Empathy, epiphany, eureka: 2 mags and a tour

[imomus]

The new edition of Viennese art magazine Spike contains a four-page Artist's Diary I wrote detailing the genesis of Love Is The End of Art, the collaboration with Aki Sasamoto I'll be performing at Zach Feuer Gallery in New York between May 5th and 16th. "Referencing the disciplines of art criticism, theater and lovemaking," reports Time Out New York, "the artists will perform Tue–Fri 2–6pm; Sat noon–6pm. Tue 5–May 16."

Meanwhile, the new edition of The Wire (issue 303, which -- neatly -- also contains an appreciation of the Roland TB-303) carries a one-page article by me on the inside back page, an Epiphanies column entitled In Praise of Quiet Music which begins: "Citizens of future civilisations who want to portray us as a backward and bone-headed lot will have plenty of examples to choose from. They could cite the fact that 10% of our global population hogs 85% of global wealth. Or they could look at our attitude to amplification." The article talks about an outdoor concert I attended in Rome of John Cage's prepared piano piece Daughters of the Lonesome Isle, about my discovery of ultra-quiet group The Gongs at Oberlin College in 2002, and about Tomoko Sauvage's forthcoming album Ombrophilia, due from and/OAR Records. I forgot to mention in the Wire article that one of The Gongs continues to make exemplary quiet music, the composer Stefan Tcherepnin, featured recently in ArtForum. You can hear a piece of his here.

On Sunday at 3pm I'm giving one of my Unreliable Tours, this time of the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. I'll guide people around their Darwin: Art and the Search for Origins exhibition, telling visitors that Darwin -- contrary to anything they might have heard -- actually arrived at his evolutionary theories after witnessing the events recounted in The Bremen Town-Musicians by The Brothers Grimm. Darwin's eureka moment, I'll continue, came when his father took him to Highdown Fair. I'll let Angelo Branduardi continue the tale, with the help of his violin:

[Error: unknown template video]

If you want a slightly less far-fetched account of the formative years of Charles Darwin (who would have turned 200 this February if apoptotic cell death hadn't depredated his body in 1882), try this old BBC production, The Voyage of Charles Darwin. My tour is part of Playing The City, a Frankfurt-wide event in which "twenty international artists, including Ulf Aminde, Dara Friedman, Dora Garcia, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Sharon Hayes, will turn downtown Frankfurt into a site of numerous activities and situations, ranging from performances to guerrilla actions". Mine starts at the Schirn at 3pm on Sunday and is called Das Ist Die Wahrheit: "that is the truth".

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Nick, read your Wire article last week, really enjoyed it: like all the best in the series the less "serious" and more personal the better they are (otherwise come off a tad worthy)

i also like the way your cry of unlove was met with an article, rather like William Bennett of Whitehouse: no sooner had he dissed the mag on his blog the band had a long-overdue "no, we like you rilly" feature!

DC

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think those cries show we, the excluded ones, care. And caring-about isn't far from caring-for. If you care about exclusion from The Wire, you care about The Wire, therefore care for The Wire, therefore The Wire can be made to care for you. They care that you care.



But that holding out -- those years outside the fold -- make the eventual inclusion feel so much better. Look, Ma, my name is on the cover of The Wire! Near Moondog's!

[(Anonymous)]

Nick, you are old, an hypocrite, a misogynist, nor really successful, you are bitter, you amount to nothing, boring, etc etc.

(I hope I have covered all the bases for the Anonymous guy so he wont have to make an appearance today).

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ha, thank you for that pre-emption! I blow my trumpet, Anon parps his kazoo.

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

Citizens of future civilisations who want to portray us as a backward and bone-headed lot will have plenty of examples to choose from. They could cite the fact that 10% of our global population hogs 85% of global wealth. Or they could look at our attitude to amplification.

I understand that it's may be nothing more than an obligatory clever opening, and that my question may take it more seriously than it was intended to be taken, but...

Why do you think it is that we--as a culture--seem to obsess so much with how future civilizations will see our civilization? Do you think there's any real value to impressing such a hard (and probably impossible-to-please) audience?

I'm trying to imagine it like a stand-up comedy routine happening through the ages.

Idiot of Now: "So I just flew in from New York City, and boy are my arms tired!"

Futuro-chorus: "Bleep?" "Blop?" "BLORP!" "Kerchunk?!"

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Why do you think it is that we--as a culture--seem to obsess so much with how future civilizations will see our civilization?

It's a good question. I'd say it's a parallel world rhetorical device that allows us to see ourselves from a hypothetical "other place". Other uses:

"One hundred years in the future" (in Chekhov's Cherry Orchard)

"After the revolution" (in Marxism)

"A Martian sends a postcard home" (in Craig Raine's "Martian School" poetry)

"In Japan" (in Click Opera pieces)

"The Scotland in which..." (in my Book of Scotlands)

It's not that these places really exist or will surely happen, it's that they give us "margins of the page" in which we can doodle speculatively. We can't ever escape our own time and our own way of thinking about things, but these "margins" are the closest we can come: a thought experiment in which we start from different presuppositions, and can see from fresh angles.

I'm utterly intrigued, though, by new quantum theory (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227044.200-avoid-a-future-cataclysm-forget-the-past.html) which suggests that we could choose which parallel worlds become the real one by "resetting our memory".

