The politics of texture
May. 19th, 2006 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThere's politics in aesthetic choices, and it's as much a politics of texture as a politics of text; it's adverbial (how you do something) as much as verbal (what you do). In other words, there's a politics of form as well as a politics of content.
This is a theme that runs throughout all my writing and thinking. It popped up here yesterday, when I drew your attention to Jan Family's quest for visual metaphors for the idea of community. It also spilled over into this week's Village Voice, where Cortney Harding reported the Whitney Peace event that erupted into conflict when Iraqi blogger Faiza Al-Arji walked out, dismayed by the hardcore sounds of Apeshit. Under the headline "Give Noise a Chance", the Village Voice declared that "Aurally violent bands can have trouble convincing fellow Iraq war protesters they're serious about peace... Apeshit: music for tanks, peace rallies, or both?"
The Voice article spawned an I Love Music thread rather embarrassingly titled duz momus noize?, in which Pitchfork writer Nitsuh Ebebe (Nabisco), Dan Bunnybrain (who tours with Devendra Banhart) and others debated, amongst other things, the relationship of aggression to peace and politics to texture.
"If we assume that texture has politics," Nitsuh said, "there's a good chance the noise-critics here would actually lose the argument. The older-lefty contingent seems to be of the opinion that aggression and excitement represent the status quo (via rock and pop music?), and that sobriety and expressions of peace are the right response to that. But in a sense, "peaceful" music represents the status quo even more so, whether it's country, crooners, folk, world, adult-contemporary, or classical -- surely. A noise act can at least make the claim to be sonically skeptical of the pleasures the status quo offers, and therefore to be offering something incisive and politically engaged."
I disagree with this. Two quotes here: Susan Sontag said that rock music was "aggressive normality", a loud noise on behalf of the status quo. And Gandhi said "Be the change you want to see in the world". (Not "angrily demand it from your representatives", note: be it.)
My feeling is that to get aggressive about aggressive policies and wars is to remain on the same page as your opponents. The danger of embodying the change you want to see in the world before that change has come about, though, is that you go out on a limb, embracing textures that refer backwards or forwards to potential lifestyles rather than actual ones. While satire and anger reflect the world as we know it rather well, being the change you want to see (embracing, for instance, radical gentleness, or a permanent 1968 of the soul) ties you in to a fantasy utopia, to a society that hasn't actually been established anywhere. If the danger of satire is excessive tough-mindedness (a "moronic cynicism" worthy of one's worst opponents), the danger of radical gentleness is a kind of dreamy disconnect from reality, a disconnect that can look, to some, like an expression of protection and privilege.
I tend to agree with Dan Bunnybrain's statement on the ILM thread about the Whitney peace tower event: "evoking warlike scenes is one way for powerlunchers and art collectors to feel anything," Bunnybrain wrote. "id splash umbilical cord blood on them if i thought they would care enough to change anything..but i dont ..so ive gone folk."
The Freak Folk scene of the last three or four years has been an attempt to "be the change you want to see in the world", and do it with texture. "Mr. Banhart, 23, is the most prominent of a highly idealistic pack of young musicians whose music is quiet, soothing and childlike, their lyrics fantastic, surreal and free of the slightest trace of irony," the New York Times reported back in December 2004.
The word "freak" in Freak Folk implies the same disconnect I outlined above as the major risk of this kind of movement. As if aware of this, the movement has tried to find "objective correlatives" in other times and places, to draw spiritual nourishment from them. The hippie and peace movements of the 1960s are a good starting point (and they're also the starting point for the Whitney's Peace Tower, based on a 1966 original). So is the spiritual practise of India, a clear influence on Devendra. Less obviously, inspiration is drawn from Latin America, currently swinging left.
I actually discussed this over lunch with two radical designers on Tuesday, Steve Heller and Mirko Ilic. I wondered whether the leftward swing in the Latin American countries might spill into the US through immigration. The consensus seemed to be that, as with Cuban immigration, the people coming to the US are the more right-leaning South Americans, the more money-motivated ones who come here for commercial reasons, leaving their left wing brothers and sisters behind.
Nevertheless, South America is a source of hope for disconsolate lefties at the moment, and you can see that in design, art and music trends. I selected Sergio Vega's tropicalia installation "Paradise in the New World" as the high point of last year's Venice Biennale. The record that made the biggest impact on me (and not just me) last year was Caetano Veloso's "Araca Azul" (1973). A Caetano display was featured in the Frieze Art Fair.
Hope can also be drawn from the period 1968-1973. An artist I'm very interested in is Luke Fowler, who makes documentaries about counter-cultural figures from the late 60s and early 70s. "They work as documentaries you might see on TV, but his techniques are much more radical, his textures much more aesthetic," I reported after seeing his Cornelius Cardew documentary at the Armory Show in March. Last year I saw Fowler's R.D. Laing documentary at the ICA in London. Again, the texture of this work is as important as its interest in freaky fringe figures from the utopian late 60s and early 70s, the high water mark of community-minded thinking in the West.
