Pieces regarding social aspects of Music-Issues
"The Borders play Sunno(((" is a piece composed by Lucio Capece to be performed in duo with Christian Kesten, at Instal Festival, Glasgow, on the 12th November 2010.
Photos showing this performance can be watched here
http://krakow.zenfolio.com/capecekesten1110/h19c2dc92#h19c2dc92
The borders play Sunno((((
(by Lucio Capece, based in texts by Guy Debord plus self created texts and selected quotes).
The idea of the piece is to make visible aspects of the music performance situation, that we usually give for granted. We pay special attention to the inertia of our time towards general separation and closeness inside groups that tend to separate from each other.
Separations among scenes, between music and music lovers when it´s considered as a collectible object, between performers and audience, between positive and negative aspects in a maniqueist simplistic way. Closeness inside he scenes, towards intimacy as a way to protect from the spectacular and anonymity, against the outside. If the event works around the idea of observing the music practice from a certain perspective, the observer can also be observed from the same distance, surely from the opposite side, that can be several ones.
This is a performance of 2 halves, during the first half Lucio will play music as Christian moves around whispering to the audience and handing out small pieces of paper with writing on and bowls of soup. Lucio will be playing a low frequency amplified by a tiny speaker. Some cardboard tubes with different length and diameter , will be placed close to speaker , changing the basic sustained note´s pitch. The music is an extremely quiet version of a doom metal style composition. For this first part the lights should be very low just bright enough for people to see what is going on with a special on Lucio who will be in the centre of the space. The cardboard tubes will have some small lights inside, so when the tubes are moved and placed on the tiny speaker, the light of each tube will point the ceiling, or different spots of the room or members of the audience.
After 15 minutes Lucio and Christian will move and sit on a small stage behind the line of the Pros’ curtains this side of the room should stay dark with some subtle lighting on them.
Before doing that, Christian says:
You are invited to read or not the texts that we have given to you, using the microphones or not.
The audience will be invited to come and read the phrases on the pieces of paper they have been given into 3 microphones 1 in front of each seating bank. The lights on the audience should be turned up slowly at this point. As the text is read out 3 technicians (operating the curtains, Fog Machine and a recording of it) will interpret what is being said by closing the curtains in front of the artists a little each time and operating the small smoke machine and it´s recording in the same way.
The criterions that the technicians will follow to react are detailed in their specific scores, posted below. These criterions require interpretation of what has been read in different dimensions ( sonic, ethic, intentions shown by the readers, creativity) .
The curtains are closed and the house lights are fully up. Then as people leave there will be simple credits projected on the wall besides the exit door.
------------------------------------------
TEXTS:
1-Critic of Separation. Guy Debord
A complete translation of the original text can be read here
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord.films/separation.htm
The texts offered in small papers to the audience are several short excerpts.
2- Blank papers. Seeveral blank papers are offered to the audience. Christian whispers different kind of self created quiet sounds by the ears of one person at each time.
3- Self Created texts and Quotes:
-International division of labor has been applied successfully to avant garde music. The musicians have accepted it and are part of the process. Don´t musicians do that when they have one project that fits in the profile of each venue?
Or the other way around, Don´t the musicians do the same when they produce according to the need of one specific scene?
Do they not fit rather too well into the categories?
-Acousmatics. Name given to the disciples of Pythagoras who, for five years, listened to his teachings hidden behind a curtain, without seeing him, while observing a strict silence. Larousee Dictionary.
-Overinformation produces music that speaks about music, done by and for people that listens to and does the same kind of music. Do we still have the capacity to make music that speaks about life? Whatever it means. Or is lifed reserved for ignorant people and old successful artists who became a commodity fetish? Maybe we should make life become a fetish commodity, and then it would be easier to speak about it. Probably that´s what we do when we make music that speaks about our records collection. Probably that´s what we do when we speak about music as a strange object.
-Performance artists that observe the music problematic from outside, look like a safe scientist with glasses and gloves that observes a primitive creature.
-The higer value that some perfomance and conceptual artists give to a one second effective idea over a long life effort, shows the triumph of publicity, not only as a technique to sell commodities, but regarding its capacity to impose a creative work dynamic.
-Avant garde art became the art of curators and critics. They have divided new art into categories for their better understanding. Artists have accepted these categories in order to find work, and produce works according to these divisions and frames.
