you the pieces in their entirety.
I don't know either. I think it's hard for me to think about it in terms of experience... I’m rather thinking about it in terms of what kinds of different objects they are - in ontological, rather then phenomenological terms, in other words. Also in the videos I guess all sorts of random background stuff comes to the foreground: noises form outside, a fly on the wall, etc. In performance, no matter how boring, the focus tends to remain tighter, no?

KF: Hmm, that 's interesting. There's a flatness in the video that places all the other distractions on an even plane. While live performance is so much about emphasis. Emphasis that is willed into existence.

FG: I like that, yes. What Gertrude Stein would have called "insistence" I suppose.

KF: Yes.

FG: Which is what brings life and energy into repetition, and what makes repetition not actually repetitive. Yes: that is very very central in live performance.

KF: I think quite a bit about the different experiences of time that can be witnessed in performance- rapt attention, boredom, distraction... I think they are all valid and interesting.

FG: Absolutely.

KF: Convincing actors of this is difficult sometimes though.

FG: Yes yes yes. Vanity.

KF: Because if they feel like they are losing the audience they get very upset.

FG: One always feels the need to be in control. There is this need to "control" the audience. I struggle with that too. It's tricky - because the audience sometimes looks like it WANTS to be controlled.

KF: I think that's mostly true. But we can't just give them what they want, right? That's too easy for everyone!

FG: It's comfortable to relinquish oneself to someone else for a while and get carried along. All the while being "interested".

KF: So when you frustrate those expectations then you get called am amateur.

FG: Yes - but don't you think that's very specific to THEATER performance? I mean, in ART performance it's a given that it's going to be a mess. In theater, even in experimental theater, there is always the expectation that the director (or performer) will control the audience’s reactions - it's a totally different game.

KF: Yes, but do art world audiences really want to watch things? Do they enjoy the experience of performance, or just the idea. I wonder about that sometimes.

FG: You mean in visual art performance - the kind of performance that gets written about on Artforum? Performa performance?

KF: Yes, I guess I'm referring to that. Because sitting through a performance and its ups and downs, transitions- being interested in THAT is a very particular thing.

FG: Well, I think here we're getting at something that is very crucial for both of us, and it's the way in which our practices are positioned in this kind of no man's land: it's not experimental theater, but it's definitely rooted in theater, and it's not quite visual art performance... in a lot of "performance art" the whole point of the experience seems often to be purely social: re-enforcing a sense of belonging to a group of connoisseurs. People react to what happens in the piece in order to signal to one another that they "get it", that they are insiders.... I see this a lot at Performa - a lot in this now very popular genre of lecture-performance.

KF: And not about the experience of the performance, which will be entirely different for different people, which uses temp and pace as variables, highly studied variables.
temp temp tempo
Problem with my o key.

FG: This is a huge topic, and crucial. It also has to do with amateurism and professionalism - in art performance being too "professional" often seems to be a liability - in theater it's the other way around. This is very badly put, but don't you agree? In art circles, an amazing performer like Fulya Peker would be considered kind of uncool - whereas they love Ann Liv Young. Well, she’s not the best example, perhaps, but I was just reading about her. It’s is something about control and technique, and about "not giving a shit"

KF: Yes, and Fulya is a great example. She's a gem with a highly developed, individualistic practice, and it's a joy to watch her work, to prepare, even, for a performance. It is integrated into her life in a very holistic way. I feel that way about several performers I've worked with (present company included.)

FG: Fulya is amazing. I remember noticing her in Foreman's shows well before I knew who she was - the performer of one’s dreams. Like Elena Russo Arman, whom you met in Italy last summer.

KF: But I think it comes back to virtuosity somehow, and time, and the willingness of audiences to give up time, and to enjoy, seek out, radical experiences of time. And that's partly why I think I always wind up working in theater.

FG: Absolutely. But don't you think that that kind of command of one's practice would be considered somehow "uncool" in performance art? Interestingly enough that is not so in painting, for instance. In other media attitudes keep changing and shifting: one day technique is conservative and a bad thing, but then it’s “in” again, and so on. In performance art, on the other hand, this sort of deskilling seems to be a defining feature: if the person looks like she knows what she’s doing, it’s not performance art. Unless we’re talking of that quasi-mystical “thing” that people like Abramović always go on and on about. I’m exaggerating of course, but you see what I mean.

KF: Well, I think that's what's so mystifying about this whole Performa/performance art situation, to performance people like you and me.

FG: It's really a different set of rules. And that's what makes your practice "difficult" I think: that it refuses to fully play by either... and what makes it really compelling too.

KF: So the question becomes what is the best apparatus to funnel myself through, or what is best for the work itself...

FG: It is a hard thing to negotiate.

KF: To be continually disappointing people and their expectations! Or happily overturning them.

FG: It's harder and harder to break the rules as more and more rule-breaking rules (rules about how to break rules) get codified and sanctioned. "Breaking rules is good" (but only if you do it in ways we can recognize: i.e. if you break them according to the rules). So in theater you're an amateur, in performance art you're too theatrical.

KF: Yes, yes. that's me.
(punch)

FG: Go stand in the corner!

KF: I think that balance and fluctuation is incredibly interesting, that's a central idea in most of my pieces, or perhaps a central methodology. Putting Doug next to Fulya for example. Then things start to get interesting. I heard comments like... "who was that guy that invaded the stage?"

FG: Ah that's a great comment! Also "control and release" - or wouldn't you put it like that?

KF: I would say different modes of performance- or methods. Task-based, actions, alongside theatricalized activity.

FG: Yes, I like that.

KF: Side by side, in an inconsistent universe.

FG: Inconsistency is also a big thing for you, it seems to me. You're much bolder than I am, on this account. I feel the attraction, but often step back.

KF: Ah, well, perhaps that is a good impulse.

FG: Ahahah, I don’t know.
I think it has to do again with the difference between personal, solo work, and ensemble work. But it's very interesting to occupy those inconsistent spaces, as a performer. It is difficult for a lot of people, I suspect - like we were saying earlier. Perhaps it's another aspect of that issue of keeping the audience interested at all times, being in control.

KF: You can occupy them as a performer, but not really embody them, yes? And that is how a diverse ensemble creates the possibility for those kinds of ruptures. And the individual performers provide the life raft, so to speak. They give you something to hang onto- several, individualistic life rafts.

