Process Festival, Berlin, March 19-20., 2010
The Festival seeks to highlight new and compelling work in the field of generative or process music – focusing on sound pieces which are inspired by or emulate algorithms, biology, or other defined systems.
Erik Steinskog
“Nearer My God To Thee”
Liminal Bodies in Mark Romanek’s “Closer” and “Hurt”
This paper will discuss two music videos directed by Mark Romanek: “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails (1994) and “Hurt” by Johnny Cash (2002). The fact that Cash’s “Hurt” is a cover of a Nine Inch Nails song contributes a musical point of comparison, but it is primarily the visual dimensions I want to focus upon.
The two videos are, at least at first sight, very different. “Closer” contains strong imagery highlighting transgressions and with more than hints of sado-masochism. “Hurt” on the other hand is seemingly calm, with film from Cash’s home, but simultaneously highlights human fragility. Both videos focus on the body, as carnality and as flesh, and these bodies are displayed in both active and passive states. Discussing these bodies as liminal, as being positioned at different thresholds – between human begins and its others (insects, animals), between life and death – points to an almost baroque sensibility of allegories related to transgressions as well as memento mori.
The paper will try to unfold these allegorical installations of liminality employing theoretical literature related to the baroque (Mario Perniola, The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic; Walter Benjamin, Origin of the German Trauerspiel), discussions of the body (Steven Shaviro’s The Cinematic Body), mortality (Catherine Russell, Narrative Mortality), theology (Graham Ward, Cities of God; Roland Boer, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door) and animality (Giorgio Agamben, The Open).
Kristine Samson
Critical Potential and Aesthetic Innovation – with or without criteria?
WARNING: Do not to seperate the dancer from the dance!
The paper will present some thoughts on Critical potentials and Aesthetic innovation in relation to Whiteheads process philosophy.
It will raise the question whether the term “critique” is adequate in correlation to aesthetical theories, if we – at the same time – accept a Deleuzian notion of a ‘becoming’ or Whiteheads ideas of processes in reality.
If we, by other words, claim that we – as researchers, artists, academics, film directors, human beings or things (anything goes) belong to these processes in reality, why then distinguish ‘ourselves’ critically as Dancers from the Dance?
The paper will be a work in progress in my ongoing development of new performative methods in research, aesthetics and urban planning.
Lars Ylander
Attraction and Repulsion in the Universe of a City Monkey
The album ”Stadtaffe” (city monkey) by the German artist Peter Fox appeared in October 2008. It turned out to include three top-10 hits. The music style may best be described as hiphop-dancehall-pop with an abundancy of acoustic violin riffs. The lyrics are generally inspiring – be that in a reflective sense of the word where the singer e.g. in the song ”Schwarz zu blau” (black to blue) describes a walk from dusk till dawn through his city, Berlin-Kreuzberg, or be that in a sense of the word where less intellectual appeals to ”shake your booty” has proven support on Youtube from an audience who likes to do just that.
The music videos may equally be said to have varying artistic standards in and by themselves. But from a come-together of visual symbolisms, of sometimes poetic, sometimes hard, repulsive lyrics, of well-produced music and rhythms, of the identity of the performing singer and the moves of the people, musicians and other beasts who are with him, a complex sort of art-pop universe emerges. This universe has a certain attraction, that I will try to give a thought.
Linda Gedina
Analysis of the structure of the music video as an experimental provocation
I will discuss the format of music video as contemporary canvas of pixels (see NIN video Only, directed by David Fincher) where digital painters make their paintings.
Respectively I will analyze the perplexed symbolical structure of a music video.
Mostly the symbolical structure of a music video is the same as the one of its technical genesis – bricolage. The model of such symbolical structure could be Matryoshka dolls or mise-en-abyme.
My point is: video changes references of its images to non-mimetic in distroing direct meaning as well as direct reference to the song and usual cultural codes with a help of different kind of more or less extreme, shocking or unusual effects (artistic or the one of provocative social meaning or aspects, for example, invisible skateboards of Spike Jonze, watch „Holiday (So High)” of Alexander Perls) and short narrational time where the connotative frame of references is an artist song.
What music video of auters are often showing is anatomy of making video and mediated reality of social environment as well. In this sense music videos are as political as Godard`s films, for example, are.
The main concepts of my analysis are experiment and provocation. A video is self-reflexive and analytical per definitio as a kind of art
II Foreseen Expose
Inner structure and Reference
I see specification of video based of its temporal shortness – its makes summarise the messages and use different kind of tools of metaphorisation, overlapping and building (I use this spatial metaphor on purpose) several levels of meaning one on other (Michel Gondry Lego-Steine video for White Stripes ). There connection between levels is free and symbolical as well as the frame of reference could be. Video uses signs, makes appearance become sign and has its own message. And mostly all videos have a conceptualy distinct end. Auteures videos are highly conceptualised and self-referential. In the videos there is a possibility to work out one tool, one aspect and so they can be the very experimental ones. Music video must not have direct mimetic reference to the text of the song.
Making connections with theories of reference there is difference between direct and indirect, e.g. symbolical reference. The language of video is symbolical, references – indirect and the „speech act” of narration – performative.