Luke Fowler's Cardew and Laing films are very much about attempts to found alternative utopian communities. I don't think it would be far-fetched to say that the sleeve of Devendra Banhart's Cripple Crow has the same theme, and so does the work of the Jan Family. The images you see scattered throughout this entry are examples of gentle, whimsical community- and nature-oriented design, mostly the produce of small record labels. It may look apolitical at first glance, but I think it's clearly trying to "be the change it wants to see in the world".
This work is also "Japanese", I think (yes, I do!) for three or four reasons:
1. Because the status quo in Japan endorses collectivism and nature-worship, these values don't have to be oppositional ones, expressed with anger. (Angry collectivism: communist revolution. Angry nature-worship: the Unabomber.)
2. Because a taboo on the public expression of aggression makes it more difficult, in Japan, to be a protester or satirist, people tend towards more "Gandhian" ways of expressing things positively.
3. Because in Japan subcultural styles have always been able to exist somewhat in a vacuum, without subcultural modes of life to support them. This may not be totally desirable when it turns into "style without substance", but it's a way to keep certain tender ideas alive in a harsh climate.
4. Because in Japan texture has often done the work that, elsewhere, text alone is supposed able to do. It's a "formalist" culture.
I'd therefore advance the hypothesis that it's only in Japan, where aggression is not normality but somewhat taboo, that, as Nitsuh says, "a noise act can at least make the claim to be sonically skeptical of the pleasures the status quo offers, and therefore to be offering something incisive and politically engaged." In the West, noise acts are "aggressive normality", they express the status quo, they are the music of the West's imperialistic tanks (I think Faiza was probably right about that, and maybe heard something we've become a bit deafened to). It's interesting, then, that it's Japan which has produced the most interesting, influential and radical noise acts of the last twenty years. We shouldn't be surprised: you can't be radical if you're expressing the status quo.
This is a theme that runs throughout all my writing and thinking. It popped up here yesterday, when I drew your attention to Jan Family's quest for visual metaphors for the idea of community. It also spilled over into this week's Village Voice, where Cortney Harding reported the Whitney Peace event that erupted into conflict when Iraqi blogger Faiza Al-Arji walked out, dismayed by the hardcore sounds of Apeshit. Under the headline "Give Noise a Chance", the Village Voice declared that "Aurally violent bands can have trouble convincing fellow Iraq war protesters they're serious about peace... Apeshit: music for tanks, peace rallies, or both?"
The Voice article spawned an I Love Music thread rather embarrassingly titled duz momus noize?, in which Pitchfork writer Nitsuh Ebebe (Nabisco), Dan Bunnybrain (who tours with Devendra Banhart) and others debated, amongst other things, the relationship of aggression to peace and politics to texture.
"If we assume that texture has politics," Nitsuh said, "there's a good chance the noise-critics here would actually lose the argument. The older-lefty contingent seems to be of the opinion that aggression and excitement represent the status quo (via rock and pop music?), and that sobriety and expressions of peace are the right response to that. But in a sense, "peaceful" music represents the status quo even more so, whether it's country, crooners, folk, world, adult-contemporary, or classical -- surely. A noise act can at least make the claim to be sonically skeptical of the pleasures the status quo offers, and therefore to be offering something incisive and politically engaged."
I disagree with this. Two quotes here: Susan Sontag said that rock music was "aggressive normality", a loud noise on behalf of the status quo. And Gandhi said "Be the change you want to see in the world". (Not "angrily demand it from your representatives", note: be it.)
My feeling is that to get aggressive about aggressive policies and wars is to remain on the same page as your opponents. The danger of embodying the change you want to see in the world before that change has come about, though, is that you go out on a limb, embracing textures that refer backwards or forwards to potential lifestyles rather than actual ones. While satire and anger reflect the world as we know it rather well, being the change you want to see (embracing, for instance, radical gentleness, or a permanent 1968 of the soul) ties you in to a fantasy utopia, to a society that hasn't actually been established anywhere. If the danger of satire is excessive tough-mindedness (a "moronic cynicism" worthy of one's worst opponents), the danger of radical gentleness is a kind of dreamy disconnect from reality, a disconnect that can look, to some, like an expression of protection and privilege.
I tend to agree with Dan Bunnybrain's statement on the ILM thread about the Whitney peace tower event: "evoking warlike scenes is one way for powerlunchers and art collectors to feel anything," Bunnybrain wrote. "id splash umbilical cord blood on them if i thought they would care enough to change anything..but i dont ..so ive gone folk."