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

But wouldn't it be far more valuable to view ourselves from contemporaneous hypothetical locales? Because honestly, we can take anything we do right now and reason that it will appear trivial, laughable, disappointing, unimpressive, etc, etc, etc, to future civilizations.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

[Error: unknown template video]

[krskrft.livejournal.com]

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Those were always funny :)

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

a) There is a documenntary (http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/eels-lead-singer-travels-across-us-learn-about-father-he-never-knew-hugh-everett-iii-quantum-physicist-14829.html) out about the physicist who came up with the parallel worlds theory. Done by his son, the lead singer of the Eels.

b) Where can I get The Gongs music? All the links are dead. They sound like they are right up my alley.

c) I have been meaning to tell you how much I enjoyed your father's book. I ordered it more out of curiosity and a sense of completism than anything else, but ended up reading it cover to cover. There is such a keen intelligence mixed with kind of a boyhood adventure story in each chapter. I loved his observations on America in the Maine and Alaska chapters (and how the thrill of the hunt was almost spoiled by the overabundance of fish in the latter). The little jokes, like how with the wrong rod he felt like a crazy man practicing semaphore.

My only small complaint was that it was too narrow - as a non-fisherman, I kept wanting him to expand cetain sections and tell me more about the people or the history, but it was always back to the river and the fish and the hunt.

There is a section in the Maine chapter where he stubbornly refuses to "worm" out some of the big trout which made me smile, because the writer of the other book I mentioned, A River Runs Through It, had the same prejudice. His father, who taught him to fish, was a preacher, and said that while all the other disciples of Jesus may have used bait, John, the beloved, was a fly fisher.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The Gongs album Rob Reich is still available (http://www.darla.com/index.php) from the Darla online shop. It's a great album, really fresh-sounding, and it's scandalous how overlooked it's been.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

And yes, my dad's a pretty good writer, but like you I wish he would widen his scope. Because if you're not into fishing, there's not much else.

[(Anonymous)]

yo, i've got parallel worlds parallel lives on my hard drive if you wanna watch it sometime...
the eels / dad / parallel worlds documentary. its good!
joe

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

I wish he would widen his scope. Because if you're not into (x), there's not much else.

Give your pop a break--that can be said of just about anyone!

(So...does he like plants?)

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

[subalpine.livejournal.com]

& poet Nanao Sakaki used a similar device with his Earth A / Earth B



雪の海 漕いで行く (http://amanakuni.net/nanao/sound/kokopelli/09.mp3)

[bugpowered.livejournal.com]

Why do you think it is that we--as a culture--seem to obsess so much with how future civilizations will see our civilization?

We are obsessed ("so much") with what?!!!!!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The image on the front of Spike magazine (not hosted by Photobucket, clearly) is of feminist performance artist Barbara T. Smith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_T._Smith) doing a 1972 piece called Nude Frieze.

[tropigalia.livejournal.com]

dear momus,
last night i had a dream that you made a livejournal post about how you loved meeting fans but you had a particularly smelly male fan in philadelphia that you did not want to come to your show, and i commented "i'm kind of smelly but it's my BIRTHDAY so you have to let me come".

you should come eat scrapple and go to omoi (http://omoionline.com) with me when you come to philadelphia; it will be great.

darwin was quite a character. someone told me he built an elaborate series of mirrors so that he could see when people were coming up his walkway and hide from them.

i never have anything intelligent to contribute but i have liked your music since i was 11 or 12 and had to turn off "coming in a girl's mouth" when i thought members of my family were approaching, even though i barely knew what it meant. every time i comment with something totally inane please know it is with utmost admiration.

[w-e-quimby.livejournal.com]

momus you should start putting naked men in your blog. then i think more people would start reading it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You're not paying attention, Quimby, there were seven (count 'em! (http://imomus.livejournal.com/452617.html)) naked men on Click Opera yesterday!

I'd rather put clothed pictures of you, though. I seem to remember you're rather nice.

[dzima.livejournal.com]

I think that the prospect of male menopause hitting soon is making Momus very easily arousable.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Are you implying Quimby isn't pretty?

[dzima.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that about Margaret but Kari Ferrell and some of your other favourites... c'mon, don't bullshit me.

Just make sure for us Hisae isn't too lonely, ok?

[w-e-quimby.livejournal.com]

I counted 9..

[dzima.livejournal.com]

Dear Margaret

would you like to sign up to wear a hanbok and dance for me in my imaginary harem?

nothing to do with blog

[(Anonymous)]

i dont like doing this(posting unrelated comments)but ive just been played your mix of oskar,before it got reproduced.bloody hell it sounds amazing.part of me thinks its maybe even on par with the proper version.anyway it got me thinking of revaluation and how time can sweeten or sour things.without doubt oskar has been well served by the passage of time. maybe the time is right to officially release a dual version of the album with the wonderful essay on its making from your essay page acting as linear notes.
artists sometimes can be (tenuous link to topic) be their own unreliable narrators / custodians of their past works .dis serving them in the actual act of innovation. leaving them orphaned and unloved as a new ideas are conceived and nurtured.in light of my revelation at hearing the unfairy dusted original oskar im asking for a chance to adopt the twins

Re: nothing to do with blog

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm very glad little Oskar is standing up to time! But I think to give him a twin at this point would be difficult. After all, the record industry has more or less collapsed, and this new material is already "released" in digital forms.

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Hime Island (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/world/asia/22japan.html?_r=1)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It sounds great to me, but I can just hear the Koizumite faction amongst the gaijins: "pork barrel... blah blah blah... bridge to nowhere... blah blah blah... conservative socialism... blah blah blah... privatize the post office... blah... feudal corruption... blah... let them fend for themselves... Passport to Pimlico..."