FG: I’m thinking about the rafts...
I think the joke is that there has been no shipwreck. That's what makes the multiplicity of life rafts so utterly puzzling and exciting. I like this!

KF: This is perhaps the greatest metaphor for my work that I can conjure. Well done!
Where's the shipwreck!?!

FG: Aftermaths of a shipwreck that never happened. Or even Rehearsals for a shipwreck.

KF: So what will you be performing next week?

FG: I’ll finalize the program over the next few days and will let you know. "I want o to use masonite boards" How's that as a title for the program?

KF: Perfect.

FG: (without the random "o') (or maybe I should leave it)

KF: And sometime I can perform "I want to use chalk line reels."

FG: Ah, yes! I want to see that one! Anyway, we should talk more about performance! And shipwrecks, and inconsistency. This was very productive for me.

KF: And for me. Signing off now- thanks Francesco, and see you soon!
(ninja) (ninja) (ninja)

FG: Thank you!
(dance) (dance) (dance)

conducted over internet chat January 30, 2011, Brooklyn, NY and Toronto, Canada

Kara Feely / Francesco Gagliardi: January 30 2011, part one

2011-02-08T12:26:00.005-05:00

Francesco Gagliardi: (dance)
(dance) (dance)
(dance) (dance) (dance)
(dance) (dance) (dance) (dance)

Kara Feely: What's happening with these little dancing men?

FG: Aren't they great? They're like Craig's Ubermarionette - they're perfect. Wouldn't you love performers like these?

KF: Yes, absolutely. They are like a virtual manifestation of one of your silent mental pieces... like the exercise one, which I read for the first time last night.

FG: Oh, the one about crying?

KF: Yes! That seems to me to be a much better acting exercise than thinking about your dead dog.

FG: Ah, yes - a perverse re-instatement of the Method...
Anyway - how are you doing? It's great chatting, finally! It's been a long time!

KF: I know! This is nice. I like this...

FG: (dance)

KF: (ninja)
Now our virtual manifestations are dancing together.

FG: Yes, the ninja guy too. He seems a little too purposeful, though, don't you think? He kicks. He does something. The other is just fooling around.

KF: He does do something, he is accomplishing things. Unknown, secret things.

FG: And do we like that? Accomplishing things, I mean?

KF: Maybe not on a Sunday...

FG: Yes - unless they are very secret...

KF: But we are industrious artists, yes?

FG: ... yes?
Speaking of secret things, I would like to perform (a variation of?) your map piece in my performance on February 11. Do I have permission?

KF: Of course.

FG: Excellent. I still don't know what to do with it - but I want to start with (something like) it.

KF: There is a variation of it in INNOVA- which is interesting.

FG: I sort of guessed it from one of the photographs...

KF: I think we will move it back to the floor for the May premiere.

FG: It was quite compelling to see it on both sides of that sheet of plastic - a sort of layering of people's disjointed recollections.

KF: Perhaps you should perform it with a chalk line reel... I'm getting obsessed with those lately.

FG: Yes, chalk is good. I like the sound of the tape, though. Also, after spending so much time thinking about Joan Jonas, I think I cannot do chalk...

KF: But these are awesome....
http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-47-681-Chalk-Line-Reel/dp/B0000950PT
I saw Peter Ksander using one and can't stop thinking about it. What's wrong with me?

FG: Oh wow, these do look great. But don't you sometimes start with one of these stupid tools - and build a whole piece around it? I know that when I need inspiration I just have to go to Home Depot, and I see stuff and I buy it, and then have to find ways of using it. Home Depot is a treasure trove.

KF: It really is. I'm teaching a class on this right now, incidentally.

FG: On Home Depot?

KF: "Designing from Home Depot"

FG: No way! That's great!

KF: Actually, the real title is "Designing for New Performance Modes: Environments, Mixed-media, Object-based Theater, and Home Depot"

FG: Beautiful.
It's interesting though how differently you think about objects when they're mass produced and available in large quantities, and when they are ... I don't know. Think about the kinds of objects you'd find in a junk shop. They may all very well have been mass produced, but each has gone through a history that has made it somehow unique, even if there are thousands like it – it’s a completely different thing - to work with an Ikea table fresh from Ikea and one that you find in a junk shop.
KF: I have really confused a whole slew of hardware store salesmen, let me tell you...

FG: Oh, yes - I had that with glass cutters... asking for pieces of glass, and agonizing over the thickness... and they would ask: "But what is it FOR?" And I would have to answer: "Oh, nothing, I just have to HOLD it."

KF: I remember that! I've had that with sanders...

FG: Sanders?

KF: Yes, Eric Magnus used a sander to distress his own suit in INNOVA.
And I was really interested in the color of one, but it turned out not to be a sander but a grout smoother or something, but I bought it anyway. The salesman was really confused.

FG: Ah. I couldn't tell from the picture if it was Eric or Doug Barrett - but I noticed a picture of someone sanding their ass...

KF: Yes, that was Eric. He did it really well. A sander with a yellow handle works much better than a piece of sandpaper.

FG: But back to this thing about objects - I think this has a lot to do with both your practice and mine, no?

KF: Yes, yes...

FG: And I mean… Your name of course: "Object Collection". How did that came about? Anything to do with objects?

KF: I think Travis and I both liked the separate words "Object" and "Collection", so we put them together. At first it seemed like a mouthful. But now it suits us, with all the crap we collect on stage. A self fulfilling prophecy.

FG: They are very good words - I like the idea of a collection - of putting stuff together and then it's a collection. It can be a collection of objects that have nothing to do with one another, but it's still a collection: you make it one by calling it one. It's an interesting compositional strategy.

KF: Yes- that reminds me of a Matisse painting I saw last year at the Met that struck me...

FG: What was it?

KF: Let me see if I can find it.

FG: I’ll put the kettle on...

KF: That's funny, most Matisse paintings fall into this category.

FG: What category?

KF: What I am about to describe... it was a still life, a collection of objects on a table with a very solid blue background which was a window perhaps. But the choice of objects was strange, bizarre, like this was a very random collection of distinct things that had nothing to do with one another... except that he owned them, and liked them, and decided to put them together on a table at the same time.