Context: contemporary world criticism and context of art
With reference to movies I think video could be seen as interior critic of film-making and place for experiments – deconstructive as well as intense extracting of hypokeimenon of reality of film as well as mediative „constructed” world – Mitwelt of consume and attraction, and violence. Critics encounters skar its tools, strategies and point aimed at of references.
Historically, dada and formalisten have destroyed word, or sentences. Godar was in deonstracting ideological signs and established meanings, e.g., by putting on show the inner structure of the making of film, or video, or reality, e.g. some aspects of reality. In this sense music videos are political in meaning of decostructing established forms of appearance and images.
The use of the film in film or film about making film is the old and well known tool of filmmakers as well as writers of making a macro-structure or object of work appear in a micro-structure, or painters painting themselves in a picture and so changing the perspective of author.
In my paper I will pay attention to some music video which are showing kitchen of making mediated reality. I think one of the best examples could be the film of music video auteur Michel Gondry The Science of Sleep (2006).
Mads Nygaard Folkmann
Designing symbolic meaning: Aesthetic strategies in Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime (1981)
Talking Heads’s seminal music video Once in a Lifetime (1981; directors: Toni Basil & David Byrne) combines the aesthetics of popular culture with avantgarde art performance techniques in a search for an adequate expression of its content of expressing an existential wake-up. In the video, the anguish of the singer/protagonist is expressed that ”you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile / You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife / You may ask yourself: well… how did I get here?” The argument on the level of content, that modern man can be caught in an existential bewilderment, is supported by a metaphorics of ”water flowing underground”, designating unconscious and uncontrollable driwing forces.
On the level of visual representation there can, however, be raised a series of design related questions. The video demonstrates, that modern life is a life of consumerism where material objects (automobile, house, beautiful wife (!)) are connected with a disproportionate high symbolic meaning. The paper will discuss how the video Once in a Lifetime as a visual expression employs this kind of symbolic representation and in doing this creates its specific aesthetics: How does the video, so to speak, design symbolic meaning? What kind of aesthetic strategies does it use?
The paper will lead its discussion through applying different models of symbolism on the video.
1. Symbolic meaning in a cultural context: Within consumer theories, the symbolic is seen as meaning operating within culture, where designed objects and other material artefacts play the role of pointing to or containing symbolic meaning. In culturally oriented consumer research, the objects of consumption are seen as vehicles in the function of articulating and creating meaning and identities among consumers. This is very much the case for the video: Through objects of consumption, the protagonist is entangled in cultural, symbolic meaning.
2. Symbolism as epistemology: The philosopher Ernst Cassirer developed a theory of symbolic forms where the symbolic is given the function of being a general schemata for man’s apprehension and being in the world. The symbolic forms of ‘images’ and ‘signs’ have the function of mediating between the “things” and a larger totality of the “spirit”, that Cassirer aims at. Cassirer claims that we understand through the symbolic forms that are human creations but at the same time frame human cognition. This can prove productive for a theory of design as symbolically signifying objects: Seen as expressions of symbolic forms, design objects fundamentally contribute to the shaping not only of the world, but they also give feedback to our understanding and perception of the world. In the context of the Talking Heads video, I will discuss how it creates symbolic objects as symbolic forms and itself in its creation of meaning functions as a symbolic form.
3. Symbolism as aesthetic schematism: Going one step behind Cassirer, Kant in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft proposes schemata as on the one hand results of the imagination and on the other hand as translating between the sensual material and the concepts. I will suggest that this notion can be ’aesthetizied’ in order to look at how the Talking Heads video creates an aesthetic, schematic representation that oscillates between the concrete, sensual appearances and the abstract concepts in order to question what concepts in the video are and how they are visually ’symbolized’ in the medium of the video.
Mathias Bonde Korsgaard
Beyond Television: Contemporary Music Video
Today, music videos flourish in many different media environments. They come to us through an array of different delivery technologies, ranging from television to DVDs, and from portable media players to streaming services on the internet such as YouTube, Vimeo and MySpace to name but a few. In this way, music videos have moved way beyond television, so that they now inhabit many other media sites.
In its partial relocation from television to the internet, the music video has undergone a series of transformations. It has tried to adapt itself to the new premises of the digital media landscape on more than one level, and this has led to changes in both the form and aesthetics of music video and in the ways that music videos are produced, distributed and consumed. In this sense, the medium of music video has responded to processes of both convergence (Jenkins 2006) and remediation (Bolter & Grusin 2000).
In this paper, I seek to examine exactly these processes of convergence and remediation that surround music video today. In addition to this, I undertake an exploration of the new types of music video that have emerged in the form’s encounter with the internet and the new digital technologies. Through its translocation to the internet, music video has experienced a veritable renaissance, partially because the technological restraints of the streaming services have made it difficult to stream feature length films, thus generating a need for short format films.
As a consequence of this process, music video has been revitalized and new types of music video that feature some of the traits of digital media have surfaced. While the audiovisual language of many of the present-day music videos still shares many traits with the music video language as it has developed through the decades, many of these new music videos differ from earlier kinds of music video in that they incorporate aesthetic strategies associated with digital media. Examples of this include the use of database structures (for instance Deerhoof: “My Purple Past”), digital image manipulation (for instance Chairlift: “Evident Utensil”), and interactivity (for instance Arcade Fire: “Black Mirror”).
