can Jason Lescalleet change the world?

[jliat]

So, could you give an example where music has really changed the world (economy, politics, power - not entertainment) and was the primal instigator of that change?
Because that's what we're talking about here: real world change, not the abandonment of conventional aesthetic forms, and as I said, music not only as something that supports (or maybe inspires), but music as something that brings about the change itself.

That was not my point. If you want examples of direct change that would be more difficult – and just as difficult to argue for Nietzsche being responsible for change.
Or Hegel, Kant, Aristotle for that matter. But you rule out entertainment- interesting!
I think its quite well accepted that the 1960s brought about a change in societies values – and I think you will find music both popular and avant garde part of this. As my wife as just remarked – Yoko Ono's statement – "women are the niggers of the world". I think if you are looking for primal instigators you have a problem – as culture appears to express itself through a variety of forms. And if music was so unimportant why did Hitler ban Jazz?

You don't think for a second even that Adorno or Nietzsche's influence on culture/society would have been significantly different without Schoenberg or Wagner, do you?

They are part of the general crisis in 19thC Europe. Which ran through pretty much every sphere – you might not think an artistc movement like Dada have much influence on contemporary culture – i beg to differ. The whole romantic idea of artist as genius (Kantian) is now the liberal's love of individualism… "And what did Kant ever do for us" (A la Python)

I'm also listening to Mattin's 30+ hour DVD iMPROKUP! As I write this – so not absolutely zero.

I was talking about the real world. I'm sure the united workers of the world will thank Mattin in a couple of decades for his numerous contributions to the restructuring of the world's money and power structures and their resulting future happiness.

Not so obvious it’s a symptom of current problematics – and Mattin's involvement – "workers" these days (in the west) in the main sit at computer terminals and run the systems. Hence Mattin's interest in the 'performer' 'audience' dialectic. Marxist economics of surplus value don’t seem to work – when leaders are led by focus groups etc.

You don't think the AK47 and other machine guns have changed the way of warfare,
…snip

But not the rationale of war. Or was the role of women changed by the washing machine!

Also, why do you think impressionism, the first step towards abstract painting, started? Because of some creative urge of some Parisian drunks? Sure. Basically, because of the invention of photography, making realistic painting obsolete.

The list is endless, but would derail this thread.

Well your impressionist argument is wrong. It was neither a response to photography's "threat" or was it the first step towards abstract painting. Impressionism was a fairly reactionary artform – unlike pointillism for instance. Though it used technology –paint in tubes and the railway… but the origins of abstract art go way back further – but as you say this would be a derailment.

It's amusing to think that Monet was motivated by the threat of Kodak? Threat to what? Hardly his income?

[Wombatz]

I think quite early modernist artists used the photography argument against realist painters. There was no threat, rather an ideological challenge. Funnily, salon painters took up the medium in a pretty modern way, incorporating photos into their process, painting over photos etc.

Gangsta rap changed the world. It has here in Germany. To the good (kids working on words) and to the bad (mysogyny and homophobia, and no, that weren't themes 14-year old Germans in any way had to engage with in the early 80s).

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

I think its quite well accepted that the 1960s brought about a change in societies values – and I think you will find music both popular and avant garde part of this. As my wife as just remarked – Yoko Ono's statement – "women are the niggers of the world". I think if you are looking for primal instigators you have a problem – as culture appears to express itself through a variety of forms. And if music was so unimportant why did Hitler ban Jazz?

Social change in the 60ies was mainly television and the contraceptive pill. Of course all this goes hand in hand, but art was not the instigator of these changes.

Why did Hitler ban Jazz? Because he felt it was entartet? It's not because someone in power thinks something is bad and bans it, that this is proof of the fact that it is an instigator of political-economical-social change.

I consider art to be a form of entertainment (as most creative entertainment can be seen as art forms), that's why I left out entertainment (since changes in art of course lead to changes in other forms of art that are influenced by it).

But not the rationale of war. Or was the role of women changed by the washing machine!

What rationale of society at large has changed since the dawn of men? As I said, it seems like we are bickering about the definition of change here.

Well your impressionist argument is wrong. It was neither a response to photography's "threat" or was it the first step towards abstract painting. Impressionism was a fairly reactionary artform – unlike pointillism for instance. Though it used technology –paint in tubes and the railway… but the origins of abstract art go way back further – but as you say this would be a derailment.

