Sunday, April 27, 2008

Lawrence Weiner interviewed by Dazed Digital at Lisson Gallery, 2008

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Friday, April 11, 2008

Six thoughts (for Kieran Daly)

1. Music is located in time; it occupies time. However, music is not simply a matter of duration. Duration means measured time. Sensation of time, on the contrary, refers to a particular awareness of presence. It involves a heightening of the senses and perhaps an ecstatic change of state.

2. Silence (in my work) is a direct - not symbolic or imaginary - encounter with reality. It is not necessarily calm and peaceful. I am not aspiring to a pretentious pseudo-mysticism. The silence may very well be confrontational and horrifying.

3. A network of dialectical relationships exists within my work: of sound and silence, of change and reiteration, of a subjective mental space and a physical world, of the maternal and paternal, of what is heard and what is thought.

4. My work is opposed to a capitalist culture that values both nostalgic humanism and the virtual, symbolic or imaginary experience.

5. I am not particularly concerned with new musical materials, new musical technology, new instruments and new sounds. I am, however, interested in new contexts and in finding new purposes for old materials.

6. My work is expressive but carries no message. It is expressive of that which can be expressed in no other way than in music. The work is universal in its address and yet the experience of it is subjective. Furthermore, the idea of a "public" is not its goal but simply one of its conditions.