An exploration of the political and ethical connotations of contemporary improvised music
Mattin 18.9.2003
During
the summer of 2003 I spent some time in Vienna researching improvised music.
Having spent six years in London involved in the improvised music scene, aware
of how it has developed, I was interested in finding Musicians who were
challenging the approaches that I was used to. In London I could see how this
music can get stuck in its own aesthetics. At the same time there has been a
lot of discussion about the political potential of this music. My research in
Vienna consisted of interviewing musicians, organisers and others people
involved in the improvised music scene there. At the end of the process I was
interested in two particular musicians for whom the political potential of the
music was immanent to their practice rather than stated before or after the
fact.
This essay consists of three parts: an introduction to the way this music has developed in Britain, an enquiry into potentiality and problems of its development, and an exploration of my experiences in Vienna with the musicians Radu Malfatti and Hiaz ( from the group farmersmanual). This final section takes the form of diary entries, as I wanted to communicate my discoveries as they happened: As a living process, thought in practise rather than a consolidation of the music and its possibilities (a problem which I will show to have affected the playing and reception of improvised music in the UK.)
Part 1
Improvisation, a huge term came to be a loose name for a genre of music
in the 60Õs. It is true that many musicians and non-musicians have been
improvising for a very long time. But it was in the 60Õs that some musicians
breaking up from jazz and contemporary music were developing a kind of music
that would counter traditions and make playing as free as possible. Musicians,
in trying to break with conventional models of playing, were looking at their
instruments in a more material way. They wanted to find ways in how to bring
their creativity across without the restrictions of history.
Some examples: Keith Rowe (part of the group AMM), inspired by Jackson
PollockÕs action painting started to play the guitar on a table and to play
things on top (i.e. radio through the pick-ups); Derek Bailey explored the
guitar on the margins of notes dealing with a strange harmonics and rough-cords
playing. Eddie PrŽvost brought a
wine barrel to the performance space and rather than invite people to drink
from it he started drumming on it as if it was a percussive instrument (I guess
he emptied it out on the way). As you can imagine, when this music started to
be performed in public, it provoked a variety of reactions and forced
redefinition of terms (the distinction of ÒnoiseÓ over music). At the beginning
there was not a network for this music to be presented by itself. As a
consequence AMM would share the bill with bands such as Pink Floyd or Cream.[1]
As time passed, the audience got more specialised. Networks & promoters
helped to consolidate a terminology and classification for this kind of music.
This would impede the more direct confrontation that this music could have on
unfamiliar audiences. It might be that the terminology and the specialised
atmosphere that this music developed helped to suppress its wider political
potential.
This is the issue that I would like to discuss in the thesis. The openness of the music, that could
have reached new audiences, gets over exposed by having to deal with a (recent)
history. These musicians created a
scene, but they also created its limitations. Because of this, it is difficult
for the coming musicians to brake completely with their ancestors; they are
more likely to follow their deconstructive methods. I do not mean to depreciate the creativity of the new
musicians. What I am saying is that once improvisation became a genre it also
became easily pigeonholed: When certain stylistic approaches get consolidated,
others are put aside and so hierarchies are created.
During the 60Õs there was an agitation in the atmosphere, issues like
art and music were constantly questioned in relation to politics.
Any alteration in the modes of music is always
followed by alteration in the most fundamental laws of the state. [2]
It is interesting to pose this quotation from Plato in view of the
English avant-garde composer, improviser (part of AMM), and later member of the
Communist Party, Cornelius Cardew.
Cardew grew up with an interest in a politics in which there was no room
for activities that did not have an interest for the industrial working class.
In the introduction to his book ÔStockhausen serves ImperialismÕ Cardew says:
In fact this whole polemical attack, including this
book, takes place outside the working class movement and is therefore
politically relatively insignificant.[3]
We have to say here that Cardew stopped improvising and composing
avant-garde music in order to write popular liberation songs against
capitalism. [4]
Eddie PrŽvost instead recognises that the interaction between
improvising musicians is a possible space for socio-political consciousness. It
is up to the musicians to recognise this or not.
The meta-musician must put music aside or else be
consumed by music. All meta-musicÕs aesthetics priorities arise from the direct
relationship of player with materials, player with player and players with
audience. A meta-aesthetic only emerges when performers perceive their
engagement with the socio-political consequences of these relationships.[5]
PrŽvost has devoted his life to improvisation, being part of the group
AMM for almost 40 years, running the Matchless Recordings label, organising
workshops, writing on the subject and so on. His theory of the ÒMeta-musiciansÓ
states that the practice of this kind of music cannot be limited to music.
What I am questioning here is if PrŽvost, in defining the way
socio-political relationships occur in improvisation, is not in fact
contributing to the generation of a style? So with this paper I am putting
myself in the impossible gap of trying to articulate the political and ethical
connotations that occur to improvisation, with the awareness that this can fall
in to stylistic rethorics.
For Cardew, the political consciousness cannot be raised just from
micro gestures. You need have a global view, an opinion about the exploitation
that is going on throughout the world. If you do not clearly state and denounce
this within your practice you are not being political. What I am interested in
showing with this paper is not the political consciousness that might be
applicable to improvised music, but to bring articulation to the smaller
gestures that emerge out of this practice. The hidden or imperceptible social
aspects that can grow out of the interaction that the ÔfreedomÕ of
improvisation offers: What potential do they have, or is there is a Òmeaning of resistanceÓ? By this I mean that in the practice of
improvisation (perhaps because it is simple, primitive or straightforward) there
is a social interaction, which has not yet found its full potential in
language. And this is one of the qualities that makes improvisation exceed or
still resist commodification.
