Akio Suzuki and the joys of orientalism

[imomus]

The Wire magazine has published its writers' list of the 50 best records of 2007. At number 20 there's a Japanese artist called Akio Suzuki, nominated for his September release K7 Box. It's a record of calming, slightly cosmic music recorded in live installations around the world -- the sound of bottles being blown and tapped, bamboo cylinders being lifted and set down, ancient stone flutes, and the strange semi-human singing sound of the Analopos, an instrument of Suzuki's own invention based on the image of two mirrors facing each other. It's all very haunting and charming.



Suzuki was born in 1941 in Pyongyang, North Korea (his parents must have been part of Japan's occupying force). He lives on the coast of Japan, in the countryside, and desolate, windswept sounds are very much part of his music. In 2006 he embarked on a tour of Scotland. Instead of the usual venues musicians play -- places where amps and mixers make everything sound the same, and bars and stages provide the familiar organisation of space -- Suzuki played ticketed but free events in remote, atmospheric outdoor locations:

Smoo Cave, Durness
Ring of Brodgar, Orkney
Lyness oil tank, Hoy
Tugnet Ice House, Spey Bay
Wormit Reservoir, Wormit
Hamilton Mausoleum, Hamilton

Before we go any further, let's listen to a couple of pieces by Akio Suzuki. Here's Analopos and here's Stone Flute. The stone instrument -- an iwabue -- is one that's been in Suzuki's family for generations; in 2002 he played it at the Brunei Gallery of the School of Oriental & African Studies in London (sorry, anti-orientalists!). The resulting series was called Mogari.



One of Suzuki's specialities is the sound walk, or oto date, an open air sound ceremony. He plans a route (through the cemeteries of Paris, for instance), designating certain spots as places where the walkers should stop and listen to specific sounds. As with the concerts in reservoirs and caves, Suzuki plays here on his own humble charisma as a sort of Zen sound shaman, but also harnesses the charisma of his raw locations, so much more evocative than trad, deadened music venues.

When he does play indoors, he's likely to start by slowly tearing up a newspaper in spirals, before moving on to performing on his handmade instruments.



Music for arty, orientalist hippies, then? It's true that Suzuki perfectly fits The Wire's criteria for a great artist: he's an old man as comfortable in art galleries as jazz clubs, a humble "master" in a knitted hat whose insights are as much spiritual as musical, a charming guru of sound. His music is avant garde (his first piece, in 1963, involved throwing a dustbin down a staircase at Nagoya Station to hear the regular beats the steps made on the can) without being particularly "difficult" or "challenging" to listen to. His music makes great background sound, injecting a little touch of spiritual magic into your room. He's had a DAAD residency in Berlin and collaborated with David Toop. (Suzuki: kikkokikiriki, stone-flute, small stones, pan pipe, silent toy. Toop: flutes, bone whistle, dog whistles, stones, whistling pot, organic materials, feedback device.)

[Error: unknown template video]

The principles structuring Suzuki's music are "sound-based topography" and echo and response. In the late 80s he made a different version of his two-mirror instrument, this time using two parallel walls which, set in a landscape, capture and bounce back the sounds of nature. When someone sits between the walls, they can focus on the directed natural sound and "purify their hearing". In this way, says Suzuki, "sound, which had been conceptually imprisoned in various spaces, is freed to circle the world".

Because I've been thinking about orientalism over the last 48 hours, I can't help wondering whether the reception of Suzuki's music, by The Wire and others, isn't heavily "orientalist". His ideas very much fit with our Western conceptions of Zen Buddhism and Shinto. I have no problem with this at all. If, bewitched onto Scottish hillsides by Akio's sagelike Zen Pied Piper act, we learn other ways of thinking and feeling, reconnecting with our own landscapes as we connect with another culture, it seems to me a mutually beneficial arrangement, a "cultural exchange". Orientalism is a game with two players, and sometimes both win.

Comments

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

God, I´m so sick of old men. They´ve seen so stupidly overexposed of late, I´m even starting to go off Cale a bit, which makes me sad.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Eh, been, not seen...

Whatev, I´m going to go back to talking about monstercocks.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Seijun Suzuki and Alain Robbe-Grillet are old; in their mid-80s. Akio Suzuki, at 66, is just middle-aged!

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Older than my dad = old.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I want to add one thought about Edward Said. While his book about "orientalism" may have been quite an important thing to say at the time -- in the late 70s -- it dates from a time when a crude interpretation of deconstruction led people to think that if you could prove something was a construct you had proved that it didn't exist at all. This is not at all the case; everything is a "construct". Social construction is what we do. The fact that something is a construct does not at all entail that the thing doesn't exist, or is false.