-Are we going to make a new little scene of improvisers becoming performance artists?
-The music scene is boring. In a party with friends the most interesting people are the “civilian” ones, those friends who are employees in a company, or those ones that opened a little company themselves, or something like that.
From an interview to the french group AIR.
-But it is still nice to have someone in the audience than having nobody, even if he is on a guest list.
Taku Sugimoto.
-Studies in music theory should no longer use the terms
"consonance" and "dissonance" when describing the quality of isolated, non-functional intervals.
James Tenney. A History of Consonance and Dissonance
-Do we need to have someone on stage pretending to make us think?
-Sharp contrast is a banal idea. Alvin Lucier.
-If you do not know the oirgin of the quote, you do not understand the piece.
-Quotes ( Related to “Empty Words”, by John Cage and “I´m sitting in a room” by Alvin Lucier)
. A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.Henry David Thoreau
.We regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a social fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities our speech may have.
.The hoodie is usually related in our imagination with violence, clandestine life, hip hop and robbery. Is because of that, that the work and developments done by BBDO Argentina intends to revert that image, giving the Hoodie a more personal meaning, letting you know that Hoodie is a moment, a mood in which the person connects with himself. This is transmitted showing the private life, intimacy and sensitivity of these three sport men. (From a Hoodie Publicity in Argentina)
http://sitemarca.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/nike-revive-al-buzo-con-capucha-en-su-nueva-campana-europea/
---------------------------------------------
INSTRUCTIONS OFFERED TO TECHNICIANS
(CURTAINS, FOG MACHINE, RECORDED SOUND OF THE FOG MACHINE)
All the parameters are executed after the person speaks, with the exception of Fog Sound Speaker.
Curtains do never close completely. The performers stay by the center of the small space and the curtain never covers them.
If several people are doing something at the same time, the technicians have to chose one of these persons and react according to what this person does, with the exception of Fog Sound Total PA, indicated below.
CURTAINS
-Curtains reading (if the audience member reads):
If the person READS
.a POSITIVE statement :you open level 1-
If its already open until it´s top, close and open again, letting it in the same position where it was before.
.a NEGATIVE statement: you close level 2.
If its already closed until it´s top, open and close again, letting it in the same position where it was before.
2 ½ 1 ½ 2------2 ½ 1 ½ 2
------------artists ----------
-Curtains No Microphones:
If someone says something without mics.:
POSITIVE: Open level ½
If its already open until it´s top then close level ½
NEGATIVE: Close level 1/2
Idem Note
If it´s already close until it´s top then open level ½
-Curtains No Reading:
If someone SAYS or DOES something creative, NO READING (with or without mics): No reaction.
FOG MACHINE
.If someone reads and is NEGATIVE: Fog level 1.
Read and is POSITIVE: Fog level 2.
.If someone SAYS or DOES something creative, NO READING: No reaction
FOG SOUND TOTAL PA:
.If someone READS without mics and says something NEGATIVE.
.If more than one person are speaking or doing something ON THE MICS at the same time, Play the sound while they are still doing it .
Fog Sound one Speaker:
.If someone READS WITHOUT MICS . Play it while the person is still speaking. It does not matter if is positive or negative.
.If you do not hear what the person says do something according to the audience reaction, if the audience does not react :Do whatever you perceive.
.If Nothing happens, and there is no reaction by the audience.
Fog: Minute 7- Fog Level 2
Curtains: Minute 10- Close level 2
Fog Sound PA: Minute 12
-----------------------------------------------------
About "The Society Of Spectacle"
Some words about the piece "About "The Society of Spectacle" Guy Debord 1967. (Improvised piece- Instructions by Lucio Capece)", released as part of the Cd Wedding Ceremony, and whose score can be checked here:
http://www.cathnor.com/LucioCapece.pdf
Debord´s book " The Society of Spectacle", written more than 40 years ago, remains an illuminating tool to read our everyday life, and the immense influence of spectacle in our collective and personal behavior.
It was written when this power was probably millions of times weaker than what it is today and exposes questions and thinking that will provide more and more light in the upcoming years.
Considered a classic for many people it surprises me to see how unknown it stays not only for people who does not dedicate too much time to read, but also to intellectuals and musicians that I know.