FG: Yes. That's exactly it. And it becomes this very unique collection, this specific unified “thing” -whether it's actually based on a set of personal, secret criteria, or completely random, like free association, or pure chance

KF: Yes, I think for that painting the collection was sort of incidental, like, well I have to paint something today... so how about this, and this...thing? Which made it all the more striking to me.
You have a kind of treasure trove of objects that you use for performance. Has this been growing since the move to Toronto?

FG: Not really --- I haven't been performing very much since the move... still working with the same table and pieces of glass and cardboard panels...

KF: New pieces with these objects?

FG: More like variations on older pieces. I’ve been a little stuck - I’m just beginning to feel the juices flowing again. Writing has been a bit draining. I find it hard to concentrate on two things at once...

KF: It's difficult to move, and difficult to switch gears between the critical and creative. I could never write in two modes at once.

FG: But it's getting better - actually, a trip to the art supplies store yesterday did the trick... I bought lots of masonite boards. They are quite beautiful.

KF: Hmmmm... masonite. Material fetish.

FG: But back to what we were saying before: do you feel you prefer to work with found objects that are somehow unique (like a special hat you find in a second hand store, or your grand mother's lamp, etc.) or with generic mass produced shit - like home depot steel rods, whatever --- I mean - do you work with these different kinds of objects in different ways or not, and if you do, is there one kind you prefer? Do you know what I mean?

KF: Yes. Most of the objects are generic. I like the distancing of them, or you could say the detourning of them. I used to use some "special" objects that I found, but then I became attached to them, and worried about breaking them in rehearsal (which happens.) And now they just sit on my shelf and come out when I'm bored, or at parties.

FG: Yes, I know exactly what you mean. If you overload them with meaning, if you overinvest in them, you literally can't use them anymore...

KF: Yes, but also the audience is not in on the situation. It makes sense for you and your solo performances, where the relationship between you and object is personal, perceivable, and performative. But assigning it to other people, actors, is different. Your relationships don't carry over, so it seems arbitrary, so why not make the objects arbitrary, or generic, in a sense.

FG: That's very true. Even in solos though I’m moving away from this over-investment in specific objects.

KF: But for you, the object is also a place holder for an idea, or memory, yes? So, any object (once properly invested) can work?

FG: Absolutely: I like to be able to identify a KIND of object that can be replaced and still serve as a trigger for that specific association, yes. What I am after is a sort of ... how shall I put it? I like the memory to be triggered in a more "abstract" way - or rather, by way of a more abstract chain of associations: it's not: grandma's handbag... poor grandma she's dead.

KF: Yes, in other words- this masonite board: poor grandma she's dead.
That would be a good performance I think.

FG: I go from grandma, to her way of walking, to the streets of the seaside town where we walked when I was a kid and she would carry her handbag in a very distinctive way, to translating that movement, or that space, etc. But yes: masonite - handbag - seaside - 1983 - grandma dead -- something like that. It goes through layers of translation, so to speak. And every time you're responding not so much to the original memory, but to the correlate object, so it becomes more and more removed and abstract and ultimately about something else entirely. You really respond to the memory of the swaying of the bag, to THAT movement itself, to its quality as a movement - it's not grandma walking anymore. Does this make sense? So in the end the performance is not about poor grandma - that's just the fuel or something. The performance is not about anything really... it's just these patterns of movements - this arrangement of objects in space, through time.

KF: It's also about a perceived rigorous practice... this is what is palpable to the audience. A very specific rigorous practice. And watching you negotiate that practice with the objects is utterly fascinating.

FG: I like the idea of virtuosity applied to absolutely gratuitous tasks. Like developing a very specific skill for turning stupid light bulbs on and off for those performances I do with the lightbox.

KF: It's good to be specialized. I'm quite good a rearranging army figurines in tableaux from Arthur Miller plays.

FG: Yes! Create your own constraints and then learn how to operate within them with beauty and perfection (… or something). It's very exciting to see.

KF: Have you written anything for the light bulb rig yet, or are you still improvising with it?

FG: Nothing yet - it's sitting on a shelf, looking at me....

---END OF PART ONE---

conducted over internet chat January 30, 2011, Brooklyn, NY and Toronto, Canada

OC on the Free Music Archive

2010-11-11T15:01:00.006-05:00

Object Collection performing Travis Just's music at Issue Project Room March 5, 2010

link here

full set here

Performers are:
Devin Maxwell
James Moore
Jonathan Marmor
Quentin Tolimieri
Travis Just

Doug Barrett / Travis Just, 10.15.2010

2010-10-18T10:29:00.012-04:00

Doug Barrett
Hey

Travis Just
good morning

DB
how's everything?

TJ
fantastic, you?

DB
did you make a cappuccino or an espresso?

not bad

still caffeinating

TJ
first the first, then the second.

what shall we talk about? you threatened that you had notes...

DB
haha

well, i've been going over the notes from our last conversation—by the way, will Kara be joining us?—along with nearly your entire oeuvre...

at least the three pieces i have dvd documentation for

TJ
no, actually...and maybe i wasn’t clear about this...i wanted to have a skype chat not related to that article. talk just you and me about your music, mine, whatever.

sorry if that wasn’t what you expected. we can certainly do something with kara next time

DB
no, no totally fine...

TJ
i did some chats with composers a couple of years ago and wanted to get back into it. kara is going to do some as well.

we think blogs are going to be really hot in 2011...bigger than twitter...

DB
haha

a bit scary

i'm sure you're right

TJ
do you want to talk about the diapason experience?

DB
hmm, well i'm still trying to digest it i think...

TJ
your piece or the entire show/its environment, reception etc...

?

DB
more or less all of the above

did you have any thoughts or eager questions about it?

TJ
how about the piece...D.E.E.D....how did it go after the initial performance?

DB
well, everything actually came together quite well: out of everything that could have gone wrong, it ended up ok; the video recording part worked and then i set up the monitor and plugged the camera in and it worked as a video piece...maybe you wanna talk more about the reception? or a reading of it or something?