The intensive creative course of action in which the musicians are
involved makes the situation a laboratory in which the audience is able to
continually grasp results but not consume them as products. The musicians
giving all their desires, passion and creative process open themselves to the
response of other musicians that can easily exceed understanding and
assimilation. This response cannot be isolated as a one-off gesture. Therefore
the response that comes after is not just an individual one, but is melted
together with the various responses the situation has provoked. The performance
space can be the place in which according to the intensity of it, new
subjectivities might arise.
I call ÔsubjectÕ the bearer [le support] of a
fidelity, the one who bears a process of truth. The subject, therefore, in no
way pre-exist the process. He is absolutely nonexistent in the situation;
before; the event. We might say that the process of truth induces a subject.[6]
The players, by pushing each other to an Òopen permission of
possibilitiesÓ are forced to question their customs, to see if they can take
something out of them or to find new ways of dealing with the performance.
Cardew
mentioned that political consciousness does not arise from one moment of
inspiration. He might be right that you are not going to realise in one second
how fucked up the worlds is. But you might be able to bring out those creative
elements that the fuckupness of the world normally suppresses. And this is the
reason for the title of the essay: Ò A second subterranean ethicsÓ. This ethics
might emerge once the improvisation is taking the players into areas of
intensity that question their modus operandi. The musicians are there but they
cannot apply their well-rehearsed ritualistic approach. Once the performance
reaches this point (of no way back, even if you wish for it), any gesture which
is not as fragile as the intensity of the performance is exposed as an
stylistic clichŽ. Surprise, and the necessity to react to this moment
simultaneously with the other musicians can create a creative feedback. But as
I mentioned before the surprise is not an isolated event, it comes from an
awareness of what has been done before and how it can be disrupted. It is a
constant challenge to the notions of cause and effect.
The ethics that I am talking about here are not the sticker that you
carry as a nice human being, nor the ethics that you are conscious of and you
behave according to. They are the ethics that emerge out of the collaboration
with the other musicians. It is here that the intensity of the situation gets
to question anything that tries to fence in its potentiality. In improvisation,
collaboration is to work together in order not to achieve anything apart from the dissolution of egos
into one another. This music does
not sell many CDs.
Improvised musicians were desperately trying to get away from music
history by creating new ÔargotsÕ with the instrument. Improvisation has been related to strong individuals, as
each of the musicians had to find his or her own path within the instrument. It
is not just the players that need to be persuasive. Usually festival
organisers, record labels, and critics of this music are very motivated in
order to remain in this field of music, which is still very marginal. Record label runners are happy to cover
expenses in order to keep putting things out (the first time that I asked Eddie
PrŽvost of Matchless Recordings the number of CDÕs he produced of each release,
I was very surprised to hear that just 1,000 copies were manufactured). Another
aspect that also reinforces the idea of strong individuality is the
multitasking way in which musicians and promoters have to work; in fact,
musicians are often promoters, record label runners, critics and so on. The idea of the strong individual also
gets reinforced at the beginning of each performance, as no one at that moment
knows how and who would start.
In the moment just before a performance begins, his
fingers poised, the meta-musician does not know what to play. He knows that he
will play, and has some reasonable expectation of what might develop. But there
is no certainty. Yet the moment the first note is negotiated then all else will
follow, seemingly out of control and at the same time inevitable. The
meta-musician makes not false stars and plays no wrong notes.[7]
This moment of uncertainty in which any of the players can break the
silence prior to the performance, in which no language has determined the first
action, forces the music to be always at the border of what has been done in
the past and what you can add or subtract from it. But of course our knowledge about the musician and his or
her music can work as a score for our expectations. Or in some cases the
musician himself can be a slave to his own trajectory, this is something that I
will try to discuss later on: how style can work as a limiter of freedom. Or
how working within a very narrow space for intervention can lead to surpass the
clichŽs that this music often provokes .
Perhaps I
have given the impression that there is no forward planning, no overall
structure, and no ÕformÕ. Adverse criticism of free improvisation ÐÐ pretty
nearly the only kind available ÐÐalmost always aims itself at the same two or
three targets and the clear favorite of these is ÔformlessnessÕ. As the criteria
for assessing a piece of music, any piece of music, is usually inherited from
the attitudes and prejudices handed down by the mandarins of European straight
music, this is to be expected. Nowhere is the concept of form as an ideal set
of proportions which transcends style and language clung to with such terrified
tenacity as by the advocates of musical composition. ÔThe necessity for design
and balance is nowhere more imperative than in music, where all is so fleeting
and impalpable Ð mere vibration of the tympanic membraneÕ. Although written
many years ago, that is still probably a fairly accurate indication of the
importance attached to form by those people concerned with composed music. Even
in those parts of contemporary composition where the earlier types of overall
organisations no longer serve, a great deal of ingenuity is exercised finding
something upon which the music can be based. Myths. Poems, political
statements, ancient rituals, paintings, mathematical systems; it seems that any
overall pattern must be imposed to save music from its endemic formlessness.[8]
Derek Bailey in his book ÔImprovisationÕ tries to explain how this
music challenges previous notions of what music can be from the western
perspective. As we can see from this quotation, improvisation has been trying
to escape any term that is not related to freedom. Once something becomes formal and easy to identify, it can
be appropriated by the establishment (something that improvisation has always
tried to evade). It is true that the abstraction of this music makes the
audience engage in the process of participation (as they are working out at the
same time as the musicians what is going on). I presume that the constant encountering of differences must
be exhausting. Miscellaneous tastes, rather than emerging into one final
product (here I am thinking of a pop-rock group working together on a song and
then delivering it in public) are continuously presented in juxtaposition with
each other. The constant encounter of different personalities in a performance
obviously dissolves the idea of the author, giving the audience more points of
view to relate to or actually to bring to. But I must admit that I am
suspicious of Òthis free flowing
amazing amount of creativity trying to evade any categorisationÓ. As a listener of this kind of music I
have discovered that you can find a diversity of approaches (that are not
necessarily compatible with each other) and they actually can become very
narrow. This is fine if its intention is not to have a Ôpolitically correctÕ
ethos that everybody can join in with, and there are no hierarchies. Another
problem is that in this music the stardom system can work in a similar way to
how it does in the mainstream.