Beyond the social aspects that the book treats with evident intelligence and commitment I find in the book specially interesting the possibility of reading how spectacular can be my behavior as a musician, what kind of sounds express the type of relations that he describes, what kind of presence on stage, under stage, with other colleagues or with the audience. Considered as a political work, I admire his talent to elaborate it, and somehow his high expectations in humanity. I take the book as an ascetic tool, that may help me to offer the best of me to other people. The social and revolutionary aspects of it, go beyond my possibilities and my expectations of a better society.
Is not my intention to show the book as a compilation of truths to be followed, or to mention Debord as a leader to follow. To put him in the position of a revolutionary leader to be followed, and not to take his work as a tool, even to be put in question, goes against what he says, and did, in my opinion. His work was far too revolutionary to become a T- shirt fetish, or a business for anybody. That explains the fact that his work stays diffused almost from mouth to mouth, helped nowadays by internet.
When the performer in the piece reads the texts to the audience softly and close to their ears I tried to express the fact that his work stays as an intimate and almost person to person ideas exchange possibility.
When I brought the piece to the project I had in my mind Debord´s book, but also Alvin Lucier´s “ I´m sitting in a room”, as well as thinking about the effect that Radu Malfatti´s music produces in me when I listen to it.
About Lucier´s piece. I wondered what might happen if instead of , given a sound element, a certain process puts in evidence the roll of the room, a piece would put in evidence the roll of the audience, after giving the audience certain elements. I think that Radu Malfatti´s music has put in question the music practice, and the spectacularity of it, in a deep way, being at the same time highly well constructed and beautiful music, but not conceptual post-music.
After listening to his music it impresses me the psicological and spiritual effect that this music creates in me, also how more things I can listen about what Is sounding in the room where I listening or outside. I was wondering how the audience may reaction nowadays, after Radu´s music, as a given sound element and Debord´s book as a text element. In this way I remember always “Empty Words” by Cage, and I always think what would happen if Cage could do that performance today. In this sense I enjoyed the musical reaction of the audience. Im conscious that there were some minutes of tension, and someone getting upset, others thinking what to do. But then some people did some loops, others took only some words. When I listen to the recording I find that is good music. Instead of being the room , or the things that I hear while I listen to Radu´s music, it s the audience, after those given elements.
While in some specific scenes to invite the audience is as classic as a sonate it surprises me somehow how some people, in some specific scenes that consider themselves avant garde, can become so aggressive when this happens. I wonder why the fact of inviting the audience to participate is often related to provocation and “oppression liberation” (?).The audience had the option to do nothing, but it was a main aspect of the thing to invite the audience to take a decision, and to give them certain conditions to do it, in the way improvisers have to resolve situations on stage. This relates also with Debord´s book and aspects of situationism.
About having the piece on the CD.
The piece is part of the CD considering that there is something like 60 minutes of music that I find beautiful before it. I think that it worths having it there and that it is coherent with the work we did. For those ones who are not interested in the voices it can be a one time listening piece,or at least the first 7 minutes of it can deserve repeated listening, and I like it in that way. There is the option of stopping the CD player or programming it or editing it with Audacity if someone wants this.
Beyond what it says and means, I think that the piece has a strong presence in the CD and that is coherent with the importance given to the “outside”, that happens during all the previous pieces. But in a different way, that is the explicit participation of the audience playing, and analyzing what is happening at that precise moment. This makes for my taste the CD quite unique and the presence of the piece an effective collaboration with the rest of the material. Including it in the CD, It was my intention to create together with the other pieces, different arrows towards the outside. The presence of the score in the label´s website has the intention to give the website an activity into the perception of the CD, that goes beyond the usual ones of announcing and selling it.
A few other aspects that specially interest me :
-The possibility of giving to a space- event a function that differs from the one the space is being used or has been created for. Vooruit´s building itself went from being a socialist cooperative building to a multidisciplinary art center.
http://vooruit.be/en/gebouw
Art has opened to new forms in the last century like performance, installations, conceptual art ,music theatre and so on, that changed our idea of art, and the function that it may have in society.
I find specially interesting to perceive what happens when the things move slightly out of what is expected from the event. The event is not any more recognizable as a concert, or a reading session, or a performance. The events that opened the perception of art became established forms themselves, as forms. We expect that whatever may happen in a performance session, and that the space can be the centre of the work in an installation, etc. And we go prepared for that to the event. To move slightly among this categories, or just slightly out of all of them, in my opinion, can open the situation much more than being into a discipline that is already accepted and installed as that.
