November 26, 2002
(Auto)biography
"As we are now aware that great men no longer make history and that history shapes the individuals who satisfy its needs, we tell our stories to make our lives comprehensible as those of real people. History is comprised of layered events that are linked in some way, and the bond between memories and the contents of other containers is cemented by the telling. The transformation of an individual's life into a museum exhibit influences the future course of that life when it provides encouragement to continue the story, in other words, to live life in such a way that there is something to tell. Living solely to create a biography is in any case more productive than a life lived in unconscious repetition of the life itself." - Bozon Brock, "God and Garbage - Museums as Creators of Time" in The Discursive Museum, MAK, Vienna, 2001, p. 25, emphasis mine
This quote is meant to illustrate the influence a museum has in the career of an artist, specifically with regard to the mid-career survey. However, it struck me for two reasons, one in relationship to the Derrida documentary I saw two weekends ago and the other in regard to my own thoughts on (auto)biography.
In the film, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, Derrida was consistent in his probe of the artifice of biography. He was especially fervent in his denial of biography as relevant to the lives of philosophers, though when asked what he wished earlier philosophers had written about but didn't, his answer was "Their sex lives." A biography immediately distances the life lived from the life described, and a battle between the two - assuming the person in question is still alive, as in Derrida's case - begins almost immediately. He explained that elements of his biography had slipped into his texts throughout the years, an assertion we can readily believe given the intensely personal nature of some of his published reflections (Circumfession, Memories for Paul de Man.) He seems to refute the idea of a life lived in the service of a biography, working instead from the assumption that the life/work and reflection upon it are necessarily intertwined. Yet for me consciousness of the making of a biography (whether by oneself or by others) automatically separates the two. I have noticed a disturbing trend in my own mind of late: my concern with the creation of a unified 'line of thought' that can be understood as a red thread running through my writing. The relief I felt the other week when discovering links between Jorg Heiser's article on "Romantic Conceptualists" and music I listened to at age sixteen perhaps only half stemmed from the excitement of my discovery. The rest came from my happiness at being able to link seemingly disparate parts of my life, thereby implying a certain coherence will eventually come of my future thought and writing. Is this consciousness of 'the big picture,' so to speak, common? Does anyone else think about this kind of thing? I was alternately energized and afraid of my responses to the last line in the above quote. On the one hand there is the idea of subsuming your life's work to a greater arc in the hope that a comprehension of the whole corpus can impart greater meaning than the individual parts. On the other is the fear of abstracting a life still unfolding. Can a balance be struck? What do you think? I'm sure it's something I'll continually grapple with, and no doubt this problematic relationship to (auto)biography will become a central aspect of my own.
PS - I hope this line of thinking doesn't come off as pretense, especially in so blatantly juxtaposing Derrida's thoughts with my own. I am in no way making direct comparisons between the two, it's just that his words in the film are fresh in my mind and relevant to what the above quote made me think about.
Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
November 22, 2002
Nick Relph and Oliver Payne at Gavin Brown's Enterprise
Most of the mixtapes I've made and received over the years are thematically constructed, collaging disparate elements under rubrics of love, summertime, quiet nights, long drives. Nick Relph and Oliver Payne follow this model with Mixtape (2002), a video that evokes youth through the carpe diem reappropriation of situations and objects.
The visuals are accompanied by Terry Riley's 1968 woozy, multitracked remix of Harvey Averne's "You're No Good." The soundtrack structures the video, determining its length (22 1/2 minutes is the length of one side of a vinyl LP at 33rpm) and editing style. Two singers intone "you're no good, you're no good, you're no good" on repeat, hypnotically overlapping while ever more images pass by, mostly pegged to the incantations. However, in defiance of these assertions from the narrative voice, an underage rock band enthusiastically rehearses, a woman breakdances on a sidewalk chalk rendering of Botticelli's "Venus," the artists' "Besht Mate" kisses a statue at the center of a park fountain, another quintessentially British youth leans against a building wearing rainbow-colored pants and walking a rhinestone-studded turtle on a leash. All have discovered unique forms of self expression, as have the artists.
Relph and Payne often zoom in on details, emphasizing the songlike rhythm underlying daily life; the repeated rhythms of the teenager's drumstick beating the ride cymbal, the tapping of the old man's cane against the sidewalk, the all-white trainers of the breakdancer swishing back and forth above the pavement. But not all is happiness and spontaneous creativity. Several scenes in Mixtape remind us of the underside to all this dancing and celebration; most direct are images of hunters and their prey, tied to the sexual tension of the scene that introduces them. Yet this knowledge is to be taken in stride, never fully derailing the sense of euphoria imparted by this mixtape. "You're no good" begins to sound like "you look good" as these actors celebrate life's little moments and their own idiosyncracies. Relph and Payne stress that there is beauty and value in youth (mis)spent.
Posted in Art. Found always via this permanent link.
November 20, 2002
Another long one
As I write this, I'm eating around the mold on my pita in an attempt to use up all the hummus before it goes bad. Some dinner. Maybe I'll blame this rambling, even worse than yesterday's, on malnutrition. This one might be a little opaque, but I really hope to get some feedback.