As festivals of improvised music have been established, there are some
musicians who are participating in many of them and others that never
participate. Trends are also important in this kind of music (not that this is
so wrong but it can actually counter the idea of being open to the risk of the
unfamiliar). This might be a difficult field and it can easily said that the
musicians asked to participate are the best improvisers. But in improvisation
there is not just one way of doing it, as we mentioned before there are many
personalities in this way of making music.
Often in different places musicians develop a certain style of playing
and so-called ÒschoolsÓ are created: London school, Berlin, School, Japanese
school, Vienna School, New Zealand school and so on. They all have their
particularities but not in all are so clear. Other ways of playing
improvisation can be very loud (ÒnoiseÓ), very quiet (ÒreductionismÓ), fast and
active (Òplinky-plonkÓ or Òsalad musicÓ as Radu Malfatti calls it), slow
gradual changes, drone-likeÉ. At the moment we could say that the Japanese
school (which is quite reductionist) sells more CDÕs that letÕs say the NZ one
for example (which is lo-fi and drone-like).
The meta-musician looks for meaning, and for a music
with meaning, and looks to invest as much meaning as possible in the music. The
intention is to transcend all previous experience of music production and music
consumption. The intention is making music, and listening to it, as if for the
first time. [9]
As we can see in this quotation by Eddie PrŽvost, there is a necessity
to break with any previous understanding of music. The meta-musician is not
just a player/composer/listener at the same time, he or she is a revolutionary
and consumer of the others playerÕs revolution. Is this not too much to ask of
a human being?
So what I want to say by bringing together the specific styles that
have emerged out of this music and Òthe radical new-creative-selfÓ that PrŽvost
is talking about is that the romantic aura that can be wrapped around this kind
of music, is sometimes put forward to reinforce a specific understanding of
politics (and perhaps as an example of social understanding) and in others it
is hidden and not so clear within the aesthetic choices of the musicians (but
then perhaps there it occurs more naturally, without pretensions). But what
does happen is that the freedom of this music creates its own limitations. Exercising freedom in a certain way
makes it stylised and sterilized.
If improvisation does not become a method, an aim, a
genre, if it is not seen as a specialist endeavour through which virtuosity can
re-emerge, if it is seen as a continual accompaniment to our everyday lives in
which meaning and responses do not always emerge instantaneously, if it is
heard as that which contains the phases of its own construction and carries the
emotions to which it gave rise, then it can operate as a "practice of
self-invention" that is spurred-on by negotiation between the determined
and the undetermined, between pleasure and displeasure.[10]
Part 2
Considering the problems in the
development of improvised music in London
Oh,
I love freedom but what is it?
I) Being beyond
"music," it is noise.
ii) Being beyond
"rules," it is free.[11]
Free improvisation as its name suggests has a relationship with freedom. The sounds originated in its practice
have a relationship with noise. If
we follow the above quotation from Bruce Russell we might think that
improvisation is by itself progressive.
There is nothing implicit in improvisation; it is what the musicians
make out of the performance that can have potential. If the musicians bring an openness to create common spaces
or ways of understanding, is more likely that the improvisation can take
unexpected and interesting paths. By common spaces I do not mean to try to find
the lowest or more common denominators, which would mean to actually bring what
they have from the past.
As I mentioned above, to try to articulate the potential of this music
might also be to constrain the spectrum in which one can act. This attempt is
bound to fail. Similar to what happens to improvisation once you try to see it
as the final result. This would mean to contextualize it and give it a purpose
- to think of it only in formal terms (this was fine here or that worked
there).
One of the biggest problems during the course of this essay is thinking
of improvisation in temporal terms. There is some potential in short fast
disruptive actions, but they will always be subjected to what happened before.
This would be a nihilistic self-destructive gesture rather than a long-term
commitment to finding alternative ways of dealing with the way that we are
determined by power. To see how this emancipatory transition can happen is the
purpose of this section of the essay.
Obeying what?
Gilles Deleuze in ÔSpinoza: Practical PhilosophyÕ:
In every society, Spinoza will show, it is a matter of obeying and nothing else. This is why the notions of fault, of merit and demerit, of good and evil, are exclusively social, having to do with obedience and disobedience. The best society, then, will be one that exempts the power of thinking from the obligation to obey, and takes care, in its own interest, not to subject thought to the rule of the state, which only applies to actions. As long as thought is free, hence vital, nothing is compromised.
I am afraid that thought is not free in the present conditions.
Capitalism, in order to reproduce itself, needs to produce workers and
consumers. This what is has been called Òproduction of subjectivitiesÓ. With
the convergence of material and immaterial production capitalism has dissolved
into people minds and habits: a subtle infiltration blurring the distinction
between oneÕs own desires and capitalist desires. How can the production of noises disrupt the production of
subjectivities?
Musicians, in constructing a dialogue out of an empty score (which
actually makes more transparent the social condition as there is no final
responsibility attached to an author or score) are showing that the effects of
their choices induce a responsibility. This responsibility (which actually gets
its meaning diluted by the musiciansÕ interaction and their subterranean
understandings), introduces further responsibility. The musicians, in having a
past (time passing, sounds created/listened to) are able to choose the way they
deal with the present according to their decision-making.
