interview with Jessie Marino, PART II – June 14, 2016

PART II – June 14, 2016

Jessie Marino: sup?

Travis Just: nuthin

JM: you got some fresh jams out today! [Object Collection audio/video release Problem Radical(s)]

TJ: (dancing bhangra emoji) but it is hard to care much about recordings…for me anyway. thoughts?

JM: ya - its kind of a drag I get sick of listening to the stuff. and I don't know anything about post production so usually its just sitting next to someone and going -- yeah I guess thats cool

TJ: i don’t know anything about it either, but i can make it sound funky and thick. i’m not terribly interested in studio knowledge anyhow.

JM: why'd you do the audio only?

TJ: audio only because that’s how people listen to things. i’ve been asked about it a little recently and finally thought why the fuck not just release it. i have these performances just sitting on my hard drive.

JM: sure, get it out there

TJ: we have videos for everything, but who is going to watch a video release of an opera?

JM: (me). and probably Paula [Matthusen]

TJ: i only care about the live shit.

JM: we're trying a video thing for the new pamplemousse album - making some super whacked out music videos old vh1 style…oh you're gone

TJ: am i back?

JM: you're back

TJ: but am i really? yeah….product. it’s a question right?

JM: YOU'RE BACK BABY! well I'm with you too - I"m mostly concerned with the live shit. its what I really get excited about

TJ: dealing with an artifact (even if a digital one, which has the identical issues) means dealing even more with non-artistic concerns than we normally have to. packaging, distribution, promotion of a dead thing (a recorded artifact). these things turn me OFF.

JM: for sure - and then you have this baggage - trash - even in digital format - it takes space -- performance can evaporate so you have to get into it RIGHT THEN -- the artifact lets you procrastinate -- and possibly never really pay attention

you can think about a performance later and remember something completely different too -- something that may not have happened at all -- so there is a developing fiction -

and a reveal of what is important to you as a witness at the time

TJ: i see them as substitutes for the actual aesthetic experience, which is being in the room with the thing.

but yes, locating where this aesthetic moment actually occurs is complex.

JM: they are mostly business cards

TJ: or an option for someone who isn’t going to be able to view it live in NYC. (or in my case, live in NYC 7 years ago).

JM: ya. well I think i'm turning around on it now. the recordings do help to broaden out interested folks who may not have the opportunity to be there

TJ: do you have a different approach to making a video for distribution as opposed to a video for live performance? do you consider the viewer/listener’s perceiving-situation?

JM: ya for sure. but the opportunity doesn't always come. If its going to be distributed I think it MUST be different than just a documentation of a live performance

TJ: opportunity for…?

JM: the opportunity to make a version for distribution. I think you have to alter it to function within the medium

TJ: it is interesting, i think of my thing as a snapshot of a live event, so it is necessarily a live documentation. maybe i just don’t trust myself in a purely video medium.

JM: well i don't know if you necessarily have to trust yourself - I think you just gotta commit to the idea when you see and then fucking put it out there!

I do also like those kinds of blair witchy POV shots of live shows - I guess I'm mostly talking about record label type distribution. its getting complicated now with things made for Youtube vs Vimeo vs DVD etc

TJ: or easier…? the ‘making any money’ aspect is certainly dead, unless one is making something more…consumable. which neither you nor i do (happily)

JM: ha - making money

TJ: i guess one thing that i think about is how important the listening/viewing environment is to receiving the work well. with Kara and my work, you really need to, like, have Avi or whoever standing right in front of you and sweating, glowering, staring you in the fucking eye. otherwise it is, quite literally, two-dimensional

…but enough about my hang-ups…i want to talk about the piece of yours from the Roulette concert last month

JM: sure -

TJ: it seemed to me to have a different angle (at least from some of your other recent work). the performative elements…well all the elements actually, whether performative or sonic…seemed to me to be sort of ‘squared-off’, very distinct components sort of hanging in time/space. as opposed to something more like a musical gesture (with the micro aspects of, say drawing a bow across a string or moving an arm). does this make any sense?

JM: yes - well its a piece about the digital. and as opposed to the former automatons who were interested in trying to find or develop or invent a kind of "personality" these characters are only able to function in an on/off, 0 or 1 kind of reality. so they do what they are assigned to do. they read down the list of stereotypes and execute

TJ: i thought there was a quality of larger-scale building blocks. and it progressed formally like: BLOCK, BLOCK, BLOCK, BLOCK. there was a brutalist aspect to it that i found unique and compelling.

JM: ya for sure - this idea goes through the entire piece - with even the weird band in the back quickly shifting between "styles" of music -- always punctuated by sharp hits in the drums -- and the blocks don't have much relation or development at all

TJ: right, exactly! not elegant at all. i liked that.

JM: no very un elegant

TJ: i mean, you say digital, meaning like an old binary conception? because it isn’t, you know, swooshy and pretty, like synthesis or something

JM: yes i mean the very basics of what makes digital digital - theres only two states. and they are very very literal

TJ: literal in what sense? oh, the ON/OFF quality..right

JM: yeah, and that there is nearly no nuance. or secret meaning. i think i was trying to deal with the experience of living in silicon valley for so long

TJ: also it was striking that there was no concern with the small-bore execution of the activities (sound producing or otherwise). the movements etc. necessary to execute a BLOCK were irrelevant. whereas most musicians/composers/whatever are EXCLUSIVELY interested in these small-bore movements/gestures/activities.