The Freak Folk scene of the last three or four years has been an attempt to "be the change you want to see in the world", and do it with texture. "Mr. Banhart, 23, is the most prominent of a highly idealistic pack of young musicians whose music is quiet, soothing and childlike, their lyrics fantastic, surreal and free of the slightest trace of irony," the New York Times reported back in December 2004.
The word "freak" in Freak Folk implies the same disconnect I outlined above as the major risk of this kind of movement. As if aware of this, the movement has tried to find "objective correlatives" in other times and places, to draw spiritual nourishment from them. The hippie and peace movements of the 1960s are a good starting point (and they're also the starting point for the Whitney's Peace Tower, based on a 1966 original). So is the spiritual practise of India, a clear influence on Devendra. Less obviously, inspiration is drawn from Latin America, currently swinging left.
I actually discussed this over lunch with two radical designers on Tuesday, Steve Heller and Mirko Ilic. I wondered whether the leftward swing in the Latin American countries might spill into the US through immigration. The consensus seemed to be that, as with Cuban immigration, the people coming to the US are the more right-leaning South Americans, the more money-motivated ones who come here for commercial reasons, leaving their left wing brothers and sisters behind.
Nevertheless, South America is a source of hope for disconsolate lefties at the moment, and you can see that in design, art and music trends. I selected Sergio Vega's tropicalia installation "Paradise in the New World" as the high point of last year's Venice Biennale. The record that made the biggest impact on me (and not just me) last year was Caetano Veloso's "Araca Azul" (1973). A Caetano display was featured in the Frieze Art Fair.
Hope can also be drawn from the period 1968-1973. An artist I'm very interested in is Luke Fowler, who makes documentaries about counter-cultural figures from the late 60s and early 70s. "They work as documentaries you might see on TV, but his techniques are much more radical, his textures much more aesthetic," I reported after seeing his Cornelius Cardew documentary at the Armory Show in March. Last year I saw Fowler's R.D. Laing documentary at the ICA in London. Again, the texture of this work is as important as its interest in freaky fringe figures from the utopian late 60s and early 70s, the high water mark of community-minded thinking in the West.
Luke Fowler's Cardew and Laing films are very much about attempts to found alternative utopian communities. I don't think it would be far-fetched to say that the sleeve of Devendra Banhart's Cripple Crow has the same theme, and so does the work of the Jan Family. The images you see scattered throughout this entry are examples of gentle, whimsical community- and nature-oriented design, mostly the produce of small record labels. It may look apolitical at first glance, but I think it's clearly trying to "be the change it wants to see in the world".This work is also "Japanese", I think (yes, I do!) for three or four reasons:
1. Because the status quo in Japan endorses collectivism and nature-worship, these values don't have to be oppositional ones, expressed with anger. (Angry collectivism: communist revolution. Angry nature-worship: the Unabomber.)
2. Because a taboo on the public expression of aggression makes it more difficult, in Japan, to be a protester or satirist, people tend towards more "Gandhian" ways of expressing things positively.
3. Because in Japan subcultural styles have always been able to exist somewhat in a vacuum, without subcultural modes of life to support them. This may not be totally desirable when it turns into "style without substance", but it's a way to keep certain tender ideas alive in a harsh climate.
4. Because in Japan texture has often done the work that, elsewhere, text alone is supposed able to do. It's a "formalist" culture.
I'd therefore advance the hypothesis that it's only in Japan, where aggression is not normality but somewhat taboo, that, as Nitsuh says, "a noise act can at least make the claim to be sonically skeptical of the pleasures the status quo offers, and therefore to be offering something incisive and politically engaged." In the West, noise acts are "aggressive normality", they express the status quo, they are the music of the West's imperialistic tanks (I think Faiza was probably right about that, and maybe heard something we've become a bit deafened to). It's interesting, then, that it's Japan which has produced the most interesting, influential and radical noise acts of the last twenty years. We shouldn't be surprised: you can't be radical if you're expressing the status quo.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Some radical American textures ;)
Date: 2006-05-19 03:14 pm (UTC)Re: Some radical American textures ;)
Date: 2006-05-19 03:19 pm (UTC)So, for you, gardening is politics? I know it certainly was for Ian Hamilton Finlay (http://imomus.livejournal.com/184422.html).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 03:22 pm (UTC)ryan
Re: Some radical American textures ;)
Date: 2006-05-19 03:33 pm (UTC)Re: Some radical American textures ;)
Date: 2006-05-19 03:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 03:37 pm (UTC)it's ironic that usa is a monster is tapping the same cultural anger that leads to war and imperialism, and is unwittingly feeding into the same alienation that leads to nationalism. They are "of the monsters party and don't even know it"
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 03:44 pm (UTC)sometimes just being doesn't cut it
Date: 2006-05-19 03:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 03:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 03:54 pm (UTC)On the Black Dice question, I think there's a clear split between early Black Dice and late Black Dice -- the dividing line is the departure of drummer Hisham Bharoocha. I like Hisham's other work (http://www.jenbekman.com/play/bio.html), but find Black Dice better without him; precisely because they've incorporated elements of the world music that Nitsuh includes, wrongly, I think, as one of the "status quo" musics in his list. Post-Creature Comforts here's still aggression in Black Dice's sound, but it's non-normative aggression.