New Music in a social context. I wonder how often contemporary artists wonder what social effect has what they do. It looks to me that very often new ideas in art try to answer to the previous great idea, trying to suggest a development of it. This dynamic very often leaves the people that are not part of that exclusive language development, totally out of it´s message, having this art work only social implications in the strict circle of people where it was created. The point seems to be, very often, to satisfy specific circles of people interested in the same item. What can be ok, somehow. Even though, we can wonder how far these artists are conscious that having access to a certain knowledge, is a privilege reserved for specific social classes-countries. And if at any moment they think in a way to make this knowledge available to people that are not part of that specific circle. The question becomes more esential when these artist use resources coming from governments (that in the bets ocassions take money from the population taxes, and in the worst ones, from evident ways of States or companies imperialism).These resources are supposed to be used in the name of the cultural development of the country that provides the money. I wonder about "every day people", how do they enjoy these creations. In terms of spaces where these works are shown, in terms of understanding what si going on, etc...
The layers of language. When we suggested Debord´s text to the audience we offered a text that was speaking about us, the performance situation, in situ. When some members of the audience began to read it in a personal way, Debord´s text became part of the spectacle (in a critical way, though), a spectacle that was based in music that I consider as unspectacular as possible. I wonder if Debord making the films "La Societé du Spectacle" and "Contre le cinema" was not somehow taken by the spectacle dynamic. I wonder if it is possible not to be part of it.
-------------------------------------------
Issues
Exhibition at the Bauhaus Archive: From Art to Life.
"Durable, inexpensive and beautiful"
http://www.bauhaus.de/uploads/media/_BH-flyer-druck_02-opt-
Is it possible to enjoy contemporary ´s art knowledge in everyday´s people life?
Do the artist care about this, or they are too busy writing applications?
Why when something is beautiful and has the potential to become popular becomes crap in order to be popular? Or why what does not pay attention to these issues stays "arty", even if it could be enjoyed by a larger group of people, and is owned by a few rich intellectuals or the usual official boring institutions?
Photos showing this performance can be watched here
http://krakow.zenfolio.com/capecekesten1110/h19c2dc92#h19c2dc92
The borders play Sunno((((
(by Lucio Capece, based in texts by Guy Debord plus self created texts and selected quotes).
The idea of the piece is to make visible aspects of the music performance situation, that we usually give for granted. We pay special attention to the inertia of our time towards general separation and closeness inside groups that tend to separate from each other.
Separations among scenes, between music and music lovers when it´s considered as a collectible object, between performers and audience, between positive and negative aspects in a maniqueist simplistic way. Closeness inside he scenes, towards intimacy as a way to protect from the spectacular and anonymity, against the outside. If the event works around the idea of observing the music practice from a certain perspective, the observer can also be observed from the same distance, surely from the opposite side, that can be several ones.
This is a performance of 2 halves, during the first half Lucio will play music as Christian moves around whispering to the audience and handing out small pieces of paper with writing on and bowls of soup. Lucio will be playing a low frequency amplified by a tiny speaker. Some cardboard tubes with different length and diameter , will be placed close to speaker , changing the basic sustained note´s pitch. The music is an extremely quiet version of a doom metal style composition. For this first part the lights should be very low just bright enough for people to see what is going on with a special on Lucio who will be in the centre of the space. The cardboard tubes will have some small lights inside, so when the tubes are moved and placed on the tiny speaker, the light of each tube will point the ceiling, or different spots of the room or members of the audience.
After 15 minutes Lucio and Christian will move and sit on a small stage behind the line of the Pros’ curtains this side of the room should stay dark with some subtle lighting on them.
Before doing that, Christian says:
You are invited to read or not the texts that we have given to you, using the microphones or not.
The audience will be invited to come and read the phrases on the pieces of paper they have been given into 3 microphones 1 in front of each seating bank. The lights on the audience should be turned up slowly at this point. As the text is read out 3 technicians (operating the curtains, Fog Machine and a recording of it) will interpret what is being said by closing the curtains in front of the artists a little each time and operating the small smoke machine and it´s recording in the same way.