It's amusing to think that Monet was motivated by the threat of Kodak? Threat to what? Hardly his income?

I used the term impressionism in the broad senses so that it includes pointillism, I should have been more specific. And sure, abstract art has other, older roots too, and in different traditions. I also didn't mean to say it was a simple cause-result thing, nor meant to imply that Monet was afraid by Kodak, so I admit to some generalization and sloppiness in that short paragraph.

Let me say that the fact that one of the main social functions of painting (representation) started changing (e.g. to more l'art pour l'art and abstract forms) when photography emerged is, to say the least, noteworthy. But let's leave painting out of the rest of this thread.


Btw, I don't care about the definition of workers or where they sit: in the light of the global real world class war, Mattin will be forgotten even before he is dead. Maybe he should involve more focus groups to change that.

[mynameissally]

I'm glad this conversation has developed so much... I think I should elaborate the naivete of my title.

over the past century or so, art "changing the world" has meant two very different things. One is the classic artist's desire for the supercession of art as an autonomous institution. This is the classic agenda of the historical (1920) avant gardes... namely the russian constructivists and the ital futurists, who wanted art to be 'used' in some way to fuel their revolutionary leninist/fascist militarist agendas. Here art has a specific measurable utility. we can see this return in the 60's in the Fluxus obsession with objects, or a piece like knowles' "Make A Salad," or in the SI (though I think this group contained a bit more than its desire to overthrow the art institution). Today the bridging of the autonomy gulf is seen is relational aesthetics. I think that this is what most posters in this thread are thinking of by art "changing the world"... art having some measurable consequences (like providing dinner for the homeless or encouraging the apolitical to vote for jill stein)

I'm a bit of an adornian and not at all sympathetic to any of the above tactics. I assume most people here have read a page or two of adorno at some point in their lives, but in short, his major contribution to the arts (i'd say) is highlighting the extent to which the above "engaged" art tactics are examples of instrumental reason, or the perversion of enlightenment reason, which, regardless of political affiliation, is propagandistic and leads to the gulag or to auschwitz. he espoused an autonomy or "functionlessness" of art objects; art shouldn't respond to market demands, consumer ideologies, should be completely removed from the realm of empirical judgments, and will thus be sufficiently alienating. this alienation is freeing. Within the context of this thread, I think schoenberg and his disciples (in the 1920's/30's, obviously not at lincoln center today) DID change the world. The change is just not measurable. I'm sorry this paragraph is so poor, but I hope it's sufficient.

Someone like Cage (and, believe it or not, Mattin, but maybe we can come back to that) is on the Adornian side of this division. sure Cage had sort of a childish optimism about the direction the world was headed (even in 1991 he believed we were moving successfully toward anarchy. incredible.) but the point of his music is not to contribute to this change on the ideological level. If that were the case he would've devoted his life to writing manifestos on political nonsense, but he didn't. I'd say that Cage's music did "change the world" because it forced the listener to reengage with the materials of the musical experience (i.e. tones, silences, but in a work like 4'33 perhaps performer/audience relations and other expanded concerns as well). Reengaging with musical materials is not the same as reengaging with political structures, races, identities, anything like that, but the act of reengagement in music can, I think, train the listening subject's "engagement faculties" outside the musical experience. Hopefully this makes some sense.

Basically, I would be very sympathetic to an argument that a work like teatro assente is political, can "change the world," for the reasons outlined above. I was totally puzzled by it the first time I listened about a year ago, but after searching for a reviews/analyses I couldn't find anything really worthwhile. I would ASSUME that most people here believe that puzzling music does, in a quasi-adornian sense, through its puzzlingness, make some kind of positive contribution to the world--that this is what is meant when we use the word "challenging" as a positive adjective--, but honestly, the only time I've ever heard EAI discussed in a sociopolitical context is when Mattin is complaining about erstwhile's business practices. I'm willing to give the genre more credit than that

[misengarde]

i just can say that some records changed MY world: my point of view about music, politics, society, human beings. jason gave me a number of feelings, ideas and new ways of listenings, so, why not? jason can change someone's world.