Silicon Valley….speak on that

JM: I think the people there are quite demented. its a culture of complete self obsession - zero creative thinking - and no concept of self doubt

frankly its terrifying. completely self righteous. When I would tell someone I was a composer - they would ask what kind of apps did I compose for

TJ: capitalism heaven

JM: no fucking kidding

it was really horrible to see that happen to humans. but thats the way it seems to be going

they all think that they are changing the world - but really they are just hyper producing absolute shit which people somehow buy and in return a small few get to have the feeling of owning the world -- which then lets them disseminate this idea to their workers that they too are changing/owning the world

or probably it will get to a tipping point and there will be a great chasm

TJ: in other words, a difficult place to make art? sounds like Hollywood

well that’s an aspect of the internet (or: The Internet)….remember way back when it was supposed to level the playing field for distribution of music/video/art/ideas/etc? major media companies were going to be wiped out and replaced by…what, the early 21st century great unwashed? what a dodge that turned out to be

as a wise man once said:

JM: well of course - those fuckers are not dumb - they saw how it was changing and could seriously be used as a force for revolution and they hunkered down and capitalized -

TJ: i suppose the alternate view is that you and I have a romantic notion of an individual artist working on a unique output.

JM: i guess that is rather romantic. but i'm into it

TJ: is it an old-fashioned attitude to rail against these mega-structures? or should we all just buy in like Jeff Koons and Matthew Barney?

JM: if we are then there is only Jeff and Matt. kinda boring don't you think. and I like to get angry sometimes

TJ: well it begs the question of just what are we trying to do anyway? which windmills are we tilting against?

JM: well maybe thats where I get off the boat. i want to be a fickle hater. having it always be against one type of idea/ ideal is maybe too romantic or old school for me. i like flip flopping

TJ: obviously we’re not trying to make ‘em dance, nor are we trying to send the audience into reveries about athletic musician-fireworks or beautiful soothing sonic soundscape-baths. and, fortunately, we aren’t trying to move “Composition” forward to the next brilliant stage of progression.

JM: no no - but I think you truly end conversation if you have too strong of stakes in your own opinion - like that stupid fucking story about Feldman disowning Philip Guston for painting people again. thats garbage

TJ: right, but with Feldman I always assume there is some Proustian salon bullshit behind the scenes. he’s mad about something someone told him someone else said at a party sometime.

JM: or he's invested too much importance in the absoluteness of his aesthetic that he can't even be a good friend. whatever - that guy was bad news

just do what you need to get out at that moment. if we aren't reacting to the things that are happening now we just live as ghosts. angry ghosts

TJ: i’ve thought for a while that one of the big problems I have with most composers is that they care too much about their sounds (and that the sounds are very much ‘their sounds’). which was what I found so refreshing about your piece at Roulette (and your stuff in general).

JM: sound can be a precious thing yes. its never been like that for me - although I guess more recently I have been leaning more towards very nostalgic sounds -

TJ: oh really? in what sense? for new work?

JM: well its mostly due to the technology i'm using. old casios and shoe box cassette players. but they are used more as time traveling devices than they are about honing and crafting a particular sound

TJ: and where is the nostalgia generating from, from a sense of boomboxes in backyards in the 80s? (i dont mean that in a sarcastic way!!)

JM: no thats exactly right. the keyboards and drum machines that we would pick up at garage sales as kids

TJ: were those objects and devices your initial entry into making music?

JM: of course! -- and honestly they are still the reason why I make music --- I always start a new piece by going to the thrift store and seeing whats been left behind!

what is it about the finicky sound world building that you don't like?

TJ: oh i like it fine! none of my opinions are steadfast!

JM: ha! thats what I love about you!

TJ: finicky sound building meaning what exactly….building up layers of material? circuit bending?

JM: no no i mean what you were referring to earlier when you said there was a problem with composers caring too much about the sound

TJ: oh. i dunno. i haven’t thought about it more that formulating that phrase…i like the laziness of this kind of sloganeering!

Nostalgia though can be a fascinating element. i dont work with it myself, but there are fabulous people i know who engage with it directly: Brian Harnetty, Devin Maxwell has some pieces, Paula Matthusen has a few. i love this work.

JM: i think its really interesting to try to find a way to communicate and ignite others nostalgia -- and sometimes tricky not to just communicate your own version of nostalgia oh man I saw this piece of Paula's recently that was actually difficult to watch as a result of its nostalgia. it was fascinating!

TJ: in what sense difficult?

JM: it was a piece that was quite literally wailing. for bassoon and electronics. and the bassoon player is mostly utilizing just the mouth piece. the bassoon player Dana Jessen, who is amazing, was also indulgently expressive in her playing of this tiny object

it at once felt completely over done and wrought with an unshakeable feeling of pain and release

TJ: and you found it difficult because of the intensity of emotion? or was it otherwise problematic?

JM: i think if you underplayed it and did not outwardly express it would have felt very callous. it was that there was a genuine feeling of grief that was being somehow exploited. and maybe it was a problem with the performance aspect - but the music itself I think would have communicated the same thing. it somehow felt manipulative

like if you weren't also accessing a moment of grief in your own emotional history then you weren't able to sympathize. but you really really want to be able to sympathize. i know that seems like a negative comment - but I actually was totally transfixed by the pieces ability to do that to me

TJ: i’ve always preferred artwork to be something separate from daily life…including grief and tragedy (which is certainly on our minds this week after Orlando).

but also political concerns (like what Kara and I engage with)…that there is no misunderstanding of our work as actual political rhetoric or action.

JM: right of course. but that is a social call not a personal one. its different if it feels self indulgent

TJ: you mean distinguishing between the approaches? i guess some people (both artists+practitioners as well as audience) can come to art as a sort of therapy. i’ve never had that attitude. but whatever helps in moments of need i suppose..

JM: do you think you make different work when you are in a "good" place vs. a "bad" one?

TJ: if i am in a truly bad place i dont think i would be making work at all.

JM: you do the shut down?

TJ: though i have committed my life to it and think about little else, i guess i see art ultimately as a luxury. if i were actually suffering, the last thing i would want to do is compose something for violin.

JM: absolutely

TJ: there is a quote/criticism and I cant remember exactly where it is…maybe from George Lewis’ AACM book (or from him himself). it is directed to an attitude about artmaking very much in general, but i think it uses James Tenney as a specific example

JM: (oh my gawd Trav, I am also reaching for the quote book right now!!…from Judith Halberstam)

TJ: it says something like ‘the attitude of experimental composers that their work aesthetically “prepares the way” for political change is a mistake’ (or something) strongly worded actually. saying that an ambivalent attitude towards what the artwork is saying, what it is doing, is a massive problem.

and i have found myself permanently coming down on either and neither side of this, and remaining ambivalent about the entire issue while simultaneously always thinking about it.

