after seeing the awful olafur eliasson show at MoMA last spring, i wrote a paragraph for the conclusion of my dissertation, which is about spectacle and the museum. now that i'm waist-deep writing the introduction and first chapter, anticipating the conclusion seems completely laughable. still, here are a couple of sentences from it:
. . . This model of metaphysics and transcendental experience extends into the present, at a time when an artist such as Olafur Eliasson can turn the museum into a theme park. All of the hallmarks of the carnival abound in Eliasson’s work: the trompes l’oeil of the funhouse; the disorientation caused by the sensory overload of the myriad lights, noises, and crowds; the fabrication of phenomenological experiences by manipulating the senses. . . .
this was all before those waterfalls, which i could have seen several times, but which i figured weren't worth my time. what follows, however, leaves me in awe and speechless (much like what mieke bal calls "the ungraspable voice of the museum" in double exposures).
10/27/08
WE'RE THE BOYS, WE'RE THE BOYS IN THE BAND
about a year ago, i went off on kevin barnes. i'm not going to rehash that here, so click on the link if you want to see it.
so there was an interview with kevin in pitchfork last week:
Pitchfork: Are you still enjoying working completely on your own, apart from the Elephant 6 Collective? Are there any aspects of like a more collaborative style that you find that you miss?
KB: Let's just say that there's this perception of the Elephant 6 manifesto, or whatever.... You know, it's not like Jeff Mangum would ever in a million years discourage me from exploring different forms of music. It was just in my mind at that time. I had just kind of created restrictions for myself, like, it's only real if it's recorded on a tape or if there's analog or something, and we gotta do everything in an organic way. I thought that somehow that was legitimate. But then I realized that was very close-minded of me, and that there are so many awesome tools out there for you to use creatively, and there's no reason to stick yourself and say, "Okay, I am only going to do it like this." You become sort of a self-fascist in a way. But, um... I can't really remember the question.
thing is, kevin barnes is an idiot who likes to shoots his mouth off. sure, he made one of my favourite pop albums of all time roughly ten years ago — one i consider better than anything else in the elephant 6 canon, including such classics as the apples in stereo's fun trick noisemaker,the olivia tremor control's dusk at cubist castle, and neutral milk hotel's in the aeroplane, over the sea — but he's an idiot. i don't begrudge him for the turn his music took when of montreal released satanic panic in the attic, and i certainly don't hold him to the 4 track ethos of the elephant 6, but i would rather he not refer to that period of montreal, when he did his most vital work, as "self-fascist," if only because it completely discounts the enormous role the 4 track played as an emancipatory mechanism for d.i.y. music-making in the 90s. it turns the 4 track revolution, one i still dearly believe in, into an albini-esque search for purity.
i bring this all up because i saw the elephant 6 collective on their "holiday surprise" tour two weekends ago. some parts were very good, especially when all the former members and associates of the olivia tremor control played old otc songs and fully realised the dense orchestral noise that is only hinted at on the CDs, or when scott spillane and julian koster performed "the fool" and all the jeff magnum fanboys stopped breathing. but something rang foul about this democratic collective, of which fifteen-odd members participated in this tour and of which most of those fifteen got a chance to showcase his own songs. that's right: his. almost everyone got to sing his songs: will cullen hart, the bill doss, peter ehrick, scott spillane, julian koster, the guy from elf power, a bunch of guys i've never heard of before. almost all... except for the women (and, also noticeably, the only non-white member travelling with E6, john fernandes).
i don't know, it just made me reflect on the dude-centered hierarchy of most music scenes. the athens, georgia pop scene, over which the elephant 6 collective still seems to reign, if mostly symbolically these days, is a particularly egregious offender in what most music scenes do, which is glorify the exceptional individual. the cult of "certified reclusive genius artist" jeff magnum, is the most obvious example, as evidenced by all of pitchfork's jeff magnum sightings news articles. and E6 patriarch will cullen hart is like a god to these people. then there's kevin barnes and julian koster, who is the keith richards to kevin barnes's mick jagger, if you know what i mean. and there are others, some of whose names have already been listed above. but even though most E6 records have women play on them, none of those women are ever accorded the same kind of cult status, nor the platform to attain it, save for the very small number of apples in stereo songs on which hilarie sidney sings. from what i saw, the role of women in E6 seems to be the traditional role of women in all patriarchal societies: a supporting role in which women do all the unnoticed work to enable the truly exceptional individuals to do their more important, exceptional work. this fact doesn't discredit the communitarian ethic that i accused kevin barnes of forgetting about, but it sure does colour it, doesn't it?
but the dude-centeredness is actually just the symptom here. the underlying prevalence of the glorification of exceptional individuals (and their outrageous personalities) was on display in an especially sickening way when i saw E6, but it certainly also pervades scenes where the division of labour doesn't follow from a division of the sexes. this tendency really goes against the anti-hierarchical communitarian ethic of what i understand punk rock to be about. there was one point when scott spillane was singing a song by himself and everyone else in the collective, dudes and ladies, came on the stage to sing along. it was a really nice moment, and it reminded me of this one great dear nora show in portland several years after katy had moved to the bay. all the former members from the portland era of dear nora got on the stage to sing the old songs with her. only this time, it was kind of a sad moment of realisation for me.
10/24/08
LIBERAL ELITE TO SWING VOTERS: FUCK YOU, BRAINDEAD HICKS
I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?
he went on to tell a condescending story about his mother during the 1968 election that portrays undecided voters as ignorant and politically and culturally unaware.
so yes, a slow clap for the liberal doxa. belittling the very people whose opinions you're trying to impress upon and attempting to bully them into thinking the way you want them to think is very mature and constructive. i'm sure that this, and all the belittling and mockery of the non-bourgeois liberal elites from metropolises by all the john stewarts, al frankens, "humorists," and everyone else on tv and NPR and salon.com is really going to get them to vote for obama instead of resenting the "cultured" half of this country and digging in their heels with sarah palin and the others who pander to them.
apparently, horst mahler, founding member of the red army faction (a.k.a. the baader-meinhof gang) and one of two founding members to have survived the group's imprisonment at stammheim prison, is standing trial for denying the holocaust on the internet. for more details about mahler's life in politics and his runs in with the law (including the current one) since his RAF days in the 70s, see this article.
in an article soon to be published in a book called resounding pasts: essays on music, literature, and cultural memory, i wrote that the red army faction's "rhetorical comparison of the Federal Republic to the Third Reich played an
enormous role in the vilification of the group in the West German imagination, not to mention the great
lengths and draconian measures the state took to suppress the group’s activities and to imprison its
members."
i am probably writing this out of ignorance of what germans know well. according to wikipedia:
Mahler penned a manifesto in prison. The rest of the Baader-Meinhof Group, however, resoundingly rejected his manifesto, effectively expelling him from the group. Then, in 1975, the Movement 2 June took Peter Lorenz hostage and demanded, among others, that Mahler be freed from prison. Mahler was offered his freedom, but refused.
In 1980 Mahler was freed from prison after serving 10 years of his 14-year sentence, largely due to the efforts of his lawyer, Gerhard Schröder (who would later become chancellor). He was granted permission to practice law again in Germany in 1988, again with the help of Schröder.
but, ignorance and the little i've learned this morning be damned, the question must be begged: is this for real? because my first response to all this was to question whether germany was still waging ideological warfare with the red army faction, as it did in the 70s, whether the state was taking ironic and legitimately subversive statements literally and then throwing the book. that's probably not the case, given mahler's history with the allegedly neo-nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, but i wouldn't have been surprised if it were.