Since its birth as a medium, music video has been able to create unique audiovisual configurations of music and images that in part has shaped some of the ways in which we conceive of audiovisuality in general today. Having always provided ample room for audiovisual experimentation, it has often anticipated stylistic developments within cinema and popular music. Correspondingly, music video has been one of the filmic forms to most eagerly explore the possibilities of digital cinema. In recent years, music video has thus served as a place for experimenting with different kinds of digital imagery, contributing greatly to the development of the language of digital cinema. This has led Lev Manovich to describe music video as “a living and constantly expanding text-book for digital cinema” (Manovich 2001:311).
With interactive videos by MGMT and Cold War Kids (“Electric Feel” and “I’ve Seen Enough”) as my examples, I aim to interrogate the layering of multiple and mutable images and sounds. The aforementioned Lev Manovich proposes that the constant changing of images (and sounds, I would add) is a key component of contemporary (audio)visual culture (see Manovich 2007). Furthermore, in my paper I investigate the way in which such interactive videos encourage the user’s active participation, thus obscuring the traditional opposition between producers and users. In this way, the interactive music videos inscribe themselves into what Jenkins has termed ‘participatory culture’ (Jenkins 2006:3), alongside other relatively new types of music video, for instance fan videos, various remix and mash-up formats (for instance ThruYou by Kutiman), and videos that consist of ‘user-generated content’ (for instance Carpark North: “Save Me From Myself”).
Literature:
Bolter, Jay David & Grusin, Richard: Remediation, Cambridge & London: The MIT Press 2000
Jenkins, Henry: Convergence Culture, New York & London: New York University Press 2006
Manovich, Lev: The Language of New Media, Cambridge & London: The MIT Press 2001
Manovich, Lev: “Understanding Hybrid Media”, 2007 (through manovich.net)
Videos:
Arcade Fire: “Black Mirror”, dir.: Olivier Groulx & Tracy Maurice (rorrimkcalb.com)
Carpark North: “Save Me From Myself”, dir.: Lau Højen (carparknorth.dk/#musicvideos)
Chairlift: “Evident Utensil”, dir.: Ray Tintori, 2009 (vimeo.com/3139412)
Cold War Kids: “I’ve Seen Enough”, dir.: Sam Jones, 2009 (coldwarkids.com/iveseenenough)
Deerhoof: “My Purple Past”, dir.: Asha Schechter, 2009 (youtube.com/watch?v=6lt4nsoIo9g)
Kutiman: “ThruYou 01: Mother of All Funk Chords”, dir.: Kutiman, 2009 (thru-you.com)
MGMT: “Electric Feel”, dir.: Ray Tintori, 2008 (whoismgmt.com/efvideo)
Tau Ulv Lenskjold
This proposal explores Music videos on Youtube as malleable social objects through which critical discourses pertaining to larger themes of controversy can unfold.
The success of Youtube and social network services like Myspace and Facebook, has mostly been associated with their capacities of facilitating social relationships among people who share interests or activities. To counter this popular understanding, in which the ‘networks’ consists of representations of the users and the ‘social‘ basically means (a lot of) people – an alternative approach to social networks could instead emphasis the importance of the objects or media artefacts that mediates ties between people. The view follows what sociologist Karin Knorr Cetina has called ‘sociality with objects’, and others ‘object centred sociality’.
According to the network-centric understanding amateur music videos on Youtube are often seen as expressions of individuality by the performer or producer of the video (usually the same person). The ‘me-centric’ perspective is further enforced by the possibilities of making and subscribing to channels, and self evident in Youtube’s corporate slogan “Broardcast Yourself”.
However, by shifting focus and examining amateur videos as social objects in an object-centred environment, I want to explore how amateur videos can function as critical objects that assemble and translate ideology and discourses. An object oriented sociality also brings into question the role and agency of the people involved with creating, sharing, selecting and commenting on the videos. How do they affect and in turn become affected by the videos? And in what ways do different music videos related to the same subject matter correspond and interact, and thus expand the critical discourse?
Thure Munkholm
Psyched up on 16mm
Ofte underkendt som det egentlige arnested for musikvideoen er slut-50’erne og især start 60’ernes scopitones: Illustrerede musiknumre optaget på 16mm-film, som kunne ses på små skærme i helt særlige jukeboxes. Fra France Gall og Gainsbourg til Procul Harum er flere af tidens store popnavne foreviget på disse strimler, men også talrige andre og ofte langt mere obskure navne brugte scopitones i kampen for at få slået deres navn fast. I dette paper vil jeg kort opridste scopitone-filmenes kulørte historie – for efterfølgende at undersøge den som en (musikvideo)æstetik in the making. Uden egentlige forgængere opfinder scopitone-filmens (i langt de fleste tilfælde) ukendte instruktører et særegent æstetisk univers, der skal illustrere det pågældende numre, og som jeg ønsker at placere i krydsfeltet mellem surrealisme og popkultur.