JM: I think my deep cynicism prevents politics from coming into my art - I don't fully understand or see possibilities for the kinds of changes which are desperately needed -- maybe its my naiveté and we are getting close - but I can't perceive that now... so I choose to make art much more about frivolous fictions

TJ: understandable. i guess in a sense i can’t see anything as outside of politics anymore (for a long time now). frivolous fictions just as much as Judith Halberstam quotes. [which i dont mean as a criticism!]

JM: Maybe the composers George is referring too are also concerned with making work that is "serious" (thats where the Halberstam quote comes in )

TJ: i think he (and i really dont remember if it is indeed George or not) is saying that this sort of ‘friendly liberal’ attitude of engagement without specificity or engagement without action is detrimental. or something like that. What is the Halberstam quote?

JM: “Being taken seriously means missing out on the chance to be frivolous, promiscuous, and irrelevant.” In other words, that one’s concern for a kind of correctness (be it political or otherwise) in art can stunt the opportunity of discovery

TJ: i guess i see social+political engagement as a matter of course in work, an inevitability. much the same way that theatricality and performative context is an inevitability around the work. i just can’t separate them out and create borders between the world and the work (or between action and sound)

and that George Lewis (or whoever!) idea problematizes it for me somehow, i can’t escape the problematized situation. which maybe isn’t bad.

JM: but then it stops for you when it comes to a personal/emotional realm?

TJ: honestly i cant conceive of a barrier between my personal/emotional realm and an aesthetic/social/political one. which doesnt mean that i’m like Mr. Politically Engaged Dude or anything.

maybe i just dont have enough of a sense of identity. or, honestly, an interest in it. i would be a shitty Freudian subject

JM: hahah!

i see - meaning that we make political decisions regardless of our intent to make a political decision

TJ: exactly. and not like some cheap Twitter burn about Trump or something, a greater political identity.

JM: oh man i had a crazy dream last night

TJ: do tell!

JM: i was in a house with my band mate Andrew - and we heard this insane noise outside - there were skylights in the house and so we could see from inside, that there was like a 1940's war-type aircraft bobbing just above the roof of the house -- but it was turning on its nose like a drill press so it was bobbing and the propeller blades were just barely missing the house - and then it dove into the pool and sunk out of view

TJ: jesus.

JM: and when I woke up there were parrots outside the window talking to one another

TJ: i rarely remember my dreams.

Kara and I were watching a Prince concert video last night - Lovesexy tour, 1988 in Dortmund - and she dreamt that Prince was running all around in ridiculous outfits all night.

JM: thats a great dream to have! dreaming can be quite productive Trav - you can hang out with all sorts of people

TJ: when I was composing the Fugazi opera and was in the depths of working through their archives all day every day i was having dreams that I was like, in the band. part of their conversations.

and then I met Guy Picciotto at a party just last weekend and actually told him this. man did he think I was a lunatic.

JM: really? - that seems like a very plausible dream situation.

TJ: dreams…i dont really know how to generate them. i think it may have more with translating non-linguistic impulses into linguistic images upon awaking. that threshold…nothing crosses it for me. which is fine.

JM: wait - you met Guy recently? what kind of fancy parties are you going to now Travis!!

TJ: oh god no. no fancy parties. never have never will. it was Dan Joseph’s birthday. Dan and Guy are from DC, were friends in their teens.

JM: aww !

TJ: it was through Dan that I contacted Fugazi in the first place. and it was his reassuring them that Kara and I were for real that they agreed to allow us to make the opera.

JM: very very cool

TJ: they think that we are insane. in a good way i guess.

JM: thats high praise I'd say!

TJ: so what are you working on these days? anything besides moving your ass to the midwest?

JM: ugggghhhh. while most of the days are about apartment hunting I am supposed to be writing a short opera but luckily I found some extremely stealable material recently! have you heard the music of Judee Sill?

TJ: nope!

JM: its fantastic! - she was this kind of mythical american woman. she was a prostitute and a smack addict and robbed banks and then got clean and learned how to play gospel piano

TJ: and you are making a piece based on her?

JM: she wrote some songs for the turtles and was an early find of David Geffen and the whole Asylum records thing. well I'm gonna use 3 songs from her album Heartfood as the kind of musical fodder

TJ: whoa like the Topanga Canyon sound and stuff? Neil Young and Joni Mitchell?

JM: exactly. she was very much into the occult - so i'm trying to think of ways of making a ghost opera

TJ: ghost in what sense?

JM: been reading a bunch of Madame Blavatsky and Crowley. I want visually to turn the singers into ghosts and try to employ some of those good old thee-ater tricks like peppers ghost

TJ: well, via Crowley you get to Jimmy Page

JM: oh yeah whats his deal?

TJ: what’s Jimmy Page’s deal? mostly rockin’ out. stuff like that.

JM: oh oh oh that Jimmy Page!!! ha! - I thought he was some sort of theosophical dude

TJ: and via Blavatsky you get to Abner Doubleday and the invention of baseball (he was a big Blavatsky guy…involved in that whole SoCal spiritualist commune)

JM: Abner Doubleday is really one of the great names that ever was

TJ: kara used a bunch of text from the interview that Burroughs did with Jimmy Page for a one-off performance of ours. at the end of the day, that might be the main reason i love working in the theater. if it were all just violin sounds and shit we wouldnt be able to talk about Madame Blavatsky and Jimmy Page.

JM: oh my god so true!

SoCal Spiritualism is for real - the sun makes people do and think some seriously other things! the Unarians - have you heard about these guys?

TJ: i havent’… i hate to say this but i’ve got to run

JM: ok!!

TJ: hey, this was great. thanks a million!!

JM: indeed - anytime!