[mudd]

i'm not going to change the thread title unless the original poster feels it necessary.

i feel like there has been a great deal of discourse about the politics of improvised music, electroacoustic music, and EAI over the years. on this board, in print, or wherever. i don't think the genre needs you handing out any credit.

m

[mynameissally]

Let me say that the fact that one of the main social functions of painting (representation) started changing (e.g. to more l'art pour l'art and abstract forms) when photography emerged is, to say the least, noteworthy. But let's leave painting out of the rest of this thread.

I'm not much of a visual arts scholar but I think cubism is the more noteworthy genre here... picasso, stein, and the other artists in that paris milieu all felt very drawn toward experimentation by photography and the moving image. but I think it's problematic to use the term "l'art pour l'art" to describe the change in painting's social function. It moved away from representation and toward aesthetics (see the work of Ranciere for more clarification on this). the term lart pour lart is an erroneous depoliticization of the concept of aesthetics.


edit:

i don't think the genre needs you handing out any credit.

okay, so I sounded a little bit rude again. I'm in the very beginning stages of a paper, for school, that I'll be working on throughout the semester. I'm going to briefly mention EAI in it. I want my understanding of the genre to be accurate for this paper. whatever credits I hand (or don't hand) the genre will be read by a few professors. I'm not an investigative journalist.

[jliat]

Are you saying that music has no part in our socio -historical development – when it seems key to identification in culture and counter culture? When its impact seems obvious – from its use within primitive societies to its reflection and development of modernity. This seems very odd – as man as individual – is a humanist – enlightenment ideal typified by the creative artistic genius which comes down to us today as the liberal endorsement of individualism.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

Let me say that the fact that one of the main social functions of painting (representation) started changing (e.g. to more l'art pour l'art and abstract forms) when photography emerged is, to say the least, noteworthy. But let's leave painting out of the rest of this thread.

. but I think it's problematic to use the term "l'art pour l'art" to describe the change in painting's social function. It moved away from representation and toward aesthetics (see the work of Ranciere for more clarification on this). the term lart pour lart is an erroneous depoliticization of the concept of aesthetics.

I meant the same thing. I didn't use the broader term aesthetics because representational painting is also a form of aesthetics. I could have used "non-representative art" instead of "l'art pour l'art" to get out of the nitpicking way, but that would have been a bit more limiting to my gut feeling. If you just think of l'art pour l'art as more or less as "art (political or not) without another function than itself", and leave out all the other theoretical bullshit (every paper or book or theorem that offers clarification of such a term is sooner or later complemented by yet another paper and other opinions ad infinitum - I gave up caring and keeping track some years ago). So, I guess you understood what I meant - what term in this realm actually isn't problematic, for carl, or rick, or jane?

I'm actually not interested in debating the specifics of these terms, that's for scholars to do, for the further enlightenment of the world. I don't think today's (art) philosophy & (art) criticism, etc. matters that much anymore. It has become too much about 2 inches of ivory, while the rich are getting richer and 1 in 7 people on the planet is dying of starvation. I'm not saying present day (art) philosophy and (art) criticism have absolutely no merit or are not serious, but they should be acknowledged for what they are: mostly a hobby (or a well paid job) for those with a degree in Humanities, something to pass intellectual time with. They hardly have real world gravitas.

I do want the world to change, and part of that I think is to get people to direct their attention and available time to other stuff than Adorno, Ranciere and Mattin; to get people asking other questions than the meta about art, and to lose the naivety that art can truly change anything aside from entertainment and personal mystical/aesthetic experiences. More has been done for the poor, the sick and the downtrodden by science, schooling and technology than art and art theory ever will. Leftist politics has done it's fair share too, true, but those involved and elected might visit a museum, sure, but they are also a very long way from the question whether the aesthetics of EAI has inherent morality.

[mudd]

not intending to quash discussion if you're planning on using material about politics in improv/eai for an academic paper you're probably better served by reading eddie prevost (mentioned just the other day in a parallel thread) or maybe tacet journal ( http://www.tacet.eu/ ) and not the postings on a message board that tends to shy away from political arguments because few people actually like the 30-page arguments that ensue.

m

[Dohol]

or that we've already beaten those 30 page arguments to death numerous times...