This decision-making might simply reproduce aesthetic choices from the
past, an act of consolidation rather than discovery, unless it is adapted to
the nature of the new improvisation, which relies on careful listening and an
awareness of the precedence of the music. This does not mean that ready-made
sounds are not welcome, but that your choice gives them a reason to be there.
The musicians and listeners are giving a new context to them.
The production of communication does not mean just to talk better but
to struggle with getting the most out of its possibilities. In capitalism, communication means
transaction of knowledge and information. In improvisation what is produced and
distributed are momentary gestures of sound, what they induce is a
response. Capitalism works towards
a directional interest (reproduction of itself.) If it gets responses, it
learns from them in order to infiltrate and produce better. Improvisation is
antagonistic to this process, because while it appeals to the audiencesÕ
desires, it then invites a dialogue.
Notions of good or bad get deformed because their general meaning is not
used in order of an interest outside the situation. Because improvisation is
not aiming for finality, fixity becomes flexibility. Flexibility in
improvisation does not mean Òfree flowingÓ but instead implies an ability to
accommodate difficult sounds you do not find inspiring and do something with
them. In doing this, conventional ways of listening are transformed for the
musicians to amplify their scope of action. The general meaning of these notions are appropriated for
that moment in which musicians decide to play with them, but then they are only
used for specific occasions which you cannot take away with you.
Human freedom, thought not free will, amounts to the power that one possesses actively to select oneÕs encounters rather than suffer chance associations.[12]
John Cage managed to open the parameters in which music was thought of.
But actually the chance pieces in CageÕs work (e.g. ÔMusic of changesÕ) are
always subjected to strict rules. The difference with improvisation is that the
musicians are always exposed to its determination and response without having
rules to back them up. Improvisation challenges the notion of divisions. CageÕs
compositions have the finality of showing what is possible in music and our
preconceptions of it. He might perhaps not be in charge of the content of the
form, but it is still a very strict way of defining a spectrum of action. What
improvisation does is to show that there is not an outside to its practice.
There is a big difference in hearing a Chance piece by John Cage and an
improvisation. Even if the sound might be similar, the approach comes from a
different angle.
In John CageÕs pieces there is a clear division, the chances
encountered within them are the purpose of them. They stop being chance. In
improvisation chances remain the whole potential to be taken in to account or
not. LetÕs say that some loud
sound comes from outside. While in more general music it would be a disturbance
and excluded, in CageÕs music it would be anticipated. In improvisation it would be listened
and questioned and if someone thinks that he can do something with it,
used. Usually the performance
spaces can be extremely varied and with different acoustic properties. In no
other music are these qualities explored more. What I want to get at is that
improvisation is able to understand that it is part of a bigger context, and is
able to do something with it. The rules in John CageÕs pieces seal the
interaction of the musicians.
Improvisation recognizes that there is no division between the
conceptual approach and constant intervention within it. In improvisation,
there is neither a concept to save, nor a rule to be applied.
Just as, in a game, the victory of one of the players
is not (with respect to the game) an originary state to be restored, but only
the stake that doesnÕt pre-exist the game but results from it, so pure violence
Ð which is the name that Benjamin gives to human action which neither founds
not conserves law Ð is not an originary figure of human action that at a
certain moment is seized and inscribed in the juridical order (just as for
speaking man there is no pre-linguistic reality which, at a certain moment,
would fall into language.)[13]
Once we understand that we are embedded within a system in which
contradictory social relations are played out, we can also see that the
contradictions contain aspects that exceed constrictions or law. Improvisation as pure praxis; You
cannot be outside of the game, but you donÕt have to be subjected to the rules
in order to play the instrument, and create convergent moments of
communication. This can be similar to when the musicians use instruments in
ways that were not anticipated before. Exploring without conceptual
restrictions the material aspect of the instrument does this. In making and
listening to the results, the musician is able to develop a personal approach
to music making. This is not done
in isolation, but within the appreciation of other musicians and listeners. In
having a positive reception for that which ÒMarketed musicÓ tries to exclude, improvised music manages
to give meaning to the residue without making a statement nor a question that
it needs to answer.
When sounds are thrown in improvisation, this pushes the
temporal-spatial understanding that we can have about sound and its place in
reality. Later on I will explain how the trombonist Radu Malfatti is pushing
this notion to the limit. The inner rules that we bring prior to the
performance as listeners become ridiculous once musicians manage to show a
different way of playing. This moment in which you realize that you had a
ÒlimiterÓ on music shakes other notions and will bring fragility to your
understanding. As in many cases those inner rules or parameters in which music
can be acted are the ones that hold other notions. If we understand politics in
terms of their potential in social relations, we can see that in the
exploratory element of improvisation there is a politics involved. By making the most of its interactions,
the musicians project their subjectivities and their desires within it and
discover other peopleÕs receptions of it.
So it appears that the common notions are practical
Ideas, in relation with our power; unlike their order of exposition, which only
concern ideas, their order of formation concern affects, showing how the mind
Òcan order its affects and connect them together.Ó The common notions are an
Art, the art of ethics itself: organizing good encounters, composing actual
relations, forming powers, experimenting.[14]
Deleuze describes the way a common notion can be put into practice in
order to develop its own powers. But the nature of the way in which
subjectivities are developed with it is conditioned by its future use. It
cannot become a rule unless it becomes a style that other musicians can be
infected with. And unless you are
able to bastardize this style it will become another template in which rules
can be applied. In that case its political potential ceases:
The more
the body politic, that individual of individuals, develop its own powers, the
more the real-imaginary complexity of social relationships as Spinoza conceives
it is revealed as a principle of mobility. Obedience itself (and its
correlative representation, the ÒLawÓ), as it is institutionalized by the
State, region and morality, is not an immutable given but the fulcrum of a
continual transition? Or, more precisely, since progress is never guaranteed,
it is what is at stake in a praxis (a struggle?) whose decisive moment is the
transformation of the mode of communication itself.[15]
In an essay entitled ÔPioesis and PraxisÕ, Giorgio Agamben explains how
the terminology of praxis has been modified through time to finally aim at
finality. In ancient Greece, work was the lowest on the rank between the terms:
work praxis and poesis. The slaves executed work in order to achieve something
concrete. We live in time in which this has inversed, and now any production
has an end.
