Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Matt Dallman's Response to my comments on a moral ground to art

Matthew Dallman a writer, musician and much more of a proper blogger than me, was kind enough to post some thoughts in response to my post meditation retreat comments on a moral foundation to art.

Matt is very interested in theoretical perspectives on art and art making that include but don't stop at scope of post-modernish critical theory.

Here is a quote:

My composition teacher, W.A. Mathieu, has taught me to consider what the human ear can reasonably be expected to hear and process. I could put any and all notes I want into one of my compositions, but the reality is that the average human ears are only going to be able to really hear--and thus truly resonate--with certain of the notes in certain patterns and combinations. The artistry of composition, in fact, involves skillfully dancing on the edge of the known and the unknown, in ways that keep the ears of the audience simultaneously engaged and in a rapture of surprise. These lines and limits of perception are pre-given to a certain extent (only tones in a certain frequency range can be perceived, for example), but also evolve. Our ears tolerate far more sonic ambiguity than those of previous epochs of culture.

Read the rest on his blog.

erik

Monday, September 26, 2005

Musicircus @ MCA


I performed at the Chicago Composer Forum's production of John Cage’s Musicircus at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It was a nearly constant loud cacophony and after I left (I was there for five hours) the sonic overload paired with the visual overload of the Dan Flavin fluorescents that are currently on display at the MCA, left me feeling physically ill. Nonetheless, I enjoyed trying to fit my work into the event and feel it was a brave act by the MCA staff to mount such an event.

The basic idea is that as many performers as possible are brought together to perform simultaneously. Chance is the driving aesthetic and I believe many choices about location and time were decided by the organizers through some kind of chance process.

I think it is easy to leap to the conclusion that the point of these kinds of actions is a loud noise or that any structure is bad in the midst of this kind of event. Realistically there are always logistical, legal and other constrains which the event bumps up against and help give the event an identity.

I see the chance aesthetic running along a couple spectrums of quality. One being a line of volume from relative silence to relative loudness. The other being a spectrum of organization from relative structure to relative happenstance. I don’t believe Cage was much for shapeless improvisation himself. I believe the kinds of cacophonous events that might arise are understood as a freed from the intentionality of the maker, a freedom achieved through intensive structure.

I occasionally use chance techniques in my work but am in no way a purist. I feel like you can always listen for the happenstance as an audience member if you like. I am more interested in it as a way to strategically short out the brain and open up closed structures. Sometime it feels more honest to inject some randomness and it creates useful problems to solve.

The Musicircus at the MCA struck me as most interesting when I found performances that offered structure to the overall sound of the event, contrasted the event with a silent act, or presented something in a pop aesthetic that would normally bore me (like the cover of that song “Red Red Wine” I heard at one point).

Some of my favorite moments in the event:



-Anthony Cobb’s performance of licking a small pane of glass was striking. I believe he continued the action for the whole show. It was quiet in volume but loud in affect. He held the square-ish piece of glass between his hands in front of his face and licked which at first created a slow drip of drool that slid to the floor but on later viewing, he seemed to have dried out. He had placed himself in one of Dan Flavin’s hallways which created this square-ish visual box around him when you viewed him from outside the hallway…the square of Anthony’s hands framing the glass square echoed in this square space was very loud.

-I though the interactive get-your-picture-draw-by-Salvador Dali was funny and I liked having the audience wandering around in the little swirly mustaches they were given.

-Thea Miklowski and Justin Goh were apparently covering their clothing in wax and then leaving these shapes around outside the back of the MCA. I only saw the shapes from a window but liked the sculptural addition to the overall event.

-There was a fun and goofy band, Environmental Encroachment, which seemed at home within the noise of the overall event and offered a Mardi Gras vibe and simple rhythms that soothed my ears at one point.

There were also some pieces that looked cool but were totally smothered by the overall event. The one that stood out was a pair of record players that played quiet ocean noises and the audience could move the needles around. I could barely hear it...I tried and then quickly passed it by several times.

There were also some moments that were probably the most pure Musicircus moments that were striking…I totally couldn’t hear this one earnest pair of readers who were without microphones and totally silenced by the overall noise of the event, but a small audience had collected around them on the floor and were trying to hear them with equal effort. This huge but failed two-way straining to connect between audience and performer was fascinating to me.

The event was very disconcerting to many people. One friend described himself feeling as if he had just been involved in some kind of CIA experiment. I, for one, came into the show with some notions about what my piece was about and what I would do but in the end had very little idea of how it read in this environment.

I suppose I don’t see a clear reason in the context of this moment why the audience should be put through quite so much volume and noise. I wouldn’t have stayed and suffered it as long as I did if I wasn’t performing. And I suppose the overwhelming amount of loud, drum heavy, noise bands in the show was the more boring part of it all for me. A bunch of little Cages running around seems kind of redundant when the event itself works to provide the randomness, but I guess this is the point were my ego and desires bump up against the structure and were something starts to happen.

Cage as a figure is sort of a ruler without power and his aesthetic is a kind of ruler without an agreeable measurement.

Upcoming Performance Dates....

I sent out an announcement about my upcoming performances to my mailing list recently but I wanted to post the dates here as well.

If you would like to be on the mailing list just put your email address in the box on the top right of this blog page or go to the contact page.

Unfortunatly the Musicircus has come and gone already.

Each is an oratory at a different scale that integrates into a larger event.

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Sunday, September 25th
Musicircus @ Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 East Chicago Avenue
“I have a lion’s head…” – 15min @ 1:30, 2:55, 3:36, 4:29pm
The Musicircus is a John Cage concept produced by the Chicago Composer Forum. It brings together hundreds of performers simultaneously at the MCA. In my piece, I address a rather large and possibly distracted audience and try to convey a simple message…that I have a lion’s head on top of this one. Jeff Harms will assist with my roaring.
http://musicircus.chicagocomposers.org
http://www.mcachicago.org/
http://www.jeffharms.net

Followed by...

Saturday, October 1st
Green Lantern Gallery, 1511 North Milwaukee Avenue, 2nd Floor, Chicago
Best Man – ongoing from 6-9pm
Green Lantern is a new apartment gallery in Wicker Park that is having a group show on the topic of marriage. I am performing a response to a number of paintings by Caroline Picard. Caroline’s work and my work are getting married and this is the wedding reception. I, as best man, will give a speech to the people who found time to share this very special day with us.

Thursday, October 6th
Early Adopters @ Three Arts Club, 1300 N. Dearborn, Chicago
Spin Cycle – 5:30-8pm
Adelheid Mers has put together a show to investigate the relationship between art and its audience. The show is up now consists of posters by a number of artists as well as larger works by Adelheid, Deb Sokolow, Industry of the Ordinary and Michael X. Ryan. During the opening, I will perform small, intimate oratories for any person who chooses to sit with me.
http://www.threearts.org/ (I think their website is down though.)
http://centerstage.net/music/clubs/three-arts.html

Also, a bit further down the road, on the first three Saturdays in November. I will be performing a car-based installation performance as part of the Drive By show at Links Hall.