Troels Degn Johansson
Laid-Back Avant-Garde: Lars von Trier’s “Bakerman”
This paper seeks to discuss in serious terms a statement made in the late 1980ies by Danish film director Lars von Trier—that Danish pop-duo Laid Back for him, at the time, should be considered a prominent example of contemporary avant-garde art. At the time, von Triers’ statement was deliberately controversial. Whereas Laid Back has been one of the largest commercial successes of the Danish music industry due to the success of a handful of pop hits (in Germany, mainly), the duo has never been recognized for its artistic contribution. A few years after his public statement, von Trier directed the official music video for Laid Back’s Bakerman single, where the duo and a backing group dressed up as bakers is seen performing while skydiving. Rather than approaching this video as an illustration of the song, the paper suggests that the Bakerman video should be seen as the result of a curatorial act where Lars von Trier seeks to elaborate on his particular fondness of the values that this pop duo seems to represent for him; simplicity, popularity (in Danish “folkelighed”), and irony. In this sense, by promoting the Laid Back single by means of a music video, von Trier’s contribution leads us rather to develop our understanding of–von Trier; apparently not of Laid Back. The paper thus seeks to approach von Trier as a conceptual artist with a special interest in the notion of developing society (the avant-garde position) and being a popular figure (“folkelig”, appreciated by the people) at the same time; an interest which historically both evokes ideas of pop music and pop culture, the role of the artist in a national, social-democratic context, and the role of the avant-garde artist after the completion of such projects as situationism and the American neo-avant-garde. In this manner, the paper finally seeks to discuss Lars von Trier’s contribution to the current debate on the status of the avant-garde. Should the avant-garde qualify as such by being revolutionary or at least systemically subversive (Mikkel Bolt) or does it suffice to let laid back artists (or just bodies) undergo a free fall through the lower parts of the atmosphere. Supposedly, the length of the standard skydiving experience (the parachute part exclusive) could be compared with that of the standard pop song and thus with that of the music video. Could sky diving constitute a critical potential of the music video? References to other skydiving music videos (e.g. Boards of Canada) and to von Trier’s work (e.g. Element of Crime) will be discussed by means of a perspective.
The paper will draw on a collection of press material concerning von Triers life and work collected by the author until ca. the mid1990ies.
Claus Krogholm
Aesthetization of the Apolitical or Anesthetization of the Political – Laibach, Neue Slowenische Kunst and Music Video
In their 1983 manifesto 10 Items of the Covenant (Nova revija, No. 13/14), Laibach claims: “All art is subject to political manipulation (indirectly – consciousness; directly), except for that which speaks the language of this same manipulation.” Thus, it should be no surprise that Laibach manipulates materials such as: “Taylorism, bruitism, Nazi Kunst, disco…”. Nevertheless, there has often been confusion as to what Laibach is all about: fascism, totalitarianism, kitsch…
A substantial part of Laibach’s work is cover versions, adaptations or manipulations of pop and rock songs by artists such as Queen, Rolling Stones, Europe – and even the entire Beatles album Let it Be (sans the title track). “LAIBACH excludes any evolution of the original idea; the original concept is not evolutionary but entelechical, and the presentation is only a link between this static and the changing determinant unit.” When it comes to music video the strategy is not so much manipulations of specific videos, but more the language and iconography of music video as such; or, perhaps rather a strategy to actualize tendencies and potentialities inherent in the visual language of music video.
This paper examines this strategy as an attempt to conflate the totalitarian with the popular, völkisch with kitsch – and the political with the aesthetic in the larger context of Neue Slowenische Kunst.
Steven Shaviro:
POST-CINEMATIC ARTICULATIONS OF SOUND AND VISION
The Music Video: Critical Potential and Aesthetic Innovation
DEAD LINE EXTENDED TO DECEMBER 10th.
3rd Winter Symposium of the Nordic Summer University’s aesthetics studies circle, Process, Design, and Aesthetics.
The Danish Design School, Copenhagen, March 26th-28th, 2010
The modern music video has undoubtedly been very important for the development of pop-culture and of popular music since the emergence of the MTV television channel in the early eighties. At least, the modern music video has been crucial for some of the most dominant and innovative stars of popular music since then—from Madonna and Michael Jackson to Grace Jones and David Bowie whose careers all intertwine with important steps in the development of the music video.
Nevertheless, the scholarly informed critique of popular music and visual media has found it difficult to take music video seriously as a genre or indeed as an “art form.” Whereas “true” music aficionados (the rock critic, the performing artist, etc.) have seen the music video as an unfortunate diversion of the “pure” musical expression, film directors and their audiences have in turn bemoaned the music video as a degeneration of the feature film as the ultimate form of (narrative) cinema. And the world of fine art has looked down on the music video as a mere illustration of another artist’s work, or even worse, as a simple advertisement where the artist’s will is tied up with commercial interests. The music video thus seems to have been met with distrust—or even disgust—from traditional critique. Coinciding with the emergence of the discourse of post-modernity, it was easy for the philosophically informed critique in the beginning simply to reject the music video as a symptom of a culture that has been corrupted by capitalistic systems of production and, consequently, of regressive systems of representation (simulation). Finding it difficult to assert any real value or meaning in the music video, this genre could at least be celebrated as a nihilistic contribution—but as well, of course, studied critically as an increasingly dominant cultural system of representation involving an alienated consumer subject (Kaplan 1987, Kinder 1984). When not discredited, the music video was celebrated as the epitome of the emergent post-modernist aesthetic. The music video has been recognized – sometimes with regret – as the driving force behind a new aesthetic that has come to dominate cinema, TV and other visual media – and aesthetic practices in general. Whereas the 20th century in some respects can be described as cinematic, perhaps we are now witnessing a new post-cinematic aesthetic.