Agamben continues that in the Greek understanding of the making an
artwork it did not include that the artwork would be finished and by itself
would come into essence. Rather the artwork would be identified with process,
therefore it could not be put together to an end or a limit.
It is important to acknowledge that the making of products (or decisive
endings) makes its parameters easy to identify and this means that you are able
to appropriate the work of art (IÕve got it! I understand it). This also gives consumption a clear-cut
meaning. For the Greeks, making
art was concerned with creation: Out of nothing make something. Now we can see
that praxis would be the medium in which you make a specific work. Is to have
an end; to have a deadline, a limit to your potentiality. Improvisation instead
brings back the act of making as the main focus of artistic praxis. But praxis
understood by the Greeks had a different connotation to pro-duction.
Pro-duction has its limits outside itself; praxis is self-contained and reaches
its limits through action. Therefore it is not pro-ductive and it can bring
itself into presence.
In improvisation, thought and action are brought together in an
unconstituted praxis. By this I mean a praxis, which is not exterior to it but
neither is it finally constituted. It needs of other listeners to actually get
an effect; it needs the interaction to fulfill its main purpose. This is
similar to AgambenÕs use of the
concept of means without end,
In improvisation the gestures made require a response in order for the
dialogue to continue. But as the
other players cannot anticipate a concrete response the gestures are like
giving birth to the conversation, and from there on something develops. But as
we mentioned before, with CageÕs pieces the concept works as an end; but in
improvisation each gesture can be as single concepts, forced to coexist. The gestures
are never left alone because even the silence has a meaning; there is not such
a thing as neutrality in improvisation. Meaning is constantly produced and
never isolated from its context.
Politics
is the exhibition of a mediality: it is the act of making a means visible as
such. Politics is the sphere neither of an end in itself nor of means
subordinated to an end; rather, it is the sphere of a pure mediality without
end intended as the field of a human thought.[16]
As Agamben suggests later on the essay in
his notes on politics that Praxis and political reflections are operating today
exclusively within the dialects of proper and improper, which means inclusion
and exclusion. And if we are able to perform acts which are indifferent to this
dialectics (therefore impossible to be categories and exclude), we are able to
bring a politics in which the notion of the common gets its meaning without
being based on concept of appropriation and expropriations. If improvisation is
able to work outside this dialectics and function as pure mediality then is
able to show its political potential.
Because of the lack of functionality outside its context, improvisation
cannot reproduce ideologies concerning product as finality (Òreproduction of
capital). The functionality in improvisation works for the moment in which
musicians are struggling to find common notions. This struggle is itself the
aim. It is in trying to find a language within spectacle, in which musicians
can for that time stop reproducing ready-made clichŽs. In making an argot
within the brutal and cold capitalist production, one starts to leave behind
what rules for obedience were put into the musicians. Obedience, points of
reference disappear as you contract the object not out of form, but with the awareness
that we are embedded with in this system. It would be ridiculous to think that
we are not determined by it, but also to think that by default we cannot stop
reproducing its negative connotations.
Argot
The age in which we are living, in fact, is also the
age in which, for the first time, it becomes possible for humans to experience
their own linguistic essence- to experience, that is, not some language content
or some true proposition, but the fact itself of speaking. The experience in
question here does not have any objective content and cannot be formulated as a
proposition referring to a state of things or to a historical situation. It
does not concern a state
but an event of language;
it does not pertain to this or that grammar but- so to speak to- the factum
loquendi as such.
Therefore, this experience must be constructed as an experiment concerning the
matter itself of thought, that is, the power of thought (in spinozian terms: an
experiment de potentia intellectus, sive de libertate)[17]
If we are conscious of how these systems are able to cut off or
actually introduce our objects of desire, we can be able to find ways of how to
produce moments of resistance to this aim. It would be difficult to actually
aim for a clear situation in which you think everything would be fantastic
(What happens once you achieve? You stop?). The situation emerges out of a
practice, a modus operandi you should be aiming at. Once the capitalist
producers know what you are looking for is easy for it to deal with. But if
there is nothing clearly positioned, it cannot apply satisfactory responses to
it.
Argot, not being a proper language is difficult to
institutionalize. It is a good
analogy to bring in the concept of argot here, even though music and language
work in different registers. Argot has the aspect of appropriating a language
and making it personal (sometimes it is used to do secret trading, or obscure
business). [18]
Languages are the jargons that hide the pure
experience of language just as people are the more or less successful mask of
the factum pluralitatis. This is why our task cannot possibly be
either the construction of this jargons into grammars or the recodification of
people into states identities, On the contrary, it is only by breaking at any point
the nexus between the existence of language, grammar, people, and state that
thought ans praxis will be equal to the tasks at hand. The forms of this
interruption Ð during which the factum of language and the factum of community come to light fro an instant-
are manifold and change according to times and circumstances: reactivation of a
jargon, trobar clus, a
pure language, minoritarian practice of a grammatical language, and so on. In
any case, it is clear that what is at stake here is not something simply
linguistic or literary but, above all, political and philosophical.
Pure language for Benjamin is irreducible to grammar or a particular
language. But its purity is not that it comes out of nothing, it is still
language, but not subjected to particular rules. Its indetermination makes it
difficult to appropriate.