TJ: miss you and hope you have a good move! (not going to Germany this summer, right?)

JM: perfecto! -- thanks! - please come visit once I"m settled - we'll do a show! no Deutschland :(

TJ: eh, they dont know what they’re missing! luv u. stay frosty!!

JM: june gloom in SD baby!! -- till soon!

---------------

conducted over internet chat June 14, 2016

interview with Jessie Marino, PART I - April 22, 2016

PART I - April 22, 2016

Travis Just: hi!

Jessie Marino: like this?

TJ: yeah! so.......Prince.

JM: I KNOW. Man.


TJ: hard to think about anything else today.


JM: Its been populating the feeds


TJ: yeah.

JM: but its also kind of interesting because his work has been so carefully protected on the internet, so there is only a handful of videos that people can post. and its like the muppets

TJ: i love that aspect.

JM: me too

TJ: i think there is something important in it. an understanding of what a musical (or performative) experience should be. and that it is least-well served by a video snippet on a social media feed.

JM: yes- but - there is also this preservation of mystique, the identity is so so so carefully constructed, that even with the muppets he's Princing all over the place - talking about starfish and coffee

TJ: i don’t see it as controlling or calculating though, almost the opposite.

JM: how so?

TJ: there is something freeing about there being an absence of social media (and the like) content. and since he was constantly shifting and contradicting his musical output (or his image, sexuality, etc) i see it as a chaotic and rich multiplicity rather than a sculpted Product. like, wouldn’t you want to goof around with muppets? i think that’s cooler than a twitter beef with some other pop star.

JM: oh absolutely - that shit is dreadful. and I am very jealous of Prince's ability to have a complete lack of mediated presence (besides the one that the artist puts forward). but that is not an option for most anymore - you have to be a Prince or a McCartney or a LeBron to get away with that. its not really even an option for second tier famous people

TJ: yes. like those articles that talk about Adele or Taylor Swift not having their music on Spotify or Radiohead releasing their music for free. the New Musical Economy! of course those people are insanely rich and famous enough so that it is irrelevant for the rest of us.

JM: but we love a good story about celebrity

TJ: i remember at music school everyone would talk about this aesthetic thing or the other, have this stance or another and on and on. but the one time tempers REALLY flared was when a professor brought up the Beach Boys in class. people took sides with knives out. popular culture is powerful

JM: what were the sides?

TJ: pro and con. i think i was con at the time but i’m more of a qualified pro now.

JM: ha! have to say thought that I really can't stand a lot of the academic shit that gets pasted onto the top of popular culture phenomena. just more old white guys who think they know more about Beyoncé than she does. its very tiresome

TJ: yeah, or they know more than some kid banging it out of her car speakers does. i would rather hear a teenager talk about the music than some writer for the New Yorker.

i find it difficult to separate the money and reach of popular music+culture from the actual artwork at the end of the day. particularly as we have engaged with it now and then on the fringes of our own practice

JM: hmm - I think I have less of a problem with that because it is so ubiquitous within popular music - its just a different system entirely - also the art world - we are not playing in the same game, not even in the same fucking park -- I guess it is harder to know when someone is taking a risk though

TJ: that is a good parallel, with the art world. both have the potential for actual money and fame. there are those composers etc who then actually cross over into that world, redefine themselves as presenting in museums and galleries or on a much much broader distribution level. do you think that is a conscious line to cross or to identify?

JM: I suppose it depends on the person. I think Nam Jun Paik and Philip Glass probably had different motivations. Paik going back to a visual arts upbringing and Glass just trying to find ways to stay relevant without having to change

TJ: yeah and it is pretty subjective on a basic level. i suppose we shouldn’t begrudge people their successes.

JM: no way - I'd love to be fuckin famous!!!

TJ: ha, at what cost?

JM: talk about freedom fantasies. I know as soon as you start thinking about the realities of it - there is actually very little freedom

TJ: we did this panel in Norway and this one curator dude was all “you could not do such things at a real opera house” to Kara and me. and i’m sitting there thinking, give us the fucking chance!

JM: I wonder why institutions like that are still afraid of waking up?

TJ: i don’t think they are as a rule. there are interesting institutions and boring ones, just like composers and artists. there is no systemic reason why institutions couldn’t support radical work. and sometimes, of course, they do.

JM: would you want to do something at a "real opera house"

TJ: sure why not?

JM: hmmm

TJ: they would have to want to do what we do, which is doubtful. i’m not going to suddenly write a different kind of music.

JM: there is some tie in here with the lack of Prince on Social media - I"m just not finding the right words for it

TJ: but why not? Cecil Taylor is at the Whitney. he washed dishes in the mid-60s.

JM: yes but a piano is not a concert hall. and pianos have been going into galleries for decades

TJ: true. i mean (not to talk about school), but it isn’t so long ago that it would be inconceivable for you to make the kind of work you do at Stanford.

JM: for sure - its still weird

TJ: though i imagine you were very much the outlier.

JM: they think they are embracing the "outsider" and that seems very cool and fashionable and open minded to them. but they have absolutely no way to talk to me about my work. they try to talk about it in these terms that have zero application. and a number of my colleagues here are being seen in a similar light. but this is mostly a direct mechanism of transitioning out of being a school devoted to New Complexity

TJ: where have you found the most success (meaning personal artistic measure) presenting your work?

JM: the festivals. that is just such a dream for me

TJ: there are some composers doing this kind of performativity thing that absolutely need to do it for a die-hard music audience. but your work (while it can work there) seems more open to the world vis a vis audience.

JM: yeah, its been interesting to see how the recent work has been having this undertone of pushing agains the academic musical institution - I had proper training as a performer aka cellist which I fought against for a while by doing all of the body movement object dance stuff with Natacha – and since coming into contact with "Academia" I think I've been kind of in a teenager-ish sort of way try to yell at that institution through making these bonkers pieces. but I'm trying to calm down about all of that (or maybe I just don't care as much about shoving it in their faces because I'm moving away from it). the last piece I made was all about Beethoven and in a very loving way

TJ: i don’t want to be too obvious here, but i’m interested in your composer Origin Story. where/when/how does the studying cello fit in with the table-top wigs+objects performances? is there a lineage from one to the other? a break?