TJ
[Doug Barrett’s Violin Tuned D.E.E.D. is a historical revision of Bruce Nauman’s Violin Tuned D.E.A.D. (1969), performed by violinist Tom Chiu and installed as a video work at
Diapason Gallery, as part of “Non-Cochlear Sound”, curated by Seth Kim-Cohen, http://noncochlearsound.com]

DB
;)

TJ
pretty fucking official, right? take that Condé Nast

i am interested in the pragmatic things first off actually...i had to leave the performance because of the environment it was happening in. i was curious whether the sound of the party made it onto the video's audio track

DB
oh yes, it did and that was the intention. at least as i saw it, to inject a kind of (pseudo-)concert situation into an otherwise "gallery" context ("gallery" because diapason also hosts performance events, experimental music and the like); more important was how that situation—with its own set of social factors comes into contact with the art opening environment, all as part of this re-framing, re-imagining of the nauman work.

and to answer your question, the sound of the party/opening did make it onto the sound track—was funny, i got an email back from david kant, "by the way, i can hear you talking"

TJ
it was a very different environment in many ways, physically, culturally, etc...

how has the piece been received?

DB
i think it was well-received, at least a few people remarked that they thought it was interesting...had several conversations during the performance (obviously, with david's remark), and then some while it was installed.

TJ
it seemed like every parameter of the original piece was inverted: a skilled violinist instead of someone who can't play; a crowded, very informal 'art-world' opening instead of an austere empty space; a sense of productivity and outward looking instead of narcissism and 'end-of-art'...

and didn’t you turn the video screen as well?

DB
i guess there was a bit of tension there too; like i wasn't sure how to treat that: in a normal 'concert' setting i would never talk over a performance, especially my own piece. but somehow in this case it seemed ok.

oh, hmm, that's an interesting way to put it, inversion. i tended to think of it as somewhere between plagiarism and détournement, but the idea of it as an inversion i think is appropriate as well. there's a definite emphasis on the shifted social context—the solipsistic artist’s studio-turned art opening/concert environment, along with the latter’s unique set of contingencies and variables

TJ
it is an interesting place to locate a performance, especially since that world has become shut-off to musical practices for decades now. there are complications and questions that go along with it of course.

DB
and i did turn the video screen, in a sense to re-erect what the nauman piece pronounces dead...at least with respect to music’s actional dimension, its relation to lived, musical labor...

TJ
i suppose another iteration could have Tom playing lying down

DB
hehe, i think that was actually his proposal for Mike Kelly's version of the piece for Performa '09

TJ
snap.

DB
stretched out over two chairs...for an hour

TJ
that's the david blaine proposal...

DB
haha

but he would have been frozen in a block of ice of course

or over a pit of burning coals

TJ
so do you have more pieces in this direction? it is an interesting shift from 'sound art' as it has been done recently (digital crowd-interaction, physical objects that reference sound, improv in museums...)

DB
well, i've been interested in two avenues i lately: work that has more installation-like components, that might have an iteratable component imagined for gallery events, and then trying to conceive of the performance evening (the "concert") as a form—putting together pieces and situations based around certain ideas

an example of the latter being the event i did for your series at the incubator arts project. and i have some more ideas that follow from this

TJ
essentially a break between something with a duration/change over time and something static or repeatable?

DB
oh, hmm, i wouldn't say that the structures are exclusive in that sense—maybe it's more practical to use a "loop" for an installation, let's say, but i don't see why it can't be ever-changing like a concert

(if that's what you meant?)

TJ
i think there is a structural difference, from a musical point of view, which is interesting.

at least in how it is presented which to me anyway is exactly parallel to how it is perceived

DB
the presentation context then determining or paralleling the structure of its contents?

TJ
no, the content is irrelevant here. presentation paralleling the perception or reception. the content can be anything of course. it's a ping-pong ball against a wall basically, not a line from artist to audience/viewer. it's like that dumb scene in Forrest Gump. just keeps bouncing back, the same as when it was sent out.

DB
ok, so a certain kind of reception modality. it doesn't alter reception/perception per se?

TJ
i guess what i'm saying is that any sort of content can work in either context and that what seems to me to create the difference is the arena or method in which it is presented. though often the details of these environment are left to happenstance to an extent.

DB
and "either context" meaning a concert or opening?

TJ
yes, or using my earlier terms: dynamic or static.

DB
oh, ok. but i've been wondering, and i'm interested to hear your thoughts, is there some kind of unique kernel of this bizarre social gathering we call concert? i don't want to essentialize what a concert is (there's no reason we can't think of listening to a recording with headphones as a kind of private performance, for instance), but i wonder if there's just something that happens there that has its own weird set of dynamics—and these can work independently of the actual structures of the site's "content", static or moving

TJ
i have thought for a while that it simply has to do with the act of naming it. once language has been applied to something, in this era when anything can be done in any situation, then the residues of that language are in full effect. i have found that operating under these assumptions has been more interesting and productive than trying to define and diagnose a situation as a 'concert' or an 'opera' or 'music'.

maybe that is my naivete though. being a sucker and willing to take people at their word..

DB
that's an important component though, the naming involved. it seems like yours and kara's work presents some interesting questions with respect to this, particularly because you do make "operas" and music and do concerts (by the way, do you think of them as "operas" or operas?) the language thing, this kind of underlying premising function, is powerful...(i'm even prone not to use terms like "concert", often preferring "evening of performances")

(but then again there is language there, in a virtual sense, even when terms like these are not employed)

TJ
it's a question of frame, isn't it? again, content is irrelevant. whether you call it a 'concert' or an 'evening of performances', the same pieces are performed. operas or 'operas'...we decided on the former (and there was a discussion, still ongoing). it seemed more direct to leave the quotation marks, if they existed, to the individuals. i am more interested in what is gained, what is forced, rather than what is lost. production is more compelling than lack, and i think necessary in the artistic climate these days.

DB
—i have in my notes something from the interview with you and kara, "What to do when you're stuck in a system based on productivity: out-produce."

TJ
i cribbed that from Sande Cohen of course. but yes, that is a mantra we have had for years now.