As this music is produced by the combination of the exploration of the
instrument against its intended purpose and a personal way of responding with
other musicians, the musical language that is created serves only the
communicability of that moment. It cannot be exported elsewhere. You can take ideas but you will also
you will also have to contextualize, in that way each element of the music is
there to be activated by the consumer. By this I mean that that the
decision-making is more prominent in the process of the consumption of this
music, as opposed to other genres in which stages of it are more clearly
defined (i.e. composing, presenting, getting recognition). This music works
like elusive liquidity in the hands of the musical grammar in order to keep
reaching other peopleÕs ears.
As there is not much interest in the general audience with this music
it is only the musicians who make the most out of it. The marginality of this
music functions at both levels, one which exposes the idea of the spectacle and
the other, how to live within in it and yet be antagonistic to it. It can just fall into a dead end, and
we all know that it is difficult if not impossible to make a child out of sodomy.
But there can be a lot of pleasure in doing it.
Part 3
Diary from Vienna
29.8.03
An exhibition of great importance opened yesterday in Vienna (Abstract
art now at the Kusthale Vienna), as you can imagine computers and their
pixilation where there. farmersmanual (all lowercase, for internet use), a
group of male individuals (transgressing definitions, how can you define them?
computer programmers, musicians, artists, researchers) from Vienna but based in
different cities (Berlin....) have a project there which questions aspects of
improvisation. A huge
metal-ball-structure was in one of the big rooms of the Kunst hale. At the
opening members of farmersmanual started a performance consisting of moving the
ball. The movement would trigger some loud sounds. The sound generated through
the network within the computers of farmers manuals. This approach had been developed when some of the members of
farmersmanual left Vienna and had to find ways to keep collaborating together
without the need of sharing the same physical spaces. This led them to explore
the possibilities of Networks. So
they started to use networks as a sound source (through some Max programming).
Their approach uses improvisation as an operative system to discover
new ways of interacting with technology. It is interesting to see that there is no such thing
as final stage of the work. In
bringing networks, and communication (which they are always working, file
sharing and so on) there in no point in which you can say you have a representation
of it. These days their projects
exceed what the concert venues can accommodate. They bring their networks,
video and usually they perform for 3 hours, in which the audience is not just
asked to sit down and listen but to actually walk around and look the work and
their activity. In fact they just released a DVD in which they document all
their performances in mp3 format. As people would think of a DVD for music,
farmersmanual reverse our preconceptions of its possibilities. It might be a
product, but one that challenges your notion of consumerism. farmersmanual do not come from an
improvisation background, they are not subjected to any particular method or
ideology that we mentioned above, instead they push technologies without
restriction, focusing on different aspects of what can you do with them.
To just listen to farmersmanual as formal music is missing its
political potential. It is the way it is made which could counter the
production of subjectivities. Some of the projects of farmersmanual have
included inviting anybody through the Internet to improvise with them. The
situation becomes special, on the one hand because they are using technology to
create creative subjectivities and on the other because the openness invites
you to be a listener, or even producer.
Its instant character gets reinforced through the possibility of
intervention, you are not constrained to maintain silence or a socially
respectful behavior (you in your room might be enjoying an orgy and youÕre
having a break from it to search different avenues of ecstasy). Another
project, which I found interesting, was in the Venice Biennale 2001. They were
invited to it but a week before they were told that there was no space. Hiaz
(the only one of FM who considers himself an artist) went there and tried to
find possibilities and spaces for interaction. As Venice is full of canals and there was no space on dry
land it made sense to do something on a boat. After a really intense process of
dealing with the owner of the boat (every minute asking for more money) FM were
able to have their huge PA and their noise networks ready for improvisation.
Here the concept of the audience and how to present your work was completely
challenged. Venice is a really
quiet city (no vehicles) but does not have any rules for the amount of noise
you can make on a boat, so FM were free to push their energy through the
speakers. It created a great deal of confusion and some people thought there
were some weapons, fireworks.
During the opening of the Venice Biennale there so many events and
openings that is difficult to attract an audience to your event. But with the
boat they were able to do the opposite: We could go wherever the people were (I
could not stop laughing thinking of all this arty-fuckers-object-observers
running away from these Viennese-freaks-boaty-noise-makers.)
We
were able to produce very loud volumes and the first people to call up the
water police were the Italian navy marine school next to the Giardini, because
they has the impression that some of their gun ships had been stolen.[19]
Radu Malfatti (trombonist)
Including silence in order to exclude staganation. Malfatti has been concerned with the
problems of style in improvisation. He criticizes those players that he started
to play with in the 60Õs and 70Õs for sounding the same now as they did at that
time. If this music is about constant renewal, reinvention and breaking new
grounds, you should do it constantly, not just once. He is famous for doing
ultra-silent performances which many people he has played with, find too much
to take or boring. What is it about silence in an improvised context that till
a certain point is fine (and at the moment it suits the trend) but after a
while people cannot cope with it? Do they find themselves being cheated (you
can listen to silence anytime, I do not need to pay for that!)? The questions that the inclusion of
silence raises for me are:
Virtuosity gets reduced as not everybody can be active, the audience is
more exposed and by default more included with in the performance, the same
about the space and its acoustic qualities. Everything becomes for fragile and
exposed. Certain criticism that this music has taken is that is dogmatic
(almost exclusive).