JM: Berlin! I went there right after school and basically sat in an apartment getting stoned and eating hallumi sandwiches for two years. it was great. and whenever I had creative impulses it was never to go and play the cello. I got to know Carolyn Chen's music. and the Pamplemousser's always were encouraging everyone in the group to write

TJ: but did you go from Xenakis to Bruce Nauman as the flip of a switch? that other stuff must have been percolating somehow, somewhere. [xenakis as a stand in for…you know…that sort of thing…]

JM: sure! I think it was more of a result of being near the HAU and the UDK which at the time was quite focused on this thing that they are calling "Experimental Music Theater" -- I saw some productions first by Aperghis, then Goebbels, and then was on a bus being driven around to different stops off of the Autobahn where there were dudes in turtle costumes giving out apples and making you walk along stretches of highway. the fact that those things could be music was really exciting -- and I didn't really care if it was speaking to a music audience or a theater audience or a performance art audience. it was there for people to experience and talk about. but this was also Berlin - not New York - and Berlin in the early 2000’s

TJ: while i was embedded (and am still) in the gaff-tape and dodgy-electricity underground theater world here in nyc

JM: right

TJ: what is your relationship now to your cello playing and those ways of making work? certainly you are a fabulous cellist, something not to be taken lightly!

JM: the classic line now is "I have a cello". I really don't play except in Pamplemousse and in the context of that group the rest of the guys are writing music they know that I can do

TJ: but it is difficult to maintain a high level of instrumental performance with the composing process, i find at least. (“i have saxophones and clarinets”.)

JM: absolutely. its just not the primary thing anymore

TJ: you know, this is something that i have been thinking about a lot. particularly now in relation to Prince. the idea of music production as a life activity, not a project-based one. in his case, he just made music all the time…all these fully-realized things in the studio, stuff put out in ersatz fashion here and there. not just: here is an album, here is the tour, here is the video.

in relation to our systems of making work, i am pretty bored with the project-based thing. i miss rehearsal, i miss performing all the time.

JM: fuck yes me too. Pamplemousse is all spread out around the country now with some of us west coast and some of us east coast - they way we've been dealing with it is by having these rehearsal retreats where we all pile into Natacha and Bryan's house and we practice/rehearse/build/change shit all day for like 5 or 6 days - it is immensely satisfying - by the end we are playing our asses off and we have the opportunity to bring sketches of pieces or just ideas or fully formed things that can then get fucked around with. thats really the only reason why I want to be fucking famous -- if I could have that be my life, I would be ecstatic

TJ: schedules get difficult. kids, jobs and so forth. and then of course you want to give people money for their time.

JM: I've also been thinking a lot about doing way more workshop performances -- things are always polished but I want to start performing things that are in the middle of development

TJ: you guys as an ensemble, a sort of collective, can ease that a bit. you have a posse, a gang, which is good. as a solo composer or someone looking for performers, the situation gets more challenging

JM: I think its necessary if you want to be able to experiment. to have your peeps

TJ: also, it is easy to take that for granted.

JM: well group dynamics are always a challenge!

TJ: like in sports, a successful team that makes it to the NBA Finals but doesn’t win…they always think, well, we’ll be back next year and be competitive for the next 5 years. but circumstances are hard to re-create. if you have a productive group of collaborators, that is precious

JM: right - which is why I think its import to have the people there - the situation will always be changing -- and people do too -- but I would much rather write music for Dave Broome, than for Piano

TJ: even more so for your work which calls upon much more than just piano technique. you need that weirdo there who will do all the other stuff, and bring the presence you are counting upon.

JM: yes -- I mean, the person has to be important. I’ve lost interest in the virtuoso

TJ: i think about the Robert Ashley operas and the ensemble. they are very much tied up in the personality, and even the individual sound of those four vocalists. transplanting them is difficult. but of course then those dudes in Varispeed went and did it and that worked well too. but they did a pretty audacious re-imagining.

how much do you think about other performers doing your work beyond yourself and Pamplemousse? do you build that into the scores or your expectations?

JM: well the person is a very big thread is a lot of the American Experimental music thought - I mean the performance practice that Cage and Alvin and all those guys developed was based on them also performing it

TJ: I’ve always found it surprising the deference people show to the personalities of the composers. 4’33 says in the score that it can actually be ANY duration, though I’ve never seen a performance that wasn’t 4 minutes and 33 seconds. and “I am sitting in a room” can actually be ANY text according to the score, but i’ve never heard anyone say anything but Alvin’s text from the recording.

JM: its true that 4'33 can be any duration - but by the same token Cage was terribly picky about the kinds of sounds that could be in something like Atlas Eclipticalis. I have been working with other people now, its kind of a recent development and I don't think I've found the right way of doing it -- when I can't be there and someone is interpreting the score I usually have them send me a video and we have a kind of "coaching" together (but I find this to be a very traditional method which gets the composer-performer relationship into old and trodden territory) -- I'm trying to figure out ways of building in enough room for the human to be present - but I'm also picky about the stereotypes

TJ: stereotypes in what sense? as a directorial meaning?

JM: i mean in the types of characters that get let into the piece -- sorry this was kind of a jump -- Mostly I mean that I picky about the material that goes in-- and when musical performers are asked to do things outside of instrumental playing there can be a slippery slope of bad shit that gets let in because people suddenly think that everything can be let in

---------------

conducted over internet chat - April 22, 2016

interview with David Helbich, April 12, 2016

Travis Just: hi! 



David Helbich: hi! my messages take 2 minutes to go through, I think. Hmmmmm. maybe I have to change rooms. 



 TJ: no, i’m just still waking up, moving slowly.

DH: it's 10 at your place?

TJ: it is. i am in a cafe. it is raining, i have had a little too much coffee.

