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imomusTo make you understand how completely exciting it was meeting Aki Sasamoto for the first time yesterday at the New York gallery where, on Tuesday at 2pm, we start a two week performance show together, I'd have to take you back to London, on Friday.
I'd been incredibly nervous about filming my bit for the Creation Records documentary. The chosen location -- the 100 Club on Oxford Street -- sank my heart a bit. Like CBGBs in New York, it's the sort of rock toilet you're supposed to love for its "rich tapestry of rock history", but is actually a sticky-carpeted basement full of grandpa vibe. I'd only been there once before, to see Denim, but in my mind the 100 Club mainly symbolizes the famous Sex Pistols gig that everybody claims to have been at, but nobody was.
I talked for about thirty minutes, and I noticed a couple of things -- really things which are internalised assumptions in me, rather than anything to do with the people making the documentary. I noticed that when I described -- at the director's request -- what I was up to this month in New York, I adopted an apologetic tone. Saying "It's two performance artists in a gallery together, one framing the actions of the other", I felt I might as well have been telling him: "I'm a fucking pierrot these days, mate. I make potato prints with my ears."
Later, I was talking about hating Thatcher's anti-gay legislation in the 80s, and making this album called The Homosexual in protest, and coming up with the idea that straight people had to become culturally gay to fight the dual assault on gay people that Thatcher and AIDS had launched. But from behind the lights I sensed -- perhaps I should say I projected -- no quickening of the pulse, no sparkling in the eyes. I didn't get any sense that this theme would avoid the cutting room floor in a film dedicated to the "pills, thrills, spats, prats, success, excess, pick me ups, breakdowns" of Creation Records, a story which leads, as we know, to the gargantuan success of Oasis. And I can't help imagining what Noel Gallagher (who calls even Primal Scream "arty disco") would say about using an album to pretend to be gay when you're straight. He'd probably say "Why not be a fucking pierrot while you're at it, and make potato prints with your ears?"
Flash forward two days and one continent into the future, and New York, and an art gallery with my name (the same artist name I used at Creation) up on the wall, and Aki installing her props, and me trying on the kuroko kabuki stagehand costume. In the gallery, I can become -- totally, unapologetically -- the pierrot you see on the Tender Pervert sleeve, a man (as I told the Creation rock doc) "planting tiny, slow-acting sticks of dynamite into the crevices of social contradictions".
Malcolm McLaren's line that it's better to be an interesting failure than a "benign success" was in my mind the whole time I was talking to the Creation doc people, because I think he's completely right: the mastodon triumph of Oasis has taken rock music to a conservative place, a place where -- no matter how much money it makes, and how many tickets it sells -- it's doomed to dinosaurdom because it's terrified of being a pierrot and making potato prints. Scared of expanding its horizons, it's doomed to contract and shrink away to nothing.
Before coming up to West 24th Street I saw the Younger Than Jesus exhibition at the New Museum, and God, it was impressive! Not just the Ryan Trecartin stuff I blogged about before, but pretty much everything in the show just blew me away. I absolutely won't stand for any cynicism about young visual artists -- they're the rock stars of our times. They're taking exactly the kind of risks music people ought to be, but aren't -- the kind of risks that ensure the relevance and longevity of a medium.
So, anyway, Aki Sasamoto in person had the exact kind of quirky energy and disinhibition I'd detected in the videos I'd seen of her. She's fantastic (and, as it happens, dates girls, which is perfect for the "unrequited love" theme). The two of us, alone in the gallery, with the rain cascading down outside (as it's due to do all week here in New York), did some preliminary performances for each other: ten minutes in which one acts out and the other observes, and the performer makes up movements and sounds and words without any limits on what's acceptable or attractive or whatever.
In my performance I sounded out the acoustics of the room, tried to imitate the sound of rainwater in the pipes, copied a hunting cat and a curious rabbit with my body. Aki, in hers, lay on her back, wiggled her toes, slammed the wall, uttered Yoko Ono-esque cries, writhed. Later, she ran through some of her absurdist mini-lectures. We worked out the lighting: I'm this "invisible" kabuki stagehand running around the darkened gallery holding a follow-spot on a long lead, picking out Aki's actions in dramatic lighting.
I know, with a glow of warm confidence, that this show is going to be great. It's going to work. People will enter this darkened gallery, and find these people running around with lights, doing a strange theatre piece. Knowing, now, that it's going to work -- and stoked, no doubt, by New York's manic energy, the kind its homeless yelling freaks and its performance artists share -- I feel delighted to be alive. Like a pierrot, in fact, making completely fucking amazing potato prints with my ears.