By making the Orient a "construct" and saying that it didn't exist, Said was making an enormous gamble. His new science of anti-orientalist risked becoming anti-orient if anything the previous orientalist scholars had said had been right, or if any specific and defined cultural entity existed in the place designated "the Orient".

Said asserted that the orientalist scholars were asserting the existence of an orient. But Said himself did something much worse: he asserted the non-existence of an orient. His anti-orientalism therefore became a sort of anti-orient-ism deepened by the fact that the East itself was deeply influenced by the West's readings of its difference, its exoticism, and so on. Just look at Bin Laden's Arabian-Nightish self-presentation strategies, or Akio Suzuki's Zen-For-Beginners schtick. Which, like all schtick, is also real, a historical fact.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"I can't help wondering whether the reception of Suzuki's music, by The Wire and others, isn't heavily "orientalist". His ideas very much fit with our Western conceptions of Zen Buddhism and shinto"

Basically, you're saying that if Suzuki wasn't Japanese, he probably wouldn't have received half the recognition he has. If Suzuki was white he would be considered a hippy artist at most, which has slightly naff overtones nowdays. But because Suzuki is this old, grey haired Japanese man it adds a "buddhist/shinto authenticity" to his work that fits nicely into western preconceptions.
You're absolutely right, but thats what happens to all artists to some extent as their work becomes recognised and they enter the world of celebrity.

Britney Spears is perhaps the most prominent example of this at the moment. Her latest album Black Out is surprising good, a large portion of the songs are extremely fresh; some of them are easily right up there with the stuff we're hearing coming out of dance labels like Ed Banger and the like. The thing is, none of it is hers. Very few people have been denying the quality of the album, but her name has been dragged through the mud in regards to of her artistic integrity by almost every music critic out there, the Salon's review being one of the most scathing:

"Britney's record company would no doubt like us to consider this album a bold assertion of Spears' identity and, by extension, relative sanity. "Crazy" is acceptable in pop, clinically insane is not. But the self-consciously stylish tin-can beats on "Blackout," referencing every '80s synth phenom from Trio to Berlin and smothered with vocal tics cribbed from Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera, actually testify to Spears' absence, and point to the irrelevance of her modest contribution to the process of building her brand. With so many hot producers competing with one another, what you hear on "Blackout" are not songs so much as commercials for songs -- a team of professional songwriters frantically overselling and spinning the image of a celebrity who has essentially left the building. Spears could recoup a lot of the impression of vacancy if she could write a hit herself or, more important, pull off a dance sequence or public appearance without seeming utterly out of it. Her celebrity, like Madonna's, was built on visual teases like the Catholic school uniforms in her first hit video, "... Baby One More Time." There's something unsettling about a celeb so out of control releasing an album so competent."

What you have is a girl constantly getting herself into the tabloids with her antics. she's a PR dream if you believe the saying "all publicity is good publicity". Behind her are a highly talented creative team creating her work for public consumption, driven on by predominantly money. What you have is a highly intricate machine, a brand polished to extreme.

Art puritans hate this shit. Art that stops being about the product alone has somehow lots if creative purity in their eyes and is treated with scorn, but personally, I consider personalities to be an extension of the art itself. I dont believe art has to have integrity, but I would say that, I work as a graphic designer...

Lets spin this question around: Would your work be half as popular and well known if you weren't the architypally British well-spoken, pretentious, intellectual eccentric garbed in self-conciously reactionary minimalist fashion, wearing your trademark eyepatch like some kind of storybook villain? Welcome to brand Momus.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting Derrida video on YouTube (searchterms: derrida, love) where he asks if we love a person or a thing (the person's attributes). His answer has a lot that's relevant to these themes.

I'd say more, but I'm out & about.

[(Anonymous)]

If it wasn't for Japan the brand you'd be writing about how samey Japan is. "The other side of the planet and its stock exchanges, tower blocks, cars, social hierarchy, sexual jealousy, girls in magazines, money worries and herd-like acceptance. Depressingly, our exact opposite is exactly the same. There is no escape."

[flying-squid.livejournal.com]

I've personally never understood completely how one gets labeled an orientalist. So most of this article is lost on me. I would think that the Wire just chose him because he a damned good collection of his soundscapes, but then again, I'm sure that you would say I'm ignorant of these things.

In the meantime, Alan Licht has this has this great book on sound art (http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Art-Beyond-Between-Categories/dp/0847829693/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198342414&sr=8-1) that came out last month. Looks very promising!

[ex-newironsh15.livejournal.com]

im surprised this guy hasn't come up yet

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

(http://tinypic.com)