DH: and I can talk like wikipedia

TJ: we could just copy and paste wikipedia articles at one another for an hour.

DH: i didnt have enough coffee. just had a pea-soup in this Moroccan place next door, where I only now started going again. and they have amazing coffee, but I had no time. after this chat, i go back. the attacks made me head to the left from my door instead to the right, searching for coffee and food.

TJ: permanently or just for a brief time? (of course, one should always head left...)

DH: it's quite a change, but at one point I might get bored by the purely masculine energy. and the food is not so organic, you know...

TJ: and what lies to the right?

DH: hip restos, gay coffee shops, my hairdresser, manneken pis,...and old style belgian beer bars. like, also brussels

TJ: it all sounds like brussels.

DH: to open up this brussels image of images in images: my street has two names: Avenue de Stalingrad and in the middle, the footpath is called Rosa Luxemburg Path

TJ: that is practically Berlin

DH: they would not have a stalingradlaan

TJ: there are those buildings along Karl-Marx Allee, the Soviet Soldiers’ Memorial, etc. but no, not the name “Stalingrad”.

DH: yes, exactly. it changed the war, it was the start of germany’s losing

TJ: have you read Boris Groys talking about Stalin?

DH: no. but since 100.000 germans ate themselves in this place, it might be weird to celebrate it. i guess, that's why france and belgium have av. de stalingrad, but not germany

TJ: certainly. Groys is rather cheaply provocative in his writing about Stalin, but it has interesting points. he ties it to “totalitarianism” in reference to art (which is even more cheaply provocative, if interesting). meaning (I paraphrase heavily) an artwork that concerns itself with what it is doing while simultaneously with the language used to describe it and the environment in which it is received. and it’s criticism. at least, that’s how i read it. this seems relevant to your work. [check out that fuckin segue]

DH: like: we want everything from concrete experience to meta-leveled observation, that's why the works are total?

TJ: he doesn’t apply it to specific works (and only tangentially to art). i don’t mean to get bogged down on Groys-analysis. but in reference to your work, it seems that the focus is not just on the auditory event of, say, a soundwalk. but also on the physical and experiential fact of taking part in a soundwalk. the idea of the activity is as much a part of the piece as the resultant sounds.

DH: ha, the transition of this chat. well done!

TJ: and this is highlighted in how the work is presented. foregrounded in what you actually have people doing, how they do things, etc.

DH: yes, indeed. I think calling something a soundwalk is nothing more than a title strategy, but of course not the reality.

TJ: i find this approach to be unique amongst people i know who do soundwalks.

DH: it offers a focus but it also makes one blind. which can be ok: to concentrate. but that's where it gets too esoteric for me.

TJ: i find it interesting the stance and application: the sounds are not important, the idea is important. but then on the flipside the sounds are obviously important. it is both strategies bound up together, without taking a stance either way. i see this in several other pieces as well: audience intervention works, “Keine-Musik”, etc

DH: yes, I think this is the difference between conceptual art and art as practice: the first treats phenomena as examples for an idea, the second uses ideas as possibilities to experience phenomena. Or for sharing a practice.

I mean, the concept of a work could be one way (method) to get close to something, namely via the restrictions set by the concept. The aim of the concept is to leave the methods behind. It's merely an idea to trigger ideas.

TJ: this is where i think i often see a weakness in work that purports to engage ideas of conceptualism. work that explicitly self-identifies as overtly conceptual often deals with quite bland and simplistic ideas and concepts in order to smooth their reception. while work that tilts too far towards practice often has a fuzzy and poorly defined relationship to ideas outside of its own execution.

DH: hm, maybe. I think the problem with both lies mainly in their relationship with the public, the audience

TJ: what both tactics miss is that the bundling of concept and practice is unavoidable and doesn’t need to be either forced or ignored. which, yes exactly!, ties into the audience and how they receive work.

DH: The problem is always the self-referentiality: when a conceptual work celebrates its own originality more than the usage of the concept by the audience. or, when an improvisational showing doesn't realize that watching someone having an experience is not necessarily communicating "experience"

TJ: right. i think artists often tragically underestimate their audience’s capacity to read and process work. i am struck by your pieces that directly engage the audience. almost as a role of guide, advocate, and professional representative of this rather ridiculous collection of practices that comprise experimental music and performance. a quality of outreach, almost of audience therapy. but without compromising the practice with kitsch or simplification. and at times openly funny. immer gutmütig.

DH: gutmütig: sure, we are all in this shit together! :)

TJ: it helps that you are charming and funny.

DH: thanks. I think, what gutmütig could mean is what I think my self as self-performativity. like, trying to create an atmosphere where whatever happens, it is not for the artist’s sake, no one has to simply help me to get through my show, but you might get curious to discover things for yourself

in some days or weeks the audience might have forgotten about me and the show, but the concept will come back up now and then, when thinking about hearing for example, or about group situations or ...

TJ: do you have to perform yourself in these situations? is it theatre (beyond the obvious theatricality of it)? “is it fiction?” is perhaps a better way of putting it.

DH: yes. of course, it's anyway not possible to not perform, so it is better to understand this and try to control it, more or less. even though I am a quite chaotic performer, which can sometimes be charming, and I have to carefully surf this thin line between charmingly chaotic and apparently unprepared… if it works, it can be a nice surprise. if it doesn't, it's a hard fall….

TJ: without wanting to wallow in failure, can you describe one of these failed performances? it is interesting to discuss the practicalities of how this sort of work can fail. i mean, you can’t miss notes or have the violinist get lost or the actor forget her lines. but of course it CAN fail.

DH: indeed. one way would be if I dont manage to convince people that they do this for themselves, even though they follow my instruction. That is, if I dont reach the field between entertainment and exercise, where the fun part is clearly just to make it enjoyable, but the stuff is actually serious and deep. This needs trust and a vulnerable performer who is still sure about what should more or less happen. which leads to the second possible failure: if the concrete material, which might only be there to show something general, if this material sucks, doesnt work or is uncontrolled, then you lose the openness of an audience to follow your thought for this bit of time you have. does this makes sense? Like, if you say: listen, and there is really nothing to listen at, then I appear pretty pretentious

TJ: yes certainly. the audience is a sort of instrument in the piece, as well as a performer themselves.