Re: Some radical American textures ;)
Date: 2006-05-19 03:57 pm (UTC)The black duck clutch of sixteen eggs started to hatch this week, and the carnivorous plants on the back porch are beginning to unfold their strange tendrils. Show me someone who has a deep appreciation for such things, and I'll show you someone I can reason with.
Re: sometimes just being doesn't cut it
Date: 2006-05-19 03:58 pm (UTC)Re: Some radical American textures ;)
Date: 2006-05-19 03:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 04:01 pm (UTC)"I have never belonged to any political party, but have always loathed and despised dictatorships and police states, as well as any sort of oppression. This goes for regimentations of thought, governmental censorship, racial or religious persecution, and all the rest of it. Whether or not this simple credo affects my writing does not interest me."
Nabokov was a strong case, as he showed nothing but disdain for all perceived "political or social" writing, but I think he's on to something there. At what point does an artist become so embroiled in the politics of their aesthetic that they forget the craft of the piece? Also, is it necessary, as readers/viewers/listeners, to eschew entirely the works of artists whose politics or religion we find vapid, reactionary, dangerous, or all of the above?
Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, how much of our own political opinions should we bring in to our evaluation of art? As I said above, I'm more or less of your mind: a Marxist who doesn't believe in violent revolution, an individualist with collectivist sympathies/beliefs, a lover of nature and niceness. But does this mean that I must disregard art that is violent and "revolutionary" or (on the flip side) mainstream and conservative (lower-case "c," not fascist, which simply doesn't count).
Sorry for the length. As the intersection of art and politics is a major leitmotif of your writing, I'd love to hear your take on this. Also, I'm re-reading Ada right now, and I highly suggest all of you do it, 'cos it's just wonderful.
Shanti, shanti, shanti -
Rob
Re: sometimes just being doesn't cut it
Date: 2006-05-19 04:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 04:11 pm (UTC)I'm tempted to say that we could learn a few tricks from the way such work is put together, and employ it to our own ends. BUT MY IDEA THAT TEXTURE IS POLITICS SPECIFICALLY FORBIDS ME TO DO THAT!
(Sorry for shouting, I've become a "noise blogger"!)
Re: Some radical American textures ;)
Date: 2006-05-19 04:14 pm (UTC)Hmm, but wouldn't you be more likely to simply share a collective sigh of satisfaction with such a person, puffing on a pipe together in unreasoning silence?
Re: Some radical American textures ;)
Date: 2006-05-19 04:14 pm (UTC)Pity it must be done, but some orchid stands have been hit hard in recent years, and the rangers cannot be everywhere. I rarely divulge the locations to anyone; people are often blindfolded en route to these stands.
I am the Lorax.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 04:18 pm (UTC)Ho-ho, well-played, sirrah!
Well, you've given me lots to think about, intentionally or not. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go further develop the life of the mind (and of the garden, and of gentle political texture) by heading to Paramount and continuing to assist on "America's Got Talent."
See, the joke is, none of them do. Though I'm not sure they know that yet.
I was really hoping they'd have some sort of avant-garde classical composer or a neo-Homeric epic poet, but to no avail. It's just jugglers and crooners.
Ta-ta!
-Rob
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 04:21 pm (UTC)Whether a peace movement needs to embrace a twee aesthetic for its own causes, I wouldn't dare to judge. Gandhi's quotes read nice on paper, but I doubt that href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi#Nonviolence" his commitment to non-violence () might have been fruitful when applied one-sided...
Re: Some radical American textures ;)
Date: 2006-05-19 04:22 pm (UTC)off
Date: 2006-05-19 04:27 pm (UTC)Aesthetics and the organic
Date: 2006-05-19 04:39 pm (UTC)You mention nature oriented aesthetics, which I love--but the other part of that equation is aesthetically oriented nature, living art, whose intricacy outstrips the former, and which often has only intention and craft to recommend it, although that is sometimes sufficient.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-19 04:39 pm (UTC)So what about in private space? Do you think some of the more "negative" (racist) Nihonjinron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonjinron) notions is an externalization of internalized aggression?
Re: Some radical American textures ;)
Date: 2006-05-19 04:40 pm (UTC)