The criterions that the technicians will follow to react are detailed in their specific scores, posted below. These criterions require interpretation of what has been read in different dimensions ( sonic, ethic, intentions shown by the readers, creativity) .
The curtains are closed and the house lights are fully up. Then as people leave there will be simple credits projected on the wall besides the exit door.
------------------------------------------
TEXTS:
1-Critic of Separation. Guy Debord
A complete translation of the original text can be read here
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord.films/separation.htm
The texts offered in small papers to the audience are several short excerpts.
2- Blank papers. Seeveral blank papers are offered to the audience. Christian whispers different kind of self created quiet sounds by the ears of one person at each time.
3- Self Created texts and Quotes:
-International division of labor has been applied successfully to avant garde music. The musicians have accepted it and are part of the process. Don´t musicians do that when they have one project that fits in the profile of each venue?
Or the other way around, Don´t the musicians do the same when they produce according to the need of one specific scene?
Do they not fit rather too well into the categories?
-Acousmatics. Name given to the disciples of Pythagoras who, for five years, listened to his teachings hidden behind a curtain, without seeing him, while observing a strict silence. Larousee Dictionary.
-Overinformation produces music that speaks about music, done by and for people that listens to and does the same kind of music. Do we still have the capacity to make music that speaks about life? Whatever it means. Or is lifed reserved for ignorant people and old successful artists who became a commodity fetish? Maybe we should make life become a fetish commodity, and then it would be easier to speak about it. Probably that´s what we do when we make music that speaks about our records collection. Probably that´s what we do when we speak about music as a strange object.
-Performance artists that observe the music problematic from outside, look like a safe scientist with glasses and gloves that observes a primitive creature.
-The higer value that some perfomance and conceptual artists give to a one second effective idea over a long life effort, shows the triumph of publicity, not only as a technique to sell commodities, but regarding its capacity to impose a creative work dynamic.
-Avant garde art became the art of curators and critics. They have divided new art into categories for their better understanding. Artists have accepted these categories in order to find work, and produce works according to these divisions and frames.
-Are we going to make a new little scene of improvisers becoming performance artists?
-The music scene is boring. In a party with friends the most interesting people are the “civilian” ones, those friends who are employees in a company, or those ones that opened a little company themselves, or something like that.
From an interview to the french group AIR.
-But it is still nice to have someone in the audience than having nobody, even if he is on a guest list.
Taku Sugimoto.
-Studies in music theory should no longer use the terms
"consonance" and "dissonance" when describing the quality of isolated, non-functional intervals.
James Tenney. A History of Consonance and Dissonance
-Do we need to have someone on stage pretending to make us think?
-Sharp contrast is a banal idea. Alvin Lucier.
-If you do not know the oirgin of the quote, you do not understand the piece.
-Quotes ( Related to “Empty Words”, by John Cage and “I´m sitting in a room” by Alvin Lucier)
. A slight sound at evening lifts me up by the ears, and makes life seem inexpressibly serene and grand. It may be Uranus, or it may be in the shutter.Henry David Thoreau
.We regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a social fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities our speech may have.
.The hoodie is usually related in our imagination with violence, clandestine life, hip hop and robbery. Is because of that, that the work and developments done by BBDO Argentina intends to revert that image, giving the Hoodie a more personal meaning, letting you know that Hoodie is a moment, a mood in which the person connects with himself. This is transmitted showing the private life, intimacy and sensitivity of these three sport men. (From a Hoodie Publicity in Argentina)
http://sitemarca.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/nike-revive-al-buzo-con-capucha-en-su-nueva-campana-europea/
---------------------------------------------
INSTRUCTIONS OFFERED TO TECHNICIANS
(CURTAINS, FOG MACHINE, RECORDED SOUND OF THE FOG MACHINE)
All the parameters are executed after the person speaks, with the exception of Fog Sound Speaker.
Curtains do never close completely. The performers stay by the center of the small space and the curtain never covers them.
If several people are doing something at the same time, the technicians have to chose one of these persons and react according to what this person does, with the exception of Fog Sound Total PA, indicated below.
CURTAINS
-Curtains reading (if the audience member reads):
If the person READS
.a POSITIVE statement :you open level 1-
If its already open until it´s top, close and open again, letting it in the same position where it was before.
.a NEGATIVE statement: you close level 2.