DH: yes. nice.

TJ: is it fair to say that your work (some of it anyway) is not necessarily aimed at a contemporary music or performance audience (though they are obviously welcome), or even a modern performance audience. the work seems to even try to peel away these self-identifiers that a viewer/listener may bring to an event - the goal being an audience of people, full-stop.

DH: yes and no: no, because I like to perform for audiences in specific contexts and then try to use this as a departure. Like, lets say: people expect another sound piece and you arrive via sound at a time experience and then body and then movement. I love for example to do stuff (perform, teach, workshop...) for dancers about sound and for composers/musicians about dance/performance. but indeed: the main goal is the understanding of: we are all in this together. (now it rains here too)

TJ: ah, maybe i just see the final result because i have mostly encountered your work via documentation, not at the festival/concert/gallery/theatre itself. so I am not involved in the setup of expectations.

DH: I mean, the event at UnionDocs was great, because the audience was of course mixed, but also experienced in a very specific subject: namely documentation in the broader sense. and suddenly the earpieces became about documenting the acoustic space and how it is connected to your individual and collective experience. or maybe it was more in general about how we are connected to space. Architectural, social or whatever space. still, it was somehow a concert without music. so speaking about musical experiences, but then about other stuff as well.

In 2015 David stayed in NYC for a 4 month residency at Residency Unlimited. In this period he also performed No Music - earpieces - a performative rehearsal at UnionDocs.

TJ: then the question is how to build these expectations into the performance itself: when is it necessary to define yourself as a composer, when to define yourself otherwise.

DH: yes, this is a social game. some scenes (music…) need more 'credibility' than others. Which is historically determined. But people are so open to play around with categories. As long as they see where it starts (the game).

TJ: people ARE open to play around with categories, but artists themselves often get so hung up on these categories which then precludes playing around with them. the side-stepping you do with this is one of the things i find refreshing about your work.

DH: yes, the trick is: you start suggesting a category and then changing it, meanwhile. Also, dont play the expert-card. Like: this needs this or that pre-knowledge. I am totally convinced that one can continue the big progressive discourse and at the same time start all over again. kind of.

let me say a word about my performance next week, ok? by working on 'Seven Scores' for the Oude Kerk ("Seven Scores for the Church, the Building, the Body and the Audience", 16th of April 2016 in the Old Church in Amsterdam) I run into two major questions or contradictions, one about the situation of production (which is part of the deal) and one content wise.

[the event in Amsterdam was a 1,5 hours performance where ca. 100 people got a score for seven self-performative pieces, all tasks for physical interactions with the huge hall of the church (touching, watching, shouting, leaing,…), then were led in different choreographies through the space, while 11 helpers slammed doors, progressively getting more and more (6 seconds reverb; amazing sounds!). In the end, I asked the audience to stand with me in a huge circle all around the church, sending a vocal actions around in circles. It went incredibly well, considering that singing is the biggest of all threats of participation for most people.]

TJ: so next week then…(i say in my late-night interviewer voice)

DH: smooth! So:

TJ: i need a tv show

DH: let me be your make up artist

TJ: yeah! So:

DH: production: I am trying once more to make a kind of work in the environment of a different kind of genre: this time a total performance event within the production circumstances (curator, communication, budget, space availability,…) of visual art. the danger is: to not rehearse a theatrical or musical situation but to still want the result to be as good as these situations. diving into more forms of expressions necessarily also means adapting more forms of production. it's what jenny walshe always says: if you want a boxing scene in your piece: go and train the shit out of it in a boxing studio for 3 month.

TJ: just to clarify, is the ‘not rehearsing’ because of the involvement of the audience as participant?

DH: no, the involvement is the solution. not rehearsing is simply the reality of the place: there is neither time, budget nor people (I need people helping me with some parts). they give me time to build up (like in a gallery) and then the audience comes in. still, they want a site-specific performance.

it's a difficult contradiction, because you have to teach these super willing and open curators what genre switching means in reality (man, I was involved in this mega-huge weekend in Palais de Tokyo, where they showed tons of performance art works, really diving into this genre as if it was just made to be exposed. and then it was a total mess for performers and audience because the conditions are not the same and they absolutely underestimated this).

But let me get to the content part. my solution for wanting to make a piece with different audiences, like having people relating differently to their own role as ‘audience’ throughout the evening, but not being able to work in the space for 3 weeks with co-performers and makers (like you would do in dance or theater). the solution is to ask a lot from the audience ...

i present, but at one point i ask. after I first 'present' the space for some pieces of self-performativity ("you perform for yourself, so no judgments…the artists don’t even know what you are doing) and even elements of entertainment (a sound piece where we slam the church doors for 20 minutes; an incredibly fascinating and very metaphorical sound event) I will ask them to help me get an experiment done.

I will put the entire audience, all one hundred people, in a huge circle around the church and then send sounds (voice mainly) clockwise through the church (amazing sounding church, Sweelinck played the organ there in 1580 or something). the most simple concept, but with a very complex outcome, socially and acoustically.

singing is hard though, because lots of people have traumas in regards to their experience with singing. pitches are evil and stuff like that. so I have to find a way to create an atmosphere where it all doesn't matter. where we just produce sound. because it sounds great for the other people, the ones on the other side of the circle (whom we cannot see). I hope that I can prove that this is still "intro-active" instead of interactive. only this time not "intro-" yourselves, but "intro-" the group

TJ: what sounds will you have them produce? yells, sustained syllables, words?

DH: yes, all of these three sounds. humming, singing, random pitches…

TJ: and how is it delivered, via paper that they hold or visual cues from a director?those variables are immense in determining how the entire situation is framed of course.