The work of Radu is the opposite of the work of Hiaz. Radu is concerned
with his own interests, taste and history. Radu believes in the idea of constant self-renewal but this
is different from the idea of self-invention that PrŽvost talks about. Radu is
more interested in what is actually being produced rather than how it is
produced (as PrŽvost or Hiaz). It is not a matter of making a product (as he
would be one the few consuming it) but rather as musicians to put yourselves in
a situation in which you feel something is happening but do not know how to
describe it. (I guess here Eddie would bring one stick and hit it; Radu would
do nothing or breathe and wait). I shall try to explain what it is that affects
me about the RaduÕs playing. One is that he is pushing the limits of minimalism
(and here itÕs not a matter of bringing John CageÕs 4Õ33ÕÕ as he comes from a
different angle. He is still interested in playing, but also in extending the
fragile moment of nothingness with what the context does. What happens in
between is listened to and appreciated, actually very close to real time field
recordings. For example, ÔDachÕ, a CD documenting a performance in a trio in
which Radu was involved: At the beginning it was raining and you can hear the
raindrops better than the playing. What you get is context eating or actually
becoming the ego of the players.
Democracy comes into play, but is so obvious that audience do not want
to deal with it (in the long silences that Radu performs you can hear people
squickling, stomachs, siliba, sacricition). The only possibility is leaving the
room, which obviously will become a statement. We could also consider here the information overload that
this time is bringing us, but Hiaz is already doing something productive about
it. What fascinates me about Radu is his radicalism (as in the second
definition that comes out in this Microsoft word program dictionary:
Far-reaching, searching or thoroughgoing. Let me bring you also the 3rd
definition: Favouring or making economical, political, or social changes of a
sweeping or extreme nature). The
fragile moment of encountering difference (and you being involved in producing
it with other musicians): This is improvisation. But obviously not everybody is
trying to achieve the same differences (some are not even trying to achieve
anything except filling their pockets and their big tanks of ego with the
constant presentation of the one difference that they have achieved in their
lives as musicians.) Here is where Radu does not fit, as what he has achieved
with his constant renewal is a very unmarketable music (I am actually going to
record with him in a proper studio, which means money, and what about if he
does not play more in total that 5m. in the period of 3 hours?)
Criticism to Eddie:
Eddie PrŽvost on Wire 231. May
2003, critisizing RaduÕs
approach to improvisation, said
ÒIf Radu Malfatti is the Pope of the New Orthodoxy, Keith Rowe is
Christ.Ó
Prev—st as we mentioned before has been doing this music for a long
time. In fact he could be part of a particular way of dealing with
improvisation (temporarily expansive, as opposed to the fast playing of free
jazz). In consolidating this way of playing, perhaps intentionally he is
putting himself on the top of the hierarchies of this way of playing (and
defining improvisation that he has been pioneer of). In his criticism of Radu
Malfatti, he mentioned that silence must come out of a catharsis, and that then
there is no possibility of interaction with other musicians. For me the problem
is this: How can you put limiters in a music that a calls itself free
improvisation? As we mentioned above Eddie asks for an awareness of the socio
political implications of this music. But the way in which he is asking us to
do this is by trying to bring common denominators to the performance, rather
than our most idiosyncratic elements.
There is a contradiction, then, when he criticizes others for sampling
his sounds.
He sees the music as hermetic. How can you see this music as hermetic
when what it does is to appreciate the context it is made in? As Cage already
proved there is no silence, and as I mention above musicians in improvisation
are able to appreciate and integrate aspects outside of the music production. I
feel in EddieÕs response a certain fear that his approach might be overcome by a
perhaps more concise, different mode of listening to and creating sounds. He
criticizes this music for being formal, but he comments about KeithÕs Rowe
playing at the begging of the article:
ÒEssentially what Keith (Rowe) does now is not that far away from what
he did in 1966. WhatÕs changed? The world of music.Ó
And even if Keith RoweÕs radical approach stays up to date, his way of
interaction has not developed. How long can his Unorthodoxy and Radicalism
last?
I think there is more heremeticism in trying to cover up for the
situation, not letting or getting the most out of the situation, rehearsing
gestures for 40 years, than actually questioning the whole way the music is
made (its cause and response) and its structures. It is true that Radu Malfatti
is the precursor of a way of playing which has inspired many musicians but it
is also true that he is the one that takes the situation the furthest. Other
musicians in Vienna appreciate very much his work and his attitude towards risk
but they do not easily get into it (it might become boring if you listen to it
15 times).
Perhaps I have not listened to him that many times, but the impression
that I have listening/not listening to him is that it makes me question: Why
activity? It is not silence for it own sake (again it is not a nihilistic
gesture), it is an understanding of the placement of the sounds and how they
can produce tension and effect. Unfortunately I could not go, but Klaus Filip
organized Ôchess & musicÕ at the rihz in Vienna and apparently the concert
featuring Taku Sugimoto (Japanese quiet guitarist) and Radu was an amazing
disintegration between the sounds of the clocks and the pieces moving and their
soundsÕ implementation.
It seems to me that in PrŽvost there is certain fear to be noticed or
heard, my problem is this might become an end in which the music is contingent
on this. Or more problematic, that this music challenges the notions of what
PrŽvost has been writing about for so long. What is contemporary about RaduÕs
approach, is observation to that which Eddie actually finds dull sound (which
in doing exposes his hierarchies of sounds developed through the years):
attention to that which usually gets unperceived or thrown away. Radu is
bringing another level of radicalism to this music, which Eddie is not
interested in. But we should not think that the amount of action and its volume
level restrains its responsibility. It can very easily be the contrary;
allowing more space to uncover that which is a gesture (by this I mean an
already rehearsed one) or actually a fragile moment of praxis in which you
throw yourselves and your past in other to get somewhere you have not been,
somewhere where you have to respond differently to the way that you are
accustomed.
I have been playing quite a lot with Eddie and I respect him for his
music, thoughts and generosity but this does not let him off from my criticism.
