10.18.2010

Doug Barrett / Travis Just, 10.15.2010

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.