If its already closed until it´s top, open and close again, letting it in the same position where it was before.
2 ½ 1 ½ 2------2 ½ 1 ½ 2
------------artists ----------
-Curtains No Microphones:
If someone says something without mics.:
POSITIVE: Open level ½
If its already open until it´s top then close level ½
NEGATIVE: Close level 1/2
Idem Note
If it´s already close until it´s top then open level ½
-Curtains No Reading:
If someone SAYS or DOES something creative, NO READING (with or without mics): No reaction.
FOG MACHINE
.If someone reads and is NEGATIVE: Fog level 1.
Read and is POSITIVE: Fog level 2.
.If someone SAYS or DOES something creative, NO READING: No reaction
FOG SOUND TOTAL PA:
.If someone READS without mics and says something NEGATIVE.
.If more than one person are speaking or doing something ON THE MICS at the same time, Play the sound while they are still doing it .
Fog Sound one Speaker:
.If someone READS WITHOUT MICS . Play it while the person is still speaking. It does not matter if is positive or negative.
.If you do not hear what the person says do something according to the audience reaction, if the audience does not react :Do whatever you perceive.
.If Nothing happens, and there is no reaction by the audience.
Fog: Minute 7- Fog Level 2
Curtains: Minute 10- Close level 2
Fog Sound PA: Minute 12
-----------------------------------------------------
About "The Society Of Spectacle"
Some words about the piece "About "The Society of Spectacle" Guy Debord 1967. (Improvised piece- Instructions by Lucio Capece)", released as part of the Cd Wedding Ceremony, and whose score can be checked here:
http://www.cathnor.com/LucioCapece.pdf
Debord´s book " The Society of Spectacle", written more than 40 years ago, remains an illuminating tool to read our everyday life, and the immense influence of spectacle in our collective and personal behavior.
It was written when this power was probably millions of times weaker than what it is today and exposes questions and thinking that will provide more and more light in the upcoming years.
Considered a classic for many people it surprises me to see how unknown it stays not only for people who does not dedicate too much time to read, but also to intellectuals and musicians that I know.
Beyond the social aspects that the book treats with evident intelligence and commitment I find in the book specially interesting the possibility of reading how spectacular can be my behavior as a musician, what kind of sounds express the type of relations that he describes, what kind of presence on stage, under stage, with other colleagues or with the audience. Considered as a political work, I admire his talent to elaborate it, and somehow his high expectations in humanity. I take the book as an ascetic tool, that may help me to offer the best of me to other people. The social and revolutionary aspects of it, go beyond my possibilities and my expectations of a better society.
Is not my intention to show the book as a compilation of truths to be followed, or to mention Debord as a leader to follow. To put him in the position of a revolutionary leader to be followed, and not to take his work as a tool, even to be put in question, goes against what he says, and did, in my opinion. His work was far too revolutionary to become a T- shirt fetish, or a business for anybody. That explains the fact that his work stays diffused almost from mouth to mouth, helped nowadays by internet.
When the performer in the piece reads the texts to the audience softly and close to their ears I tried to express the fact that his work stays as an intimate and almost person to person ideas exchange possibility.
When I brought the piece to the project I had in my mind Debord´s book, but also Alvin Lucier´s “ I´m sitting in a room”, as well as thinking about the effect that Radu Malfatti´s music produces in me when I listen to it.
About Lucier´s piece. I wondered what might happen if instead of , given a sound element, a certain process puts in evidence the roll of the room, a piece would put in evidence the roll of the audience, after giving the audience certain elements. I think that Radu Malfatti´s music has put in question the music practice, and the spectacularity of it, in a deep way, being at the same time highly well constructed and beautiful music, but not conceptual post-music.
After listening to his music it impresses me the psicological and spiritual effect that this music creates in me, also how more things I can listen about what Is sounding in the room where I listening or outside. I was wondering how the audience may reaction nowadays, after Radu´s music, as a given sound element and Debord´s book as a text element. In this way I remember always “Empty Words” by Cage, and I always think what would happen if Cage could do that performance today. In this sense I enjoyed the musical reaction of the audience. Im conscious that there were some minutes of tension, and someone getting upset, others thinking what to do. But then some people did some loops, others took only some words. When I listen to the recording I find that is good music. Instead of being the room , or the things that I hear while I listen to Radu´s music, it s the audience, after those given elements.