In his Mute magazine article about sampling Eddie criticizes the idea of
processing or taking his sounds somewhere else. As if his sounds were the only
ones put at the right place at the right moment, as if his sounds have
characteristics only applicable to his hands and his long history. ItÕs a long
time now since the idea of the author has been dissolved into the text.
His recreation of sounds might have been done with the idea of
self-inventiveness. Nothing wrong in being creative but what is ridiculous
these days is to try to be self-preserved. It is all right for Eddie to produce sounds that provoke
thought and reactions and events, better if he produces conversations about the
sounds (how beautiful it was!!) but what is not fine is to actually make music
with them. The placement and the use of them for sure are going to be different
to the ones that Eddie gives, it is then when Eddie exposes his love for form
and his fetish for his own sounds. His ego trip about the music, not everybody
can do this music if you do not have your sounds; you are not allowed to borrow
in EddieÕs improvisational ethos. I am not really sure if Eddie has heard about
open sources but then he really is missing a way in which information be
treated. As he said, with
technology things get more mediated and we have two choices here; we take the
most out it, or we can do like John Zerzan: believe in primitivism (and if
before language the better). But Eddie is not really making a decision that
matches his original approach: full of self-invention. Which as Radu suggested
actually should be self-inventions (and not be so profoundly frozen by the
first one.)
Again another problem: his beautiful wine barrel, which he uses very
interestingly, but there is an aspect of this which again shows his fear of
attention to the context, the little motor which rotates a piece of plastic
which hits the barrel. The motor
might be wound by him but obviously its hitting is not done by him, is this as
far is his understanding of the changes of time can go?
Bibliography
Adorno, Theodor. Prisms. MIT Press, Cambridge 1990.
Agamben, Giorgio.
Etat dÕexception. Seuil, Paris 2002.
Agamben, Giorgio. Means without End. University of Minnesota
Press, Mineapolis 1996.
Agamben, Giorgio. The Coming Community. University of Minnesota
Press, Mineapolis 1993.
Agamben, Giorgio. The Man without Content. Stanford University Press,
California 1999.
Attali Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. University of Minnesota Press,
Mineapolis 1999.
Balibar, Etienne. Spinoza and Politics. Verso, London 1998.
Bailey, Derek. Improvisation : Its Nature
& Practice In Music,
Da Capo Press 1993.
Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An essay on the understanding of
evil. Verso. New York. 2000.
Bonefeld, Werner (ed.) Revolutionary Writing: Common
Sense Essayss In Post-Political Essays. Autonomedia, New York 2003.
Cage, John. Silence. Calder
Boyars, London 1968
Cardew, Cornelius. Treatise Handbook. Hinrichsen Edition, London
1971
Cardew, Cornelius. Stockhausen serves Imperialism. Latimer New Dimensions,
London 1974.
Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. City Lights Books, San
Francisco 1988.
Negri, Tony. The
Savage Anomaly. University
of Minnesota Press, Mineapolis 1991.
PrŽvost, Edwin. No Sound is Innocent. Copula Press, Essex 1995.
PrŽvost, Edwin. Free
as Air: On sampling in Mute 23, March
2003.
Sakolsky, Ron
(ed.) Sounding off ! Music as
Subversion/Resistance/Revolution. Autonomedia/Semiotext(e), New York
1995
Slater, Howard. Stammer Language: Some thoughts on
improvisation prompted by
Eddie Prevost: No Sound Is Innocent. Available at http://daisy.metamute.com/~simon/mfiles/mcontent/impro_v.html
Spinoza, Baruch. SpinozaÕs Ethics and On the Correction of the
Understanding. J.M. Dent
& Sons, London 1956
Watson, Ben. Free Improvisation Actuality in Mute 19, April 2001.
Web sites:
www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/
interviews/malfatti.htm
Interview with Radu Malfatti
http://www.web.fm/
Website of
farmersmanual
http://www.matchlessrecordings.com/
Eddie PrŽvostÕs
record labelÕs website
[1] In fact the first AMM ÒAMMMusic was released by the big label Elektra.
[2] Plato. Republic Book IV
[3] Cornelious Cardew. Stockhausen Serves Imperialism.. P.8
[4] A couple of years ago there was
a memorial for Cardew (he was run
over by a car in 1979.) at the Conway Hall in Holborn. AMM played alongside the
revolutionary popular songwriters. It was surprising to me that while AMM got
from the audience an average response, the popular songs produced so much
euphoria (here I perhaps should motioned that I was probably the youngest
person in the space and may people were close to half of a century old). For me
the popular songs sounded so dated and stank of nostalgia while AMM somehow
retained some contemporaneity.
[5] PrŽvost, Eddie. No Sound Is Innocent, p.103
[6] Badiou , Alain. Ethics, An Essay on the
Understanding of evil. P.23
[7] PrŽvost, Eddie. No Sound is Innocent. P.115.
[8] Bailey, Derek. Improvisation. P. 111.
[9] PrŽvost Eddie. No Sound is Innocent. P. 9
[10] Slater, Howard. Stammer Language. Available at:
http://daisy.metamute.com/~simon/mfiles/mcontent/impro_v.html
[11] Bruce Russell, Free Noise Manifesto. Available at: http://www.corpushermeticum.com
[12] Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics. p.116
[13] Agamben,
Giorgio, Etat dÕexception.
P.103.
[14] Deleuze, Gilles. Practical Philosophy. P. 119
[15] Balibar, Ettienne. Espinoza and Politics. P. 96
[16] Agamben,
Giorgio. Means without Ends. P.116.
[17] Ibid. P.115.
[18] Ibid. p.70
[19] Hiaz, on a
talk Ò see with your ears and listen with your eyes, on a sounds
workshop held at the center for contemporary art (cca) Kitakyushu ( japan). 29th
July Ð August 3th 2002. Published
on Substantials. CCA. Japan. 2003