DB
:) yes, a question of frame. i think at the present moment there's a big problem that lies in the re-articulation of such frames. in the sense that one must not essentialize or erect a kind of monolithic autonomy around what it is to make concerts, music (or operas?), but salvage something of those traditions by showing their inherent alterity, non-selfsameness...to show how they operate within and against other media, situations, cultural contexts

that for me is why i choose the "evening of performances" as a way to re-see the concert

TJ
certainly, and that idea i think is mirrored in the content of kara's writing.

you know, lachenmann wrote about his music as the last gasp of orchestral writing at the same time that cage was producing Song Books. i guess i have always been drawn to the latter.

i see DEAD vs DEED in this context as well.

except cage was 40 years ahead of his time as usual.

your reaction to the Song Books show last week was interesting

DB
interesting. what in kara's writing are you thinking of (i read a little of the script to Evoke Memories of a Golden Age last night)?

as far as lachenmann and cage that's funny, when i met lachenmann in buffalo one thing that he said was, "when i was a student this (points to a work of webern) was not considered music. what i tell all of my students is not to make music. make a 'sounding situation' or something. but don't make music." i wouldn't ordinarily think of lachenmann (presently at least) as not making music, but in a way it's kind of good advice. perhaps whereas that was good advice, Song Books was good action...

DEAD vs. DEED as far as context?

TJ
DEAD vs DEED as far as articulating this difference

when i met lachenmann he was railing against 'high' vs 'low' music. a shocking display of conservatism for an old communist.

or maybe not....that's a different conversation ;)

maybe that's the difference: deeds not words (or DEEDs)

it's like the art criticism you come across...the most fantastic, forward-looking ideas are represented in this criticism by completely reactionary artwork: Barthes/Boulez, Lehmann's 'Postdramatic theater' and its suburban-german Stadttheater expression...

DB
yeah, the Song Books show was great, and my reaction i think has more to do with what i'm interested in at the moment: using music or performance to push even further a politicized statement, whether that "violates" the work or not (i like this german word, Musikmissgebrauch, from Christian von Borries); again détournement, but maybe one in which the initial revolutionary impulse is revered precisely by its recontextualization, re-imagining...

i remember lachenmann saying something similar in buffalo i think...

actions/property and not text? i'd imagine that the articulation is a medial one, an intervention producing a way of seeing (in the sense of visibility) "the musical"?

TJ
a musicalization of Nauman? someone should do that to that awful piece that was in MoMA the last few months.

DB
oh, the days of the week piece?

TJ
yes

DB
i admit, i was pretty underwhelmed by it

TJ
so, it seemed, was Nauman

there does seem to be a scraping of the bottom of the barrel of that 60s generation going on.
wringing the last bits of life from anything that can be found.

DB
but nauman is a brilliant genius...sometimes

TJ
agreed

maybe i prefer stupid genius though....

DB
re: musicalization of Nauman: or a Naumanization of music. it's a way of re-seeing something historically, which re-articulates something presently, a relationality...

TJ
right, very much in tune with object collection's operas/concerts/etc

DB
opening something up that was never exactly closed. to see, envision a musical practice that intersects with this particular mode of 60s video performance...not that video performance and musical practices have been or should have ever been separated, but somehow perhaps we've forgotten how richly intertwined things like that once were?

TJ
the presence of the video seemed almost incidental to me, not in a negative way though. the focus seemed to me to be back on the activity, back on the action/deed. the video was necessarily present of course, but its self-fascination with its tactile presence was erased or ignored. this appears to be the best way to work with technology and such things: as fact instead of as surface.

DB
the operas of yours and kara's as a similar kind of re-articulation?

that's interesting, especially given this explicit (again) death opera has supposedly suffered (death part II according to Žižek and Mladen Dolar's book)

TJ
haven't read it unfortunately...to paraphrase a dead 60s icon: opera isn't dead if i say it isn’t

DB
sounds pretty diva-ish. i like it

TJ
i didn't even invent the re-articulation of it. and that sums up the situation today, particularly in new york. in many ways new york is filled with corpses.

DB
...and yet there is still this incessant labor, still musicians and artists producing, working

TJ
well that is the flip side of it. but that incessant labor is all but ignored by everyone who isn't directly involved with it. the fixation on past glories is astonishing, the backwards-looking... this is particularly noticeable in people from out of town, but it infects the city itself.

DB
right, the kind of historical spectacle-fetish

TJ
geriatric star-fucking was a term jenny walshe and i had for it

DB
haha

TJ
but that was after a night of drinking

DB
well one day we'll all have our little black books published somewhere ;)

conducted over internet chat October 15, 2010, Brooklyn, NY.

Problem Radical(s)...into the Fall

2009-08-21T12:44:00.002-04:00

The opera came, the opera went, we videoed the opera.

Lots more to come in the Fall into 2010, but for now...

Director/Writer: Kara Feely
Composer: Travis Just
Installation: Hannah Dougherty
Video: Daniel Kötter
Costume Desiger: Peter Ksander
Lighting Designer: Miranda Hardy
Performers: Karl Allen, Sarah Dahlen, Francesco Gagliardi, Caitlin McDonough Thayer
Musicians: Kevin Farrell, James Moore
Stage Manager: Sarah Nerboso
Production Assistants: Peiyi Wong, Stacey Berman, Sara Patterson
Assistant Producer: Morgan von Prelle Pecelli

www.objectcollection.us

video from the show after the jump

Election Day 2008 - Schooltime Compositions (Cardew)

2008-11-12T15:51:00.008-05:00

Object Collection celebrates Election Day 2008 with a performance of Cornelius Cardew's Schooltime Compositions (1968).

performed 11.04.2008, Ontological Theater, NYC

performed by:
Alex Barreto, Sarah Dahlen, Kara Feely, Avi Glickstein, Miranda Hardy, Travis Just, Peter Ksander, Devin Maxwell, Jonathan Marmor, Aaron Meicht, Jessica Grace Pagan, Katie Porter, Nick Rattray, Roy Scranton, Jennifer Walshe, Peiyi Wong

www.objectcollection.us

Click the link for 2 excerpts from the show.

Available in High-Quality by clicking here and here

Problem Radical(s) workshop videos

2008-07-28T13:32:00.005-04:00

We just finished a month-long residency at Abrons Arts Center on the lovely Lower East Side working on our upcoming opera Problem Radical(s).

Problem Radical(s). will premiere at PS122 in April 2009.

Photos and more information at www.objectcollection.us

Click the link for a couple of videos from the workshop performances.

