<b>"THE MALADY OF WRITING. Modernism You Can Dance To", a podcast by Kenneth Goldsmith</b><br><br>Link: <a href="http://bit.ly/evpby0" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/evpby0</a><br>Related info: <a href="http://bit.ly/aW3935" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/aW3935</a> <br>
MP3: <a href="http://bit.ly/bYieIX%20" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/bYieIX </a><br>Transcript: <a href="http://bit.ly/feGu9k" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/feGu9k</a><br><br><b>Summary</b><br>Mark
Klienberg's proposition: "Could there be someone capable of writing a
science-fiction thriller based on the intention of presenting an
alternative interpretation of modernist art that is readable and
appreciated by the wider public?" has actually been answered
affirmatively in a certain undercurrent of artist's audio production
over the past century; let's call it an unofficial unofficial history of
modernism (doubly unofficial since artist's audio production has been
viewed as secondary to the their plastic / marketable production). Who
knew, for example, that Jean Dubuffet released several albums of musique
concrete? Or that Alfred Jarry wrote and performed bawdy drinking
songs? Or that Salvador Dalν recorded an homage to money that was used
as an advertisement for a commercial bank? Or that Joseph Beuys fronted a
New Wave band and belted out pop songs against nuclear power? All of
these artifacts are remarkably easy to love: the problem is that the
general public never knew about them.<br>
<br>I'd like to propose an audio companion to [url]The Malady of Writing
t[/url]hat actualizes Klienberg's proposition in sound; one that
presents a pleasurable, humorous and fun version of modernism: call it
"modernism you can dance to." But this is serious business. If we can
seize upon the notion of guilty pleasures in midst of modernism a
place which disdained such gestures we may be able to unfurl a secret
thread which may help to shed a new light on contemporary gestures.
Somehow, if we understand how The Beatles detourned Stockhausen's tape
music into "Revolution No. 9," we might be get a glimpse into what Sue
Tompkins was thinking when she sings the chorus of The Beach Boys "God
Only Knows" again and again for ten minutes straight; or why Seth Price
would string together hours of New Jack Swing a genre of music so
unloved that it's practically been written out of the history books.
Guilty pleasures, reclamation, resurrection and recontextualization are
key to understanding these phenomena. But why now? One of the first
things that struck me about Napster was how impure (read: eclectic)
people's tastes were. Whilst browsing another user's files, I was
stunned to find John Cage MP3s snuggled up next to, say, Mariah Carey
files in the same directory. Everyone has guilty pleasures, however,
never before have they been so exposed and celebrated.<br>
<br>Impurity and guilty pleasures, as viewed through the lens of the
historic avant-garde: If there's one thing that recent revisionist
history has done, it's been to bring historically marginalized figures
into front and center. One of the best examples of this might be the
resurrected reputation of filmmaker Jack Smith, who, upon his death in
1989, was deemed "eccentric," "queer," and "frivolous." Today, of
course, Smith occupies a central position in the cultural discourse on
so many levels. It's this sort of transmigration I'm interested in: work
that challenges its received histories and genres, and by doing so,
speaks directly to our sense of the present, ruled by the constructive
chaos of decentralized horizontal media, as well as the celebration of
notions like "incorrectness" and "uncreativity," the rise of the
"outsider", the canonization of the underdog.<br>
<br>And humor. And narrative. Remember that Gertrude Stein, for all her
kudos went and continues to go pretty much unread. Her high
modernist writing is great to talk about but nearly impossible to read.
What made Gertrude Stein a household name? It wasn't her poetry. It was
her wildly readable memoir of her fascinating life, The Autobiography of
Alice B. Toklass. Had Stein not written pleasurably, today most of us
would never know who she is. There may be something to this after all...<br>
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