I'd been incredibly nervous about filming my bit for the Creation Records documentary. The chosen location -- the 100 Club on Oxford Street -- sank my heart a bit. Like CBGBs in New York, it's the sort of rock toilet you're supposed to love for its "rich tapestry of rock history", but is actually a sticky-carpeted basement full of grandpa vibe. I'd only been there once before, to see Denim, but in my mind the 100 Club mainly symbolizes the famous Sex Pistols gig that everybody claims to have been at, but nobody was.
I talked for about thirty minutes, and I noticed a couple of things -- really things which are internalised assumptions in me, rather than anything to do with the people making the documentary. I noticed that when I described -- at the director's request -- what I was up to this month in New York, I adopted an apologetic tone. Saying "It's two performance artists in a gallery together, one framing the actions of the other", I felt I might as well have been telling him: "I'm a fucking pierrot these days, mate. I make potato prints with my ears."
Later, I was talking about hating Thatcher's anti-gay legislation in the 80s, and making this album called The Homosexual in protest, and coming up with the idea that straight people had to become culturally gay to fight the dual assault on gay people that Thatcher and AIDS had launched. But from behind the lights I sensed -- perhaps I should say I projected -- no quickening of the pulse, no sparkling in the eyes. I didn't get any sense that this theme would avoid the cutting room floor in a film dedicated to the "pills, thrills, spats, prats, success, excess, pick me ups, breakdowns" of Creation Records, a story which leads, as we know, to the gargantuan success of Oasis. And I can't help imagining what Noel Gallagher (who calls even Primal Scream "arty disco") would say about using an album to pretend to be gay when you're straight. He'd probably say "Why not be a fucking pierrot while you're at it, and make potato prints with your ears?"
Flash forward two days and one continent into the future, and New York, and an art gallery with my name (the same artist name I used at Creation) up on the wall, and Aki installing her props, and me trying on the kuroko kabuki stagehand costume. In the gallery, I can become -- totally, unapologetically -- the pierrot you see on the Tender Pervert sleeve, a man (as I told the Creation rock doc) "planting tiny, slow-acting sticks of dynamite into the crevices of social contradictions".
Malcolm McLaren's line that it's better to be an interesting failure than a "benign success" was in my mind the whole time I was talking to the Creation doc people, because I think he's completely right: the mastodon triumph of Oasis has taken rock music to a conservative place, a place where -- no matter how much money it makes, and how many tickets it sells -- it's doomed to dinosaurdom because it's terrified of being a pierrot and making potato prints. Scared of expanding its horizons, it's doomed to contract and shrink away to nothing.
Before coming up to West 24th Street I saw the Younger Than Jesus exhibition at the New Museum, and God, it was impressive! Not just the Ryan Trecartin stuff I blogged about before, but pretty much everything in the show just blew me away. I absolutely won't stand for any cynicism about young visual artists -- they're the rock stars of our times. They're taking exactly the kind of risks music people ought to be, but aren't -- the kind of risks that ensure the relevance and longevity of a medium.
So, anyway, Aki Sasamoto in person had the exact kind of quirky energy and disinhibition I'd detected in the videos I'd seen of her. She's fantastic (and, as it happens, dates girls, which is perfect for the "unrequited love" theme). The two of us, alone in the gallery, with the rain cascading down outside (as it's due to do all week here in New York), did some preliminary performances for each other: ten minutes in which one acts out and the other observes, and the performer makes up movements and sounds and words without any limits on what's acceptable or attractive or whatever.
In my performance I sounded out the acoustics of the room, tried to imitate the sound of rainwater in the pipes, copied a hunting cat and a curious rabbit with my body. Aki, in hers, lay on her back, wiggled her toes, slammed the wall, uttered Yoko Ono-esque cries, writhed. Later, she ran through some of her absurdist mini-lectures. We worked out the lighting: I'm this "invisible" kabuki stagehand running around the darkened gallery holding a follow-spot on a long lead, picking out Aki's actions in dramatic lighting.
I know, with a glow of warm confidence, that this show is going to be great. It's going to work. People will enter this darkened gallery, and find these people running around with lights, doing a strange theatre piece. Knowing, now, that it's going to work -- and stoked, no doubt, by New York's manic energy, the kind its homeless yelling freaks and its performance artists share -- I feel delighted to be alive. Like a pierrot, in fact, making completely fucking amazing potato prints with my ears.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 11:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 12:44 pm (UTC)What about "interesting success"?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 12:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 01:00 pm (UTC)D.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 12:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 04:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 12:52 pm (UTC)have fun!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 12:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 12:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 01:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 01:36 pm (UTC)Interesting that this post features mention of both Yoko Ono and Noel Gallagher. So Noel would probably hate what you're doing in New York, but the person you're doing it with emits vocal noises similar to those of Ono that John loved. But then, I never did get the Beatles comparisons with Oasis. How can you deduct all the weird/experimental stuff from the Beatles? At least Robbie Williams grows a beard and nobs off into the desert to search for UFOs.