Jennifer Walshe videos, Experimental Music 2.23.2008

2008-04-16T15:00:00.007-04:00

two videos from our concert of Jennifer Walshe's music
performed as part of "Experimental Music" at the Ontological Theater in St. Mark's Church, NYC, 2.23.2008

A sensitive number for the laydeez (Jennifer Walshe)

Eric KM Clark - violin, objects
Travis Just - alto saxophone, objects
Quentin Tolimieri - objects
Harris Wulfson - objects

Same person, not the same person (Jennifer Walshe)

Jennifer Walshe - voice, psaltery
Eric KM Clark - violin, harmonica
Harris Wulfson - violin, harmonica
James Moore - bowed electric bass, harmonica
Travis Just - sine tones, field recordings, harmonica
Quentin Tolimieri - sine tones, field recordings, harmonica

Christian Kesten interview 2.27.2008

2008-03-09T10:51:00.004-04:00

Travis Just
hi christian.

Christian Kesten
hi travis.

TJ
glad we could find a time, i guess it is late over there.

CK
well it's ok. i'm a bit exhausted from last preparations before leaving for a month, but i'm in good mood.

TJ
well what shall we talk about? what is the climate in the berlin new music world like these days?

CK
there are the big festivals like UltraSchall and MaerzMusik, they're still existing, people go there, but besides places like Tesla got closed and nobody really cared, there was no big protest against it. Money gets less and less. There are scenes which try to get acquainted with this "post-economic" situation, like the very vivid scene of Labor Sonor or ausland or similar places, no-money series, but a very good exchange. We started Labor Diskurs, a talk among musicians, improvisers, composers, also theorists, and it seemed there was a big need for that.

TJ
yes, I have heard about all of the closings. it seems quite difficult (from a distance). of course there are still so many artists so that is hopeful. Is Labor Diskurs an event at KuLe? who has been appearing there if so?
(ballhaus naunynstrasse should be mentioned as well...)

CK
Right, I was just thinking about Ballhaus... We were trying to do our annual "maulwerker performing music" at Ballhaus, since Tesla doesn't exist anymore (where it happened before). Now we're searching desperately for another place, and it's not easy. Right now, we don't know where it will happen, and July is coming soon… - Labor Diskurs was started by Andrea Neumann, Burkhard Beins and me plus Arthur Rother and Fernanda Farah. We had the desire to talk more theoretically about certain issues in the music which is played at Labor Sonor, and invited people from the "scene". It has a good resonance. After first more general discussions about topics like "the union of composer and performer", "notation and non-notation", etc., musicians introduced their works more specifically. So far Kai Fagaschinski, Burkhard Beins presented their works (in a talk), and a duo work of Andrea Neumann and Sabine Ercklentz has been discussed.

TJ
it's interesting how these topics and these scenes are so linked to issues of space. obviously one of the things that everyone was so excited about berlin was the abundance of space for work.

CK
that's maybe true. there are a lot of small no-budget places, yes.

TJ
do you find a different kind of work being presented in these venues (Labor Sonor, etc) in comparison to the larger festivals?

CK
definitely. on the one hand it's more "improvised" music [this term is discussed heavily at Labor Diskurs...], or "echtzeitmusik" (real time music), which is maybe a bit presented at MaerzMusik, but not at all at other festivals. Or it's simply called "Jazz" like in donaueschingen. at labor sonor and ausland, we also try to present performance art or art which is between music and performance art, or works for music and video etc.

TJ
do you find that your work as a composer is separate from the work as a performer (or organizer)? do the processes interact at all?

CK
yes they do interact. sometimes it's weird being both or all of this. but being also a "composer-performer", meaning, performing my own work, or composing for myself, has its certain qualities. only composing can be quite theoretical. performing brings it down to earth.
how is that for yourself?

TJ
similar. sometimes one takes precedence out of necessity. an interesting thing about at least some of your music is the emphasis of the body. of course since you are such a compelling performer, the music is related closely to your, CK's, body. but one of the things I love about the pieces is that they work for other performers as well.

CK
interesting. i always try to make them performable for others. although they are maybe developed through my body (tongue piece, breath piece), i try to fix them in scores, which are readable and performable for everyone. kai fagaschinski for example is the opposite: he only composes for himself, his sounds are his own, and he never tells any composer how he creates his amazing clarinet sounds.
it depends if you understand yourself as a "band" or as a score composer, i'd say.

TJ
yes there is this intense involvement with one's own physicality, certainly in improvisation. when that translates to a score in your case there seems to be a real intimacy present in the music. maybe another way of putting it is that your willingness to see the performing body as one that goes out and lives a life (has a drink, sneezes, gets into bed) after the performance is a different approach to other composers that work with concepts of 'performance'.

CK
yes i see a necessity to keep it permeable.

TJ
permeable in what sense?

CK
i mean life and art can interpenetrate.
for me it's as you already noticed the body which makes it necessary to integrate different ways of perception - acoustic, visual, spatial, physical … - in one piece or one work.

TJ
and these ways of perception are then put through the prism of the body?

CK
yes, one perceives through the body. the listener/spectator as well as the performer.

TJ
yes and this feels like a difference to me, for example, with cage. where the physicality of the performer is de-emphasized in favor of abstraction. your music still retains this abstraction but engages the meat-muscle-blood of the body in a way that is unique I think.

conducted online, 2.27.08

Jennifer Walshe interview 2.6.2008

2008-02-11T21:37:00.007-05:00

Travis Just
good morning jenny

Jennifer Walshe
ok!

TJ
this is a continuing adventure getting this to work

JW
well seems to be going now!

TJ
so...what shall we talk about? i guess a good first question last time was: is there anything that is on your mind (musically or otherwise) these days?

JW
well at the moment i'm in the midst of this big alter ego project, so i suppose what is on my mind a lot is trying to get away from habit.

TJ
yeah, it's interesting that you created 11 non-existent entities to get away from habit. (can we refer to them without giving anything away?)

JW
yes we can refer to them, that's fine. i think part of the issue for me is that i think even with free improvisation (or sometimes especially with free improvisation) there is this problem of falling back on habits, of tricks to get out of certain situations, of certain sounds and sound spaces....

TJ
how do you differentiate those habits from the compositional ones? is it just a question of time/consideration?

