CFP: The Music Video: Critical Potential and Aesthetic Innovation

The Music Video: Critical Potential and Aesthetic Innovation

3^rd Winter Symposium of the Nordic Summer University’s aesthetics studies circle, Process, Design, and Aesthetics.

The Danish Design School, Copenhagen, March 26^th-28^th, 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 26^th-28^th2010.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

CFP: Disjointed Temporalities – Analogue, Digital… and Beyond

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.

Future Spectralities: Hauntology and Aesthetics – Preliminary Programme

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

CFP: Future Spectralities: Hauntology and Aesthetics

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.

Crash

Robert Hughes on art, architecture and the 1929 Crash. Have we learned from history?

Process Aesthetics – moving on

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.

A Freudian (Design) Slip?

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has a new logo

Some find it a bit dubious

CFP: Process Aesthetics, or, The Aesthetics of Process

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.

Botanizing on the Asphalt

Guerilla Gardening in Copenhagen, March 29.

(click on pictures for larger images)

 

Update, April 1.

POLICE BRUTALITY! 

Looking for Mr. Banksy

A rare interview with Banksy – almost.