One thing is you go for these polar opposites- eg if it's not poverty then it's ferraris. Here- If it's not your position of interesting failure, then it's Oasis with benign success. I know it's going off the Creation thing, but where do, say, Sonic Youth fit in that? They're certainly not failures, but neither are they a benign success. Just one example occupying the huge space between the two.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 02:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 07:59 am (UTC)It is, in other words a question of taste and not worth fighting about. And Momus (and for the sake of disclosure, my own) interest in culture that teeters on the brink of FAIL is not unlike Buddhist monks finding beauty in decay or gourmets enjoying moldy cheeses. Obsession within a field tends to breed a taste for the strange (in case you're wondering which field the monks are active, I'd submit it is "staring at stuff"). This, however, despite the buddhist monks' conviction to the contrary, is not positive or commendable. It just is.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 10:06 am (UTC)The British Eagles
Date: 2009-05-04 03:33 pm (UTC)Re: The British Eagles
Date: 2009-05-04 03:54 pm (UTC)Re: The British Eagles
Date: 2009-05-04 05:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 08:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 12:58 pm (UTC)Dot, a bit dreamy, and wishing for just a moment she were in NYC, too
delighted to be alive
Date: 2009-05-04 01:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 04:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 05:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-04 04:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 10:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 10:55 am (UTC)The person above who mentioned how Aki's Yoko Ono-esque performance ought to evoke Yoko Ono's involvement in The Beatles, who are supposed to be Oasis' biggest inspiration, hit an important point. There were times -- and there are places -- when mainstream and avant garde practices are in the same frame. And what happens in the avant garde does have relevance for the mainstream, freshening and expanding its repertoire, preventing it from collapsing into repetition, habit, staleness.
I'm not ready, perhaps, to condemn the Q magazine world, the Creation documentary world. All it takes is for those commentators to show a little more respect for the R&D stuff, for the idea of originality itself. They need to temper their conservative impulses (and that has its place, it's the "true" part of the "new plus true" formula, eternal verities etc) with more vigilance about being constantly innovative. The very survival of the medium depends on that, because even the most trad audiences get bored eventually. You can't just keep serving up the same twangs and echoes.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 11:47 am (UTC)How likely do you think this is? retro necro, to coin your phrase, is ingrained in the way these people think. It is reenforced daily by radio, and tv talent contests and fame schools. Even in the 70s you had the likes of mud, showaddywaddy and grease reviving the 50s in new blandness; in the 80s you had the likes of tight fit, stars on 45, shakin stevens, stock aitken waterman, jimmy somerville, and countless others reworking 60s stuff. As long as a few cosmetic changes are made, you can keep selling the same crap over and over again, recent history has proved that.
The major problem I think, is a structural one. It is traceable to the inordinate amount of record company mergers in the 80s and 90s, which consolidated the power of a handful of majors into a few electronics giants, so even fewer risks were taken - hence the fragmentation of the market, as indie labels (many often aspiring to be majors themselves!) filled the gap left by the absorbtion of all the smaller labels on the more 'plural' playing field made up of the plethora of smaller labels that existed in the 60s and early 70s.
At the same time, DJs , who arguably used to have far more freedom to play records they liked, and support acts they rated, became mere robots playing pre-arranged playlists. We were better off , I think, when DJs' idiosyncracies, and not corporate practice, could turn us on to good music.
To sum up, whilst I hope what you say does happen for the good of culture, I think it's a bit naïve to believe that this lot are going to 'temper their conservative impulses' and show respect for more avant garde stuff. Economic imperatives inherent in capitalism mean they prefer the sound of retro, or 'death warmed over' - dead guys don't (always) collect! It's easier, cheaper and familiar to the moronic audiences the same industry has shaped the tastes of.
we were discussing a very similar topic [URL=http://verygoodplus.co.uk/showthread.php?t=22816] HERE [/url] after another awful, retro necro Stuart maconie '90s review' programme - see what you think.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-05 02:54 pm (UTC)Martin Rev
Date: 2009-05-05 09:48 pm (UTC)Re: Martin Rev
Date: 2009-05-05 10:39 pm (UTC)