So, although the music video now has been a central stage for the development of audiovisual culture as well as of new technological and stylistic means of cinematic expression for almost three decades, critical literature on this genre is still limited. Most work so far seems to have been done within studies on popular (consumer) culture (Goodwin 1993, Kaplan 1987), audio-visual communication (Højbjerg 2008), and visual culture and subjectivity (Fausing, Kinder 1984). In the rearview mirror, it is regrettable that the early critique of the music video did not include voices from scholarly fields that might have been able to assert the cultural richness and depth of the music video, or at least would have been able to identify its importance and recognize the value of this genre to contemporary youth culture.
Especially, the music video calls for contributions from interdisciplinary cultural analysis where the music video could be studied in terms of the genre’s possible cultural complexity as well as its impact and innovation; in short: the possible critical potential of the music video. Do this genre and its dominant channels of distribution offer a platform for a critical artist subjectivity that is capable of challenging contemporary culture in an interesting, innovative way? Does the music-video in this sense form out an interesting alternative to traditional avant-garde strategies, or could actual music-videos themselves be seen as the expression of avant-garde positions?
Another voice which has been missing is that of interdisciplinary research into the communication design of the music video. Whereas the music video has long been problematic to students of cinema and fine art, designers and design students do, in turn, not seem to have had much reservation as for experimenting with and contributing to the development of this genre. The reasons for this are probably many, but one could mention the significant heritage of illustration within design education as well as the traditional, interdisciplinary thinking of designers; that this profession in many cases has been used to adapting to very different institutional contexts and very different media (from graphic design to craft and industrial design; from print to mass produced objects as well as crafted artifacts). In short, the critique of the music video is short of a voice of the doers (or at least of voices which are capable of talking about doing). Music videos thus relatively early developed into a medium of auteurs. In 1992, MTV thus began listing the director along with artist and song credits, and quite a few recognized film directors started their career as the directors of music videos, e.g. Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, David Fincher and Mark Romanek. And film directors on the other hand took a shot at the music video (David Lynch, Lars von Trier, Martin Scorsese and others).
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the critique of the modern music video needs to consider the meaning and value of those new ways of producing and distributing works that have lead the culture of the music video to flourish again. Whereas in the eighties, MTV and a few other, competing television channels (VIVA, MGM, etc) were the dominant networks for distributing music videos, Internet-based channels like Youtube and social media like Myspace and Facebook have brought about entirely new ways of sharing, selecting, enjoying, and reflecting on works of music video. Moreover, it has become much easier for amateurs, individual artists, as well as small, independent production companies to produce their own music videos due to easy access to inexpensive, digital video equipment. This is contrasted by the fact that music videos today play a relatively limited role compared to reality shows and documentaries in MTV’s transmissions. Moreover, whereas in the MTV days, the genre was dominated by very costly productions for artists like Michael Jackson and Madonna, the culture of the music video today thus seems more and more to be characterized by what the layman lover of music and video wish to share—that may be videos which are not necessarily new, and it may be videos which have been made by fans to interpret a favorite song.
The music video – and MTV – got a lot of attention in cultural- and critical studies during the 1980’s and 1990’s, but apparently a lot less here in the first decade of the 21st century. We would like to see a new departure for music video studies now that the music video has come of age. The research seminar circle, Process, Design and Aesthetics (2008-2010) thus calls for papers for a research symposium on the modern music video with special reference to its critical potentials as well as its potential to develop new form and facilitate new aesthetic positions. The symposium will be held at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen on March 26th-28th2010.It will be funded partially by the Nordic Council of Ministers by means of the Nordic Summer University (http://www.nsuweb.net/wb/). The call for papers is particularly orientated towards scholars who would like to take the opportunity to share and discuss their new ideas by means of a working paper. Presentations should be in English, should not exceed 30 minutes, and should be based on the analysis of one or more works of music video. Abstracts should not exceed more than 4000 characters and be submitted for review before December 1st, 2009 to Claus Krogholm (clauskrogholm@mail.dk)/Troels Degn Johansson (tdj@dkds.dk).
Please post your comments and suggestions for further reading below.
Literature
Beebe, Roger & Jason Middleton (2007) Medium Cool: Music Video from Soundies to Cellphones, Duke University Press
Frith, Simon, Andrew Goodwin & Lawrence Grossberg (1993) Sound & Vision. The music video reader London: Routledge
Goodwin, Andrew (1992) Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture University of Minnesota Press
Kaplan, E. Ann (1987) Rocking Around the Clock. Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture London & New York: Routledge
Kinder, Marsha (1984) “Music Video and the Spectator: Television, Ideology and Dream”, in Film Quaterly, vol. 38, no. 1, 1984
Movin, Lars & Morten Øberg (1990) Rockreklamer – om musikvideo, Amanda
Shaviro, Steven (2008): “Grace Jones, Corporate Cannibal“, The Pinocchio Theory (http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=653)
Strand, Joachim (2008) The Cineastic Montage of Music-video: Hearing the Image, Seeing the Sound, VDM
Vernallis, Carol (2004) Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context, Columbia University Press
Call for papers for Summer Session, Tyrefjord, Norway, July 19th – 26th, 2009
It has often been said that the computer, the world wide web and digitalization has revolutionized the way we access and use media and consequently the way we see ourselves and the world around us. Digitalization differs from all previous media revolutions, because all previous media are translatable to digital code. Whereas media used to differ in material expression – paper for print, the screen for TV – then digital media needs just one platform: the computer. Text, images, sound can all be produced and reproduced on the computer.