JW
what do you mean?

TJ
well there are physical/reactive habits in improvisation and composition doesn't happen on the fly (for me anyway...)

JW
yes, certainly i think that there are physical/reactive habits in improvisation, i also think that when you play with different people more and more you discover that there are compositional or what you might even call structural habits, or developmental habits to do with the material that everyone has, and so i can understand from this perspective why cage was against improvisation, because while opening yourself up to everything allows for the possibility of something you've never heard/done before, it also allows for the possibility of you to keep doing what is comfortable/habitual.

TJ
that's true, the interesting thing for me in that was the pseudo-moral stance that came with it. I mean it's a very human thing to do and it isn't clear that one way of working (composition/improvisation) results in greater changeability. But we don't have to turn this into a “C” vs. “I” discussion...although you are uniquely qualified for such a discussion...

JW
no, i think i share your view also, in that when i first read cage talking about improvisation i thought the same thing, that it seemed a bit patronizing or moralist, but then after a few years of improvising and getting to understand more how the process happens in the moment you start to realize that it is a trap that is sometimes easy to fall into. and also i must say that going to performances of cage's music can also cause this problem - if you leave your score open to chance, if you offer the performer that power, you can often end up with the exact same problem. i've sat through many a cage concert where the performance had the same quality as a bad improvisation concert....

TJ
that's true. I sometimes feel that way listening to Sciarrino or something, even when I like the music.

JW
why do you say sciarrino?

TJ
dunno, a widely performed modern composer with an established performance practice I suppose?

could have been anyone, even myself

JW
i see what you mean. at the moment i'm listening to sciarrino's lohengrin and i just think it is stunningly beautiful...

TJ
what is it that appeals to you?

JW
in the lohengrin i think it's this sense of being inside somebody's head. it's this opera that seems utterly private and close to you.

TJ
that's a unique quality for something that uses such large forces and that kind of cultural arena.

what do you think about the term "opera", you've used it a couple of times.

JW
i think opera is a grand term, and i mean that in the sense of largesse. when you go to an opera at an opera house, you feel like you're watching a hollywood film - they have all the money, power, talent to put on this huge show. but because of the nature of the opera house, the performers are usually miles away from you (i am presuming here i'm in the cheap seats). and so there is this distance. and i know they can try and get around that with video, amplification, etc, but what i like about the lohengrin is that it feels close to you, which is a very special quality. opera i think is an interesting term. i've written 3 operas [XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!!, set phasers on kill! and Motel Abandon], and i call them all operas, but sometimes i do think are they better termed as music theatre pieces...

TJ
yeah, this difference I'm not sure has been made clear here in the States.

JW
where do you draw the line though? when i wrote the barbie opera [XXX_LIVE_NUDE_GIRLS!!I], i was very consciously placing it in the context of opera history. it's a marionette opera - mozart and haydn wrote them - it has characters, a story with a clear classical narrative arc, is in three acts. and of course it takes that and messes around with it by using barbie dolls instead of singers, but it was important to me to think of it as an opera rather than a music theatre piece.

TJ
yeah, sometimes the terminology doesn't reflect the ideas we're working on at the moment of course. There is something about the term 'opera' that just screams "the Past" to me though. And I say this as I am working on my first. It was hard to decide to use that word for me.

JW
that's exactly why i wanted to use it, because it is so loaded. and that's why i have pieces which i call operas and other pieces which i call music theatre pieces. when it's an opera, it knows it's "An Opera" and it's aware of what's going on by being called an opera, and dealing with the past. because if you run away completely from opera, to me that seems a little like a film-maker running away from film and calling all their films videos. also maybe on one level it has to do with who commissions it and where it is being performed - the second opera i wrote [set phasers on kill!] was commissioned by an opera production company and premiered in the hamburg staatsoper, so there was never any question at any point about whether it was an opera or not. we had the full opera house treatment with all the trimmings (people to help us get dressed). but the opera i wrote after that [Motel Abandon] was for three people and it was dogme 95 style opera in an apartment in berlin, and it was important to me to still call it opera. otherwise it's like saying that you can never write one, that it opera is always in the hands of these massively-funded organizations.

TJ
that's true. i mean it's already an act of outrageous insolence in our culture to call oneself an artist. the decision to define these terms for ourselves as composers isn't that much further along that road.

JW
i think you just have to decide to use the terms and not let them be taken away from you.

TJ
how does the music-theater idea work itself into your music? does that mean something in particular in your thinking?

JW
music theatre is just how i think. the cage quote which i use again and again is "what next? theatre. because we have eyes as well as ears." you can't divorce the theatrical/scenic element from the sonic in a performance unless you are brought to the theatre in a hermetically sealed car, manage not to see/hear/smell/touch anything prior to the concert, and then leave immediately without even listening to the applause. you listen to mahler 2 on CD, and it's great. then you go to carnegie hall and you see all the brass players shuffling and re-arranging themselves just before they come crashing in with a huge chord, you see the choir sitting there all quietly waiting til they come in, and it's amazing and exciting. i think a lot of the interest in the theatrical and visual elements comes from two sources for me - one is that my mother is a writer, and when i was growing up she considered beckett, pinter, tennessee williams and other playwrights an important part of my education. another important factor for me is that i was a trumpet player for a long time, and when you play in an orchestras a lot, you look around constantly, you are very aware of what is going on visually. you know when people are nervous, you know when they're about to play loud or soft, you know when they haven't practiced, you know when they are nailing it, you know how different it can sound in heldenleben when the first violinist is having an affair with the first horn.

TJ
right, the difference seems to be that now we work with those ideas directly in the score. instead of having those be (probably undesired) accidents or exceptions, they become specified material that is written in or given explicit space. At some point, something changed.

JW
i make a differentiation in my work - there's the type of music theatre pieces where people are doing certain theatrical things, along a continuum from explicitly playing a role through to perhaps making simple scenic gestures like building blocks in between phrases. then there's instrumental theatre, which is very involved with the performers being performers. and so i end up in these situations where i write scores which are very complex, where the notation of everything from breathing, gesture, when the pages of the part are turned, when a brass-player releases their spit valve is all locked down. [they could laugh smile]

TJ
i guess one question is, what keeps it music as opposed to performance or text? does it matter even? at what point could you simply take away the brass-player and still have a music-piece?

i mean, musicians aren't the best actors always...