While in some specific scenes to invite the audience is as classic as a sonate it surprises me somehow how some people, in some specific scenes that consider themselves avant garde, can become so aggressive when this happens. I wonder why the fact of inviting the audience to participate is often related to provocation and “oppression liberation” (?).The audience had the option to do nothing, but it was a main aspect of the thing to invite the audience to take a decision, and to give them certain conditions to do it, in the way improvisers have to resolve situations on stage. This relates also with Debord´s book and aspects of situationism.
About having the piece on the CD.
The piece is part of the CD considering that there is something like 60 minutes of music that I find beautiful before it. I think that it worths having it there and that it is coherent with the work we did. For those ones who are not interested in the voices it can be a one time listening piece,or at least the first 7 minutes of it can deserve repeated listening, and I like it in that way. There is the option of stopping the CD player or programming it or editing it with Audacity if someone wants this.
Beyond what it says and means, I think that the piece has a strong presence in the CD and that is coherent with the importance given to the “outside”, that happens during all the previous pieces. But in a different way, that is the explicit participation of the audience playing, and analyzing what is happening at that precise moment. This makes for my taste the CD quite unique and the presence of the piece an effective collaboration with the rest of the material. Including it in the CD, It was my intention to create together with the other pieces, different arrows towards the outside. The presence of the score in the label´s website has the intention to give the website an activity into the perception of the CD, that goes beyond the usual ones of announcing and selling it.
A few other aspects that specially interest me :
-The possibility of giving to a space- event a function that differs from the one the space is being used or has been created for. Vooruit´s building itself went from being a socialist cooperative building to a multidisciplinary art center.
http://vooruit.be/en/gebouw
Art has opened to new forms in the last century like performance, installations, conceptual art ,music theatre and so on, that changed our idea of art, and the function that it may have in society.
I find specially interesting to perceive what happens when the things move slightly out of what is expected from the event. The event is not any more recognizable as a concert, or a reading session, or a performance. The events that opened the perception of art became established forms themselves, as forms. We expect that whatever may happen in a performance session, and that the space can be the centre of the work in an installation, etc. And we go prepared for that to the event. To move slightly among this categories, or just slightly out of all of them, in my opinion, can open the situation much more than being into a discipline that is already accepted and installed as that.
New Music in a social context. I wonder how often contemporary artists wonder what social effect has what they do. It looks to me that very often new ideas in art try to answer to the previous great idea, trying to suggest a development of it. This dynamic very often leaves the people that are not part of that exclusive language development, totally out of it´s message, having this art work only social implications in the strict circle of people where it was created. The point seems to be, very often, to satisfy specific circles of people interested in the same item. What can be ok, somehow. Even though, we can wonder how far these artists are conscious that having access to a certain knowledge, is a privilege reserved for specific social classes-countries. And if at any moment they think in a way to make this knowledge available to people that are not part of that specific circle. The question becomes more esential when these artist use resources coming from governments (that in the bets ocassions take money from the population taxes, and in the worst ones, from evident ways of States or companies imperialism).These resources are supposed to be used in the name of the cultural development of the country that provides the money. I wonder about "every day people", how do they enjoy these creations. In terms of spaces where these works are shown, in terms of understanding what si going on, etc...
The layers of language. When we suggested Debord´s text to the audience we offered a text that was speaking about us, the performance situation, in situ. When some members of the audience began to read it in a personal way, Debord´s text became part of the spectacle (in a critical way, though), a spectacle that was based in music that I consider as unspectacular as possible. I wonder if Debord making the films "La Societé du Spectacle" and "Contre le cinema" was not somehow taken by the spectacle dynamic. I wonder if it is possible not to be part of it.
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Issues
Exhibition at the Bauhaus Archive: From Art to Life.
"Durable, inexpensive and beautiful"
http://www.bauhaus.de/uploads/media/_BH-flyer-druck_02-opt-
Is it possible to enjoy contemporary ´s art knowledge in everyday´s people life?Do the artist care about this, or they are too busy writing applications?
Why when something is beautiful and has the potential to become popular becomes crap in order to be popular? Or why what does not pay attention to these issues stays "arty", even if it could be enjoyed by a larger group of people, and is owned by a few rich intellectuals or the usual official boring institutions?
posted by electrobatimento at 10:00 PM
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