It has been predicted that digitalization and the computer would make all other media obsolete. However, we can observe today how this is not the case. Despite being declared dead with the emergence of the CD, records are still printed on vinyl – and in increasing numbers. Audiophiles prefer the analogue sound of vinyl to the digital sound of the CD or mp3. Some musicians insists on using old Moog synthesizers for authentic sound. And architects has substituted 3-D computer models for hand drawn sketches.
This could be interpreted as a revolt against the more or less complete computerization of everyday life. But, as Marshall McLuhan observed, new media does not so much make old media obsolete as they transform and reconfigures the way we perceive and use them. Not just does new technology change the social world around us, it changes our senses as well. And consequently: “When technology extends one of our senses, a new translation of culture occurs as swiftly as the new technology is interiorized.” (The Gutenberg Galaxy).
Going back to analogue should not be conceived as some kind of retro-movement. To use analogue media in a digital or post-analogue culture is not necessarily seeking refuge in the pre-digital. Despite the prefixes, the notions of pre-digital and post-analogue is not used to suggest any kind of chronology or temporal linearity. The analogue has been transformed, reconfigured or transfigured by the digital without necessarily becoming digital or post-analogue; and without by necessity remaining pre-digital.
We would like to suggest that it is a process of disjointed temporality and spatiality. Or, in the words of McLuhan: “What we are considering here, however, are the psychic and social consequences of the designs or patterns as they amplify or accelerate existing processes.” (Understanding Media). We call for papers that examines how this disjointed temporality and spatiality affects the aesthetic processes in art, film, literature, design, architecture, music and so on. This could be under the auspices of “the time is out of joint” (Shakespeare), “nostalgia for the present” (Fredric Jameson) or the “Ungleichzeitlichkeit des Gleichzeitigen” (Ernst Bloch) – or some other conception of time and space in contemporary aesthetics, be it theoretical, analytical or practical.
How does the use of analogue techniques, methods and media influence the aesthetics of art, design and architecture in a digital age? – in form as well as content. And vice versa: how does the use of digital tools and media affect aesthetic processes expressed in analogue material (ceramics, paper, concrete and so on)? To what extend has our senses been changed by digitalization and how is this expressed in the way we perceive and construe time and space? Are we really experiencing a new disjointed temporality and spatiality?
Literature
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1 – the Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson & Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.
Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2 – the Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson & Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.
Hatherly, Owen. Militant Modernism. London: O Books, 2009
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman – Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. 1. ed. London New York: Verso – Duke University Press, 1991.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media – the Extensions of Man. London: Routledge Classics, 2001.
Shaviro, Steven. Without Criteria – Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics, The MIT Press, 2009
Weheliye, Alexander G. Phonographies – Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
Please mail your abstract to Kristine Samson (kristine@ready-made.dk) and Claus Krogholm (clauskrogholm@mail.dk), dead-line May 15th.
Registration for the Summer Session http://www.nsuweb.net/wb/sommar/?action=register, dead-line June 1st.
Preliminary programme for the Future Spectralities: Hauntology and Aesthetics seminar in Reykjavik, March 27th – 29th 2009.
Credit Crunch
Tau Ulv Lenskjold
Tracing spectral (and ghastly) qualities in design artefacts
Signe Sophie Bøggild & Marie Bruun Yde
Ghost Post Urbanism: Mapping the Spectres of Modernism
Jesper Pedersen
When I hear the name mistake, I misfire. Or [spoiler alert!]: Erasing mistakes through their perfection
Hlynur Helgason
‘Ghosts, memory, resolution’ An examination of the narrative properties of hauntings, in reference to it’s ‘resolution’ and in terms of ‘memory’, through a reading of spectral issues in films directed by Jacques Rivette.
Jon Rostgaard Boiesen
Communism: The Sublime Spectre of Capitalism
Linda Gedina
Ghostly parody of Fathers Voice
Erik Steinskog
Hauntological Sounds: Dubstep, Ghosts, and Urbanity
Mads Nygaard Folkmann
The Hauntology of the Imaginary in Design
Kirsten Marie Raahauge
Realizing the Unreal
Natalia Stüdemann
Old and new media ghosts
Anders Høg Hansen
Memory, Truth and Alternating Worlds
Claus Krogholm
Ghost Modernism
Kristine Samson
From heritage and masterplanning to performative process planning
Susan Schuppli
The Séance as a Cultural Method
Per Markku Ristilammi
Spectral Events: Attempt at Pattern Recognition
Troels Degn Johansson & Anette Højlund
The Artistic Foundation”, or the Ghost of Art in Contemporary Design Education
Thure Munkholm
Scream and Shoot: Haunted Images of Peter Tscherkassky and Philippe Garrel
Ylva Blank & Ingrid Holmberg
Chasing Collective Amnesia: Contentious Swedish Housing as Heritage
Per Bäckström
Tight Pants: Iggy Pop and the Anti-Aesthetics of Voluptuous Flesh
Call for papers for study circle 4 winter symposium Future Spectralities: Hauntology and Aesthetics in Reykjavik, March 27th – 29th 2009.