The e-mail then defines the concept of "progress" (however simplifying that term is) as a device that allows those inside the capitalist system to render intelligible all of these unintelligible things. Now to quote a larger part of the e-mail before going on: "However, the progress narrative is obviously a massive simplification, covering over the unintelligibility of certain modes of existence with the certainty that in time they will become more like us."
What becomes interesting is that not only are non-standard (often read: non-western) modes of thought and production rendered unintelligible by this system, but also certain things that can be considered within the system (even caused directly by it): feelings of hopelessness in people who are otherwise not 'victims' of capitalist culture, any problem on its own terms ("depression without cures"), anomalies like people 'going postal.' To oversimplify, large parts of the emotional sphere are within the system yet unexplained by it.
While the e-mail seems to be discussing this issue on a largely social or political level, it gains added significance for me in relationship to a text I read in the current issue of Frieze magazine (a contemporary art journal based in London.) Titled "Emotional Rescue," it attempts to carve out from within the field of late 1960s and early 1970s conceptual art a space for what the author, Jorg Heiser, calls "Romantic Conceptualism." Artists like Bas Jan Ader and Robert Smithson and contemporary descendants like Jan Timme and Didier Courbot fuse the conceptual with the emotional tenor of Romanticism, thereby connecting what Heiser calls the two endpoints of 'modern artistic subjectivity.'
For me, the article was like suddenly turning on a bright light in a semidark room. All of the artists my tastes had me groping toward were suddenly presented before me in contrast to their contemporaries, wrapped up with a neat rhetorical bow that elucidated many of my own thoughts on their artistic production. I was slightly frustrated that Heiser had beaten me to the punch - I was clumsily drafting my own text on several of these artists (is it worth noting that both Ader and Smithson are on my livejournal 'interest' list? Not for nothing, as they say here in New York.) - but nonetheless relieved that I wasn't alone in my thoughts.
Then - that's right, there's more! - after reading this, I happened to put on the sole LP of a mid-1990s band called Portraits of Past (record label link). I bought the record for its cover without having any idea who they were or what kind of music they made. At the time, I had been listening to pop punk alone. When the first notes rang out from my speakers - sixteen low throbs from the bass before an explosion of guitars and screaming - I realized that I was in for something incredibly different from anything I was familiar with. It was filled with such emotion, charged with such a dramatic flair, that it refused to be ignored. It ignited in me a search for that particular quality in music that I have not yet stopped. Now, I mainly listen to quiet, experimental electronic music, but nonetheless what registers is that which fuses concept with emotion (for example, Herbert's "Around the House" album, or Autopoiesis' "La Vie a Noir" [both label links].)
I gravitate toward the emotional, that which is potentially unintelligible when viewed through its structuring system, when looking at art and listening to music. To return to the e-mail from the mailing list: "The significance of all this is that [by exploring this 'unintelligible' content] we are gesturing toward the outside of 'common' sense, toward things whose exclusion is desirable for a certain framework of meaning to continue, toward things which, if they were allowed to pour into the center would transform it considerably."
Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
November 19, 2002
Critical mass and my relationship to my past
Forgive me, this one's a rambler.
Yesterday, I read two essays from a book on Critical Mass published by AK Press. Credit goes to my professor for including anything published by AK in the course syllabus. However, there is a maxim that states we are most critical of what we hold dearest, and this proved to be the case: after twelve weeks of being assigned rigorously researched and grammatically sound academic articles, I found myself disappointed by the two texts. I feel that Critical Mass, as a phenomenon, should be examined intellectually in conjunction with the largely anecdotal and instinctive essays collected in this book. Is this just a symptom of me not thinking something is legitimate until it has been academically analyzed? That could be part of it, and, if so, the disappointment I felt could be a problem with my expectations. However, I'd like to think that I'm still a bit more open-minded than that, however much time and energy I spend with things related to the academy and academic writing.
Would an academic analysis drain the movement - as represented to a wider public - of its sense of spontaneity? Worse for me, would it remove the fun I have in monthly participation? I'd be afraid of fixing the levity referred to by both authors in the structured nature of an analysis, of missing 'the point' in an attempt to research the point. However, there is a whole network of relationships (to other social and activist movements, to other critiques) that I feel should be explicated so that proper context can be given to the movement for those who might approach it in this way.
Anyway, while I wrestle with the idea of undertaking this project - if I'm even able to complete it - I am reminded of numerous other issues I have thought about lately. The short version is that I feel a conflict within me concerning what I will overly simplify as a "punk rock" past and a "bourgeois-leaning academic/salaried employee" present. Twenty-three years of age is not particularly old, but the past year has brought about a wholesale change in my life. I'm no longer in school. I'm no longer a "dependent." The cycles of my everyday life in New York are quite different from everyday life in either Boston or Chicago.