DH: no paper scores. there is not a single person that we can all see at the same time. I will tell them before that we will send sounds around and that this is an experiment. this happens after I did a very open "do what you want" piece and a very strict walking piece with them.

TJ: and what is the attitude of the person communicating these things: funny and disarming or sombre and serious

DH: exactly, that is the question.

TJ: at what point do you decide?

DH: My rehearsal is actually about my style of presentation, not the sounds. I had a small rehearsal this sunday. the choir of the church helps out with 10 people and gave me 20 minutes after the service to explain them the project. (20 minutes…).

I want to be ready for, and open to, the possibility that the people wont exactly repeat what they hear or, that they will not follow at all. It's Amsterdam after all. People will want to fuck up the situation. I at least expect this and want to make this valuable for the evening. no, for the others. in the end, I imagine this entire performance as one open rehearsal. or something like this.

TJ: right, that is a challenge: what to do about audience (or spectators) who want to sabotage a public performance.

DH: yes, in 2004 i had this sabotage thing in amsterdam. traumatic, because sabotage means dominance.

TJ: i mean, I understand that impulse to sabotage. I can still empathize with the dumb teenager attitude of sabotaging something. it could also mean vandalism though.

DH: you would be a saboteur, I know, but you would make it clever. so I have to make these clever people want to show me a better idea, instead of just fucking up my idea without a counter-proposition.

TJ: vandalism certainly can have the effect of dominance but can also be a form of unconscious resistance, or just bad behavior. which can be interesting or fun at times. it is a risk you expose yourself to more than the person presenting a controlled theatrical performance in a black box with lights and microphones. (like me).

DH: and: my advantage is the phenomena. I mean, that connects with what we said before:

TJ: phenomena in what sense?

DH: like with the ear-pieces “No Music”: every one laughs, because it is somehow funnily weird how we all do this weird stuff. and suddenly it sounds great. if I can suprise the audience with my pre-knowledge that whatever we do it will sound fucking amazing and that this space is a blast, then the social situation suddenly is not there only for itself.

TJ: right, and having a disarming personality be the one communicating the piece and activity also mitigates the situation.

DH: and then it is like: oh, this was actually serious. So, humor with an interest.

TJ: these pieces are so tied to where/when/with whom they are presented, does it make them impossible to repeat? or to imagine someone besides yourself presenting?

DH: i have had others present them. i loved it.

TJ: is this line of questions completely irrelevant? i can see how it would be.

DH: its a very good question. and we had to solve it very concretely by rewriting the gestures and even the order of things for one show. my style allows a certain order, a dancer, who did my ear-pieces had to do something completely different with it. Which proves: it is not only about ears, but also about a performance. or about performativity. or about bodies

TJ: at what point in your practice did you become aware of this? many composers and musicians who are involved in performative work seem to not be aware of their physical performative presence. that it, too, is the content of the work. i know my earlier pieces and performances with gestures etc. weren’t necessarily very well engaged with these ideas. i had to learn how do it, like i learned to play saxophone as a child.

DH: yes. I mean, I starred at my daddy conducting all my childhood. and this is highly performative.

TJ: oh, you had a shortcut! bastard!

DH: :) … and then I fell in love with a dancer. next shortcut. and i could never help myself but seeing the performativity of the audience, the social games in concert halls and how different(-ly more sexy) these were in, for example, theater or dance shows, art shows.

I wrote 5 guitar pieces and the last one was for air guitar. and i thought, i could simply give people the score. I performed the pieces and also this last piece myself. the differences in the versions were amazing. i mean the differences between me doing them and the someone else doing them. so, even though i thought about a hand movement, it was apparently all about the feet and the clothes etc… as well

TJ: when i asked earlier about the irrelevance of this line of questioning, it was because one might as well ask Bach the same about violinists playing the second Partita or Beckett about actors doing Krapp. it will, necessarily, be different.

DH: yes, but it is a difference if the consideration of a context only means the singer needs a dress that is not too revealing, but still sexy enough for lincoln center, or if the piece invites the entire environment into the perception/experience/reading.

I remember that choirs in the 70s tried to implement the habit to sing in their street clothes, but then (in the 80s) it was once again felt to be distracting from the musical event because the audience could not concentrate on the absolute representation of the scores. So: back to uniforms.

TJ: yeah, and that’s the thing about this general sudden interest in performance and theatre in music: it has been there all along.

DH: yes, we always had bodies. and it is nice that someone finally sees it, as it was nice to totally forget about it for a while.

TJ: my old pal Doug Barrett has a book coming out in the Autumn that deals with the interest in ‘non-cochlear’ and ‘sound art’ and so forth. i might have his ideas wrong, but i think his attitude is that the term ‘music’ is broad enough to include these ideas. and has been doing so.

DH: yes: thats my field of work somehow: instead of saying: fuck music, it is all so conditional (me with 25), I like to love it! I like to take it as an advantage: there is something there to work with. It is all possible from this point forwards. I think visual art has a much bigger problem with its total openess and is also therefore much more sensitive to the market etc

TJ: the thing is not to discount or obliterate recent modulations and developments. but simultaneously not to treat them as fashions or obvious movements.

DH: i mean, my answer to the question of conceptual music is: music is conceptual. music is a concept already.

TJ: that is what i’ve been trying to articulate, yes.

DH: yeah!

TJ: we need to avoid, as Rosalind Krauss said, “The Originality of the Avant-Garde and other Modernist Myths”. (as I hijack her book title for my own purposes)



Conducted over internet chat between Brooklyn and Brussels on April 12, 2016.

----------------------------------------------

David Helbich; Berlin 1973; artist; studied composition and philosophy in Amsterdam and in Freiburg; lives and works since 2002 in Brussels.

He created various experimental works on stage, on page, online and in public space.

A recurrent interest is the understanding of an audience as active individuals and the search for an opening up of experiences in an artistically restricted space.

His trajectory moves between representative and interactive works, pieces and interventions, between conceptual work and actions.

davidhelbich.blogspot.be

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

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

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

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.

Christian Kesten interview 2.27.2008

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