To study social life one must confront the ghostly aspects of it
Avery F. Gordon
Hauntology is a coming to terms with the permanence of our (dis)possession, the inevitability of dyschronia
k-punk
Ghosts has come to play an increasing role in art, philosophy, social theory and culture studies. One important reason for this has been Jacques Derrida and his book Specters of Marx (1993), where he coined the neologism hauntology – an English word that pronounced in French is a homophone to ontology. Whereas ontology is about Being, hauntology is about non-being as well. Derrida deals with the ghost of Hamlet’s father and the specter that, according to The Communist Manifesto, has come to haunt Europe. It is Derrida’s point that we are not just haunted by the past and past events. The “time is out of joint”, and we are haunted by the future as well. “Hauntology isn’t about the return of the past, but about the fact that the origin was already spectral. We live in a time when the past is present, and the present is saturated with the past. Hauntology emerges as a crucial – cultural and political – alternative both to linear history and to postmodernism’s permanent revival.” (Mark Fischer a.k.a. k-punk http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/008535.html).
Hauntology has spread to numerous fields: philosophy, aesthetics, architecture, film, music etc. Especially in an Anglo-American context hauntology has disseminated, not just as a theoretical concept but as a terminology for describing concrete aesthetic expressions (see the link above and http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007252.html). With this seminar we would like to introduce hauntology as a broader concept in the Nordic countries as well.
In “On the Concept of History” Walter Benjamin notes how we are awaited by those who lived before us. History is not empty, homogenous time (as historiography regards it) but bears the traces of past events. The unfulfilled dreams and utopian wishes of those who lived before us are waiting to be realized. Like ghosts they have not been put to rest but will still haunt us until they are recognized by us and finally allowed to find their proper home; i.e. be fulfilled.
In urban planning we have examples like London’s White City or The Urban Plan in Copenhagen. These were projects that should provide cheap, modern apartments and facilities to the common people. They were vital parts of the social democratic welfare project that should move workers out of the inner city slum and into modern, well planned and designed neighborhoods complete with all the comforts of modern infrastructure. Today these projects are considered concrete ghettoes, an unpleasant and ugly reminder of a failed utopia: a welfare state for the masses that forgot the individual. They have become concrete ghosts, houses haunted by the specter of political visions long considered gone and forgotten. Today these projects (with their roots in Le Corbusier’s utopian architecture) are regarded of no architectural, cultural or historical value – and quite often demolished. But to some they represent an architecture, that might be ugly but should not be forgotten. They are representations of a “ghost modernism” (k-punk), concretizations – and possibly distorted representations – of dreams that should not be forgotten. What is haunting these buildings are not the ugliness of the architecture, but the unfulfilled utopian desires. Simply demolishing them is to discard the dream; a kind of exorcism of unfit and outdated political ideas rather than putting the ghost to rest. Until the specter is recognized it will continue to haunt us. The repressed will return in distorted, uncanny images. But what is haunting is not the images (or architecture) of the past; it is the unfulfilled promises of a better future inherent in these images (or buildings).
This seminar welcomes papers that considers the role of ghosts and other spectral beings in theory, philosophy, aesthetics, architecture and design, in film, photography, music and literature. Possible questions to be considered could be:
Can art and aesthetics be instrumental in putting the ghost to rest, or should art rather invoke the ghost?
Should process design be a kind of exorcism aiming at cleansing processes of all “unfit” content; or rather a “ghost busting” process recognizing what haunts us and thereby improve our ability to live with ghosts?
How are we to interpret the increasing role of ghosts and other spectral beings in contemporary culture – ranging from ghost movies to ghost economy?
Literature
Berman, Marshall. All That is Solid Melts into Air – The Experience of Modernity. London 1985.
Brogan, Kathleen. Cultural Hauntings – Ghosts and Ethnicity in Recent American Literature. University of Virginia Press, 1999.
Buse, Peter & Andrew Stott (eds.). Ghosts – Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, History. Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.
Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx – the State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Gordon, Avery F. Ghostly Matters – Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Sprinkler, Michael (ed.). Ghostly Demarcations – A Symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx. London: Verso, 1999.
Zizek, Slavoj. The Fragile Absolute, or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?, Verso, 2001.
http://www.abe1x.org/movetype/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=7&search=hauntology
http://nastybrutalistandshort.blogspot.com/search?q=hauntology
Please send proposals for papers to Kristine Samson (kristine@ready-made.dk) and Claus Krogholm (clauskrogholm@mail.dk).
Dead-line: December 1st, 2008.
Robert Hughes on art, architecture and the 1929 Crash. Have we learned from history?
The 2008 Summer Session at Brandbjerg Højskole, Denmark, is now over. Lots of processes, lots of discussions. Now we move on to the next seminar in Reykjavik – including hauntology, ghostly designs, processual excorsism and future spectralities. More news will follow.