In a way, this spring, I suffered a little identity crisis. This manifested itself in a "punk rock summer" filled with hardcore shows, hanging out with friends that I hadn't seen in four or five years, a road trip, getting tattooed, attending protests, etc. I wanted to reassure myself that, despite the fact that I draw a salary and have a "career path," I hadn't lost touch with the elements of my life that sustained me over the past few years. To what extent does participation in a specific subculture condition the later reactions to/against it? Do hip-hop kids or goth kids later grow up to face similar dilemmas? I'm sure I'm not the only one to feel this way, but I'm curious as to when and how it comes to the foreground of other people's lives.
By the end of the summer, I felt that I had reconciled the two. Now, as the cold weather settles upon the city, I feel the pendulum swinging back in the other direction, and these thoughts come to mind again.
Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
November 17, 2002
Derrida and book shopping
I saw the biographical documentary on Derrida at Film Forum this afternoon, by myself because I couldn't think who to ask to join me (If you're into this kind of thing, contact me!). He acted the part well; recalcitrant about the details of his personal life, always pointing out the artificiality of the documentary/biography setup, rambling at length on minute topics and grand themes. It was quite entertaining, but of greatest interest to me, it turned out, was my own viewing; there is a schism during parts of film between word and image that I could not reconcile.
In between direct interview and lecture footage during which Derrida is speaking, a woman's voice quotes passages from his published texts. She speaks in English, and the image on screen is not accompanied by subtitles, as is other dialogue. I was unable to focus on the audio soundtrack of her reciting his words, unable to process their meaning because my eye was instead seduced by the image on screen. It was usually a tracking shot of Paris streets and my interest in the beauty of that city consistently won out over my desire to understand what the narrator was saying.
It is rare that I am able to dole out my attention in full, but rather can devote gradations to multiple objects/fascinations simultaneously. When there was text on the screen to read, I could simultaneously read and understand it while also processing what was happening visually in the background. Both cognitive processes were visual. When the text disappeared into the ethereal realm of the spoken word, that cognition was much more difficult. This is interesting to me, because it opposes the experience I had on Thursday night (see below post), when Buchloch's spoken words, accompanied by slide projections, made so much more sense to me than when I have previously attempted to read his essays. Do I learn better visually or aurally? If it's the former, was I somehow visualizing Buchloch's words as he spoke them? If it's the latter, was I 'speaking' the subtitles via an inner voice? I'm sure there are texts (audiotapes? ha.) about this kind of stuff, but for now I'm content to simply have the questions suspended before me.
Posted in Miscellaneous. Found always via this permanent link.
November 15, 2002
Benjamin Buchloch on Gerhard Richter
Last night I attended Benjamin Buchloch's lecture on Gerhard Richter's glass works at the Dia Center. The lecture was a surprise on several fronts: I did not expect to be as intrigued by Richter's glass projects as I was, I did not expect the lecture to be so crowded, and I definitely did not expect Benjamin Buchloch to come across as affably as he did.
Richter's glass works largely take the form of rectangular monochrome panes mounted to the wall on adjustable steel supports. At the beginning of the lecture, Buchloch's analysis focused on the monochromes as a sort of 'dense Minimalism.' He contrasted the ideological complexity of these pieces - notably Eight Gray, a series of eight of these panels recently executed - with the 1960s American Minimalists' absolute rejection of interpretation and 'meaning.' Buchloch stated that Richter's monochromes are so loaded with dualisms and tension - the definitions of painting and architecture, the relationship between painting and architecture, the history of the monochrome, issues of transparency, perfection, reflection, translucency, opacity, and industrial fabrication, among others - that a dialectic is hidden within the work, ingested by it. Richter's becomes an all-inclusive Minimalism, like a vacuum that sucks meaning and interpretation into the work, supporting the contradictions like Atlas and leaving the space around it airless and 'minimal.' It's an interesting inversion that provides a road out from the resolute muteness of the Minimalist work with which I am familiar while not abandoning its formal characteristics.
At the end of the lecture, an hour and a half later, Buchloch described Richter's project commissioned by the unified German government and installed in the restored Reichstag building. In its development from the original proposal (using images of Holocaust victims through a stage of abstraction via randomly chosen colors to its final installation [scroll down] as a triptych of colored glass monochromes bearing the three colors of the German flag), the project mirrors the process by which the creation of a national identity masks the ‘victims’ that do not fit into its picture. This is especially true in Germany, a country whose national identity was sewn together, ripped apart, and was in the process of being re-stitched at the time of this project (it still is). Also, none of those questions touch on other complications: the fact that the government sponsored/commissioned the work, that it is intended as a memorial, that it has plenty of formal issues worth discsussing, its status as an ‘anti-monument’ (Buchloch’s term), etc. As Buchloch stated in the Q&A afterward - a whole paper could be devoted to any one of these glass works without bringing up every issue they engage and still ignoring their relationship to Richter's paintings and other work.
The middle part of his lecture was devoted to historically situating the work within a larger arc of 20th century cultural production. It can most easily be summed up as 'an aesthetic history of glass in art and architecture of the twentieth century,' which seems like it would be a quite interesting book on its own.
And it didn't hurt that, as a response to the very last question from the audience, he took a few shots at Jorge Pardo's work, confirming my own take on a body of work that I feel is vastly overrated.