JW
i'll answer your questions in order - the first one is what i think people find very problematic. is it still music if the performer doesn't play for a while and reads text? it is if it's called music. is it still music if the trombonist makes air sounds instead of pitched sounds? is it still music if the piano is prepared? i think if you call it music it is, otherwise we'd all be writing for classical ensembles, with no microphones, pitched and traditionally notated music. with the instrumental theatre pieces i write, i'm not trying to get the performers to act, which gets around the problem of musicians not always being actors. i'm just bringing gestures that are a part of performing for them into the piece. it's very normal when you're a brass player to position and re-position your mutes on the floor next to your chair. but when you get someone to do that over and over in a performance, it becomes something else.

TJ
one of the things that I find so interesting in your work is that there isn't an insistence that all of the music necessarily have a sonic element. meaning it can be the re-positioning of mutes for 2 minutes or something. and yet, there is never a question to me that it is an extraordinarily musical situation. (and of course there are all of those pieces that DO work with pitches/rhythms/etc...)

JW
well it makes sense to me that a musician will reposition mutes, and that watching that is a musical experience!

TJ
i don't know if this will be off-topic, or interesting, but how are you finding it spending all of this time in...perhaps even becoming a resident of, New York and the States? Of course you studied in Chicago, but a great deal of your work has been over in Europe.

JW
it's interesting being here. i see the same people i see in europe, everybody seems to pass through new york at one time or another. the funding structure is very different to europe, and a lot of people here have to be very focused on getting their work out because it's not quite as easy as europe (not that its easy anywhere). there's good and bad things about this...

TJ
i suppose 'europe' is a bit reductive, it's a big place...

JW
it is, and it's very different wherever you go...

i mean, how do you find the shuttling back and forth between berlin and here? what would make you go/stay?

TJ
it's hard to say for myself. i go where there is work and interest. right now there are more opportunities for me in new york so I am here more. the lifestyle question is another thing. also, it's hard to be a perpetual outsider for me, sometimes I just really really want to talk about the Mets.

do you find a different audience or different set of expectations for your work? from the musicians even?

JW
i can understand the not wanting to feel like an outsider! i think for me i just want space to work, and that involves a lot of factors. at the moment it's great living here, and in doing concerts in the city it's nice not to have to travel or get on a plane to do them. but i think wherever i go it's the same community to a large extent - there are always new people that you meet but you end up working with people that you will have something in common with, and that usually means that it's part of the community. we're not such a huge global community that everyone is still hidden, and that's great because you always feels connected. i think i would have to go to somewhere very remote like patagonia or borneo to feel that i was meeting people i didn't already know, hadn't already heard their music or even played with them. especially now with the web people have more and more access to what is going on.

TJ
that's true, but there is something different between the web-world and actually being on the street, dealing with the venues, rehearsing with musicians from different places. I find that places are actually quite different and that the world isn't as flat as it's supposed to be. I mean loading into a gig in New York is quite different than loading in to a gig in Berlin. This maybe ties into the extra-sonic elements you were describing earlier in reference to music-theater.

JW
you're right, it is completely different, and the people are different and the streets, the smells, the light are completely different. i find here in new york there are lots of possibilities to play, often for little or no money, and that does change the way i work. it's quite liberating because you view the experience differently - i view it as a chance to try out new works, to try new things, experiment. i don't mean that i don't give time and thought to what i'm doing, but instead that the gigs can become absorbed into the larger compositional process. most of the concerts i do in europe are of commissions, where everything needs to be very polished and so you do not try out things in the incubative phase, you want the end product. incidentally, i was talking to a friend last night who told me a story about a swiss composer who was here on a grant booking a gig in philadelphia at a place that wasn't actually a proper venue - they had a fake web site which made them sound like a university-affiliated institute. he was saying how if the swiss composer had lived in philly or had friends there he would have known what the story was. instead he turned up and was completely shocked to be playing for 5 people in an unheated garage in the middle of winter. so knowing the context is always important!

TJ
i think i might know those guys in philly...context is indeed important

JW
at the end of the day you just want to be somewhere with space and time to work, with an environment that is conducive to that...

TJ
yeah, well we're glad to have you on our turf for a while.

thanks very much for the conversation

JW
thanks to you too!

conducted online, 2.6.2008

nachtstimmung (Michael Pisaro) video excerpt - Experimental Music concert #1

2008-02-04T13:37:00.001-05:00

An excerpt from nachtstimmung (Michael Pisaro, 2007/8)

for:
speaker, 2 vocalists, 3 performers, piano, violin, guitar, mandolin, bass clarinet, trumpet, objects, sine tones, field recordings

Performed on January 25, 2008 at the Ontological Theater at St. Mark's Church, NYC.

Part of the "Experimental Music" series.

performed by:
Alex Barreto, Eric Clark, Gisburg, Avi Glickstein, Kara Feely, Travis Just, Jonathan Marmor, Aaron Meicht, Michael Pisaro, Quentin Tolimieri, Jennifer Walshe, Harris Wulfson

www.objectcollection.us

Michael Pisaro interview 1.13.2008

2008-01-13T11:32:00.006-05:00

Object Collection performed nachtstimmung with Michael Pisaro Friday 1/25, 10pm at the Ontological Theater as a part of the Experimental Music series.

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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

12/17/07 at Experimental Intermedia, NYC

2008-01-09T23:48:00.003-05:00

first post...

an excerpt from Problem Radical(s), a chamber opera premiering next year.

performed at Experimental Intermedia (thanks Phill!), 12/17/07.

Avi Glickstein, Jessica Grace Pagan, Kara Feely - voice, actions
Harris Wulfson - violin, mandolin, guitar
Eric Clark - violin, guitar
Travis Just - samples, field recordings, computer, clarinet, saxophone, harmonica, guitar

music by Travis Just
text/actions/direction by Kara Feely

this excerpt contains material from:
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young - Almost Cut My Hair
Crass - Do They Owe Us A Living
Radiohead - Kid A (album on fast-forward)
Neil Young - Let's Roll
Funkadelic - If You Don't Like the Effects, Don't Produce the Cause
I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill (trad.)