The ghosts already took part in the dance, though…
Ghost Dance
More photos to be found under Circle Four Photos in the right hand column.
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has a new logo
Some find it a bit dubious
At this summer’s seminar we would like to focus on process and the role of process within the field of aesthetics. Papers can be on the theory or theorization of process, methodological questions regarding process and aesthetics, or analytical approaches to works or objects with emphasis on process.
Why process? In Process and Reality A.N. Whitehead suggests that the world consists of events or happenings rather than solid permanent objects. Nothing comes into being once and for all. Objects can only persist insofar they renew or recreate themselves in an infinite process. “The community of actual things is an organism; but it is not a static organism. It is an incompletion in process of production. Thus the expansion of the universe in respect to actual things is the first meaning of ‘process’; and the universe in any stage of its expansion is the first meaning of ‘organism’. In this sense, an organism is a nexus.” (Process and Reality, p. 214-15). To Whitehead there is no ontological difference between physical objects and mental or subjective acts. There is no essential distinction between mind and matter, subject and object, human and non-human, living and non-living. All pertains to the same process. “Secondly, each actual entity is itself only describable as an organic process. It repeats in microcosm what the universe is in macrocosm. It is a process proceeding from phase to phase, each phase being the real basis from which its successor proceeds towards the completion of the thing in question. Each actual entity bears in its constitution the ‘reasons’ why its conditions are what they are. These ‘reasons’ are the other actual entities objectified for it.” (Process and Reality, p. 215). The world is Becoming rather than Being.
In Anti-Oedipus Deleuze and Guattari describes nature as “a process of production” (p. 3). Thus, there is no distinction between natural and industrial production. “Everything is production, since the recording processes [enregistrement] are immediately consumed, immediately consummated, and these consumptions directly reproduced.” (p. 4). The process of production diverts the current of the flow. In production the flow of energy is solidified into a product, an object that is subsequently coupled to the process of circulation and consumption. Any object is the actualization of potentials produced within the process of becoming.
The process is without end or finality, but it is not a goal in itself. “A metaphysics of process and becoming cannot do without some principle of unification, lest it drift off into atomized incoherence. But it also cannot allow such a principle to fix it into any sort of finality or closure.” (Steven Shaviro: “God, or the Body without Organs”, p. 27). Any given work, object or thing will possess a “potentiality for process” (Whitehead: Process and Reality, p. 43). Whether the ‘potential’ becomes ‘actual’ depends on ‘decision’. Whitehead does not distinguish between human and non-human subjects when it comes to deciding. Decisions are not grounded in cognitive skills but in ‘aesthetic selection’. Thus, the process of selection becomes an aesthetic process.
We would like to explore the possibilities for a process aesthetics or aesthetics of process. The outline above suggests one possible framework, but is in no way meant to exclude other approaches. In the words of Rosi Braidotti: ”It is therefore crucial to learn how to think about processes and not only concepts. The challenge is in how to represent in-between zones and areas of experience or perception” (Metamorphosis). The contributions could be, but are definitely not limited to following topics:
∑ Metamorphosis represented or mediated in art, film and literature.
∑ Art and art movements with an emphasis on process rather than product. Fluxus, OULIPO, situationism, happenings, installations, performance and so on.
∑ Aesthetics of process
∑ Methodological suggestions on how to deal with process in research and knowledge production. Processual archives and knowledge files. How to apprehend the processual without leaving behind the ephemeral.
∑ Exploration of types of processual media and modes of production – are some media more processual than others?
∑ Transitory urban spaces, zones of indeterminacy and territorial becoming. Process planning, aesthetics of regeneration and transformation
∑ What are the options for the political and urge for transformation? Interventions in reality (Guerilla Gardening, Permanent Breakfast, Alternate Reality Gaming, Street Art and so on)?
∑ Explorations and research of the work in progress. What does it entail, has it impact on academia and where to draw the line for a work in progress? The seminar and journal as a processual artwork (DOCUMENTA 12)
∑ Discussions of the claim that selection processes rest upon aesthetic criteria rather than cognitive or moral ones.
We call for contributions that discuss either theoretical approaches to process and aesthetics, analyses of concrete works or objects dealing with process, or develop methodological approaches to the field of process aesthetics.
Literature:
Braidotti, Rosi: Metamorphosis – Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2002
Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row, 1990
Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guattari: Anti-Oedipus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: The Athlone Press, 1983
Deleuze, Gilles & Felix Guattari: A Thousand Plateaus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia, New York: Continuum, 1987
Deleuze, Gilles: The Fold – Leibniz and the Baroque, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993
Latour, Bruno: Vi har aldrig været moderne, København: Hans Reitzel, 2006
Shaviro, Steven: “Deleuze’s Encounter with Whitehead”, http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/DeleuzeWhitehead.pdf, 2007
Shaviro, Steven: “God, or the Body without Organs”, http://www.shaviro.com/Othertexts/God.pdf, 2008
Whitehead, A.N.: Process and Reality – An Essay in Cosmology, New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1978
Please send your abstract to kristine [at] ready-made.dk and/or clauskrogholm [at] mail.dk – dead-line May 1.
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