[-empyre-] fragile identities / taboo of destroying property

[Johannes Birringer]

dear soft_skinned listeners

thanks Magnus for expanding, i found it very helpful, and also wish to reflect, perhaps,
later on Menotti's responses, the current debate largely responding to Marie's posts
and her performance.  Before going on to discuss, may I ask whether some of you here
were involved in or have more information regarding some of the references (I am 
thinking of "Noise and Capitalism" - a publication I was not aware of until now) and
how you understand the a r t o . a r t i a n [musika txikien katalogoa / catálogo de musicas mínimas]

http://www.artoartian.org/?p=1141

project...... apparent re-released or published online in english (edited?, translated?) by Mattin and
Anthony Iles,   and as i tried to track and then  read this interesting manifesto, i saw a further reference
to this  (is is what Magnus also describes, a different even or same?)

>>
Noise & Capitalism: Funeral & Zombification at D.A.I.

January 4th, 2012 by mattin

‘Noise & Capitalism: Funeral & Zombification’
With Mattin and Anthony Iles

12 January, 20.00h
Dutch Art Institute
Kortestraat 27, Arnhem
20hours

This evening will inaugurate the first of a series of workshops that will reflect on and ‘dig the grave’ for Noise & Capitalism (2009) a publication edited by Mattin and Anthony Iles. More than two years after it’s publication, what is the relevance for the book’s attempt to understand the practices of noise and improvisation in relation to capitalism? So many world-changing events have taken place in the intervening years, how has capitalism and the struggles within it changed and how does this reorient us critically to the object of this book? The editors propose an open process of reflection for the publication in joined effort to rework, rethink and identify its problems. This process will be guided by a performance that will introduce the book content and pave the way for ‘collective study’ between the authors and the audience; a proposed collaborative exercise against the grain of self promotion often found in the ‘book launch’ form. Furthermore, this evening aims to blur the boundaries between ‘author’ and ‘audience’, to block the valorisation of either authoritative or distinguished subjectivities, and to experiment and put into question how we may invalidate such subjects’ accumulated ‘capital’ by releasing unquantifiable and non-exchangeable ‘product’.

Noise & Capitalism’ is a collection of essays by various musicians, academics, activists which reflects on the artist-audience binary, specifically how “noise,” “improvised” or “free” music offers resistance and tensions that may, at worst, provide instruments for capitalism but also, at best, point to modes of ‘subjectlessness’.>.


what is meant by Mattin and Iles when they speak of digging the grave for "Noise & Capitalism"?  
And, fascinating as it is, how did (Menotti's curating?) Marie's posts on noise shift our debate to sound performance (from initial focus on in/compatible research)?  What exactly is noise incompatible with, if it in fact is an everyday life experience for all of us continuously and perennially negotiated? And possibly analyzed by Henri Lefebvre in his "rhytmanalysis" as an elementary "rhythm" of and in our lives?  What then does noise resist, or how does it rupture particular medium specificity or particular reception situations in high or low or mass cultures and high or low academias  (how come one never talks about low academia?). 

This may all be obvious to you, and perhaps reading in starts and stops is not good on my part, in a durational debate where continuity (apart from contingencies that Marie validates in her writing) is perhaps of some importance, but I am really interested in whether claims (on behalf of noise in sonic arts/performance) of noise are here also claims on behalf of "sharing" and the participatory pathos in much contemporary art discussions (I see that the "Funeral and Zombification" event thinks that participatory noise or silence is also a tool to struggle against property and ownership/intellectual property?  

is noise then conflated with open source initiatives or "resistance"  (yes, Baruch, I sensed your impatience), aesthetic and political, which perhaps (if we remember the issues raised my Marc and others here, regarding research and scholarship and practices-as-research accreditations) links the noise in the system or authorization to unacceptable knowledge or badly written up ideas?   quite apart from the broken loudspeakers. 

with regards
Johannes Birringer
dap-lab

PS  "Noise and Capitalism" proposes that improvisation and noise contain or can produce emancipatory moments ...   these practices point towards social relations which can extend these moments.
It might be good to talk further about these social relations and what is meant by them,  and also define more closely in what sense improvisation emancipates. From what? from order or adhered structure, from
rules, and precise choreographies?  


- - - -

Magnus schreibt:
>>
> In response to Marie, Magnus mentions that he felt "lucky to participate
> in a performance 'going fragile', involving Mattin and other contributors
> to Noise and Capitalism. This was part of Arika's 'Kill Your Timid Notion'
> festival in Dundee in February 2010. It seemed as if people ('audience')
> couldn't bear the silence and the absolutely (radically) open structure of
> this collaboration. The performace and the notion of 'going fragile' made
> a real impression on me."  This was picked up by others, but i am not so
> sure (Cage's 4':33"  and his ideas on silence go back to the 50s) what
> surprised audiences, what made anything un-bearable, or why an open
> structure (an indeterminate structure?) would be considered radical?

To explain the performance......
..[clip]
hope it is clear from what I've described that a drama unfolded, through a
kind of direct improvisation (just dealing with the immediate moment,
without much expectation or intent) and from this point the public really
entered the frame and were faced with some options, for example to accept
the premise of the performance or retain a critical detachment, to speak
up or remain silent, to recognize the choice before them to become an
actor and director and to do something about that, or to not respond. What
I observed and heard after the performance had ended, was that some people
felt very challenged by this situation - intimidated or offended, bemused
or wondering, overwhelmed or affirmed, as well as having many
contradictory thoughts and emotions.
>>