[mynameissally]

I don't think today's (art) philosophy & (art) criticism, etc. matters that much anymore. It has become too much about 2 inches of ivory, while the rich are getting richer and 1 in 7 people on the planet is dying of starvation. I'm not saying present day (art) philosophy and (art) criticism have absolutely no merit or are not serious, but they should be acknowledged for what they are: mostly a hobby (or a well paid job) for those with a degree in Humanities, something to pass intellectual time with. They hardly have real world gravitas.

okay... I can understand and respect this view. I'd argue that art philosophy/criticism is more necessary than ever today, particularly among experimental musicians, who, in my opinion, have become a little too complacent with the very consumer-y nature of the field, i.e. the exploitation of virtuosos for big gala events at new york venues. I worked at a so-called experimental venue in nyc for a bit where 9/10 of the staff had PR/communications degrees and didn't know anything about the artists being booked... this is alarming. [edit: alarming not solely because experimental music is becoming a consumer-oriented thing--who cares--but alarming because I think this complacency carries itself outside of music and into the political world.] of course, the other experimental arts are hardly any better, but when marina abramovic puts together some ridiculous bourgeois spectacle, critics go up in arms. I'm not sure if the presence of radical theorists and critics in the other experimental arts makes a superficial 'difference' or a concrete one, but I believe--perhaps youthfully and idealistically--that the difference is crucial.


re: mudd
tacet and eddie prevost are definitely great sources, but i feel that they offer a sort of skewed perspective of the genre, namely because this genre is, i feel, largely (but not entirely) based around a community, and a lot of the critical insight in tacet is made by intellectuals with very little association with that community. i.e. I loved mathieu saladin's essay on "the fetish character of experimental music," but who really gives him the authority to call the no-input mixing board a technological fetish (or something like that)? I think most people on this forum would disagree with that idea

or that we've already beaten those 30 page arguments to death numerous times...

not to be snippy, but a link or something would be wildly appreciated

[Dohol]

not to be snippy, but a link or something would be wildly appreciated

ohmygod....where do we begin?

[presquepartout]

double edit: and Jason Lescalleet has changed the world.

\thread

[mynameissally]

idk man! I promise I've been looking at this forum every few weeks for the past year and haven't really found anything relevant. I remember some potentially interesting threads (by that weird group 'gegensichkollektiv' or something), but the ideas in those threads were always stepped on before an interesting convo could ensue.

[mudd]

every perspective is going to be skewed when you are looking for contemporary evaluations of a small and changing community. you should take what you can get that is considered and carefully expressed.

m

[anasara]

or that we've already beaten those 30 page arguments to death numerous times...

not to be snippy, but a link or something would be wildly appreciated

i don't think you're doing yourself a favor here, and, also, when you criticize 'experimental musicians' for being 'bourgeoisie' or 'politically complacent' you should realize that, on this board, you'll often find yourself speaking to 1) friends of those musicians; 2) people who have released their work or set up shows; 3) the musicians themselves.

[mudd]

http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5184

for example.

m

[mynameissally]

i don't think you're doing yourself a favor here, and, also, when you criticize 'experimental musicians' for being 'bourgeoisie' or 'politically complacent' you should realize that, on this board, you'll often find yourself speaking to 1) friends of those musicians; 2) people who have released their work or set up shows; 3) the musicians themselves.

I too am friends with plenty of experimental musicians, have worked for some, have spent my delivery-boy-savings supporting them to the extent that I can by purchasing albums and attending shows, so on and so forth. If it offends someone that I fear contemporary musicians might be politically complacent, then I apologize, but I don't see a reason to avoid making comments like that. I'd hope that within this community (i.e. not me, let's say I'm an outsider) members can make these sorts of claims and be heard out..

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

I'd argue that art philosophy/criticism is more necessary than ever today, particularly among experimental musicians, who, in my opinion, have become a little too complacent with the very consumer-y nature of the field (...) alarming because I think this complacency carries itself outside of music and into the political world. of course, the other experimental arts are hardly any better. (...) I'm not sure if the presence of radical theorists and critics in the other experimental arts makes a superficial 'difference' or a concrete one, but I believe--perhaps youthfully and idealistically--that the difference is crucial.

Okay, I hear you, but I think over-theorizing, focussing on 2 inches of ivory and a certain kind of radicalism is part of the malaise in art criticism, and that that actually contributes to the arts in general to have less political power, for one because it spooks the general public away, and leaves it with less "constituents".


One a side note, what artists are not bourgeoisie (as in the economic middle class) nowadays? This is not really a problem, I feel.