tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328655832024-03-08T02:00:18.669-05:00What is the WordJason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-36613357893638159182009-10-11T15:49:00.001-04:002009-10-11T15:51:23.964-04:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">New Places</span><br /><br /><a href="http://maltedmilk.org/brogan">maltedmilk.org/brogan</a><br /><a href="http://jasonbrogan.tumblr.com">media</a><br /><a href="http://calculations-series.tumblr.com">calculations</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-69270471608607673212009-02-27T21:08:00.001-05:002009-02-27T21:08:59.709-05:00<a href="http://www.contemporarystl.org/GediSibony.php">Gedi Sibony: My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-62711703486341447842009-01-12T16:03:00.002-05:002009-01-12T16:11:14.476-05:00Maureen Paley : <a href="http://www.maureenpaley.com/maureenpaley.php?color=yellow&element=113&id_cache=1-29">Maiike Schoorel</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-5015807570871081802008-12-26T22:48:00.001-05:002008-12-26T22:50:01.381-05:00hillmancurtis : <a href="http://www.hillmancurtis.com/index.php?/film/watch/lawrence_weiner/">Lawrence Weiner</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-53421675164479078642008-12-20T12:14:00.003-05:002008-12-20T12:31:32.708-05:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">Some wonderful moments from 2008</span><br /><br />1. Michael Pisaro's <span style="font-style:italic;">nachtstimmung</span> (2008) performed by <a href="http://www.objectcollection.us">Object Collection</a> as part of the Experimental Music series at the Ontological Theater in New York.<br /><br />2. Seeing the Lawrence Weiner retrospective, <a href="http://www.whitney.org/weiner/">AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE</a>, on both coasts at the Whitney Museum (NYC) and MOCA (LA).<br /><br />3. Sam Sfirri performing Radu Malfatti's <span style="font-style:italic;">nonostante II</span> (2000) for solo piano in Charleston, South Carolina as part of <a href="http://maltedmilk.org/433">Silent Music: 4'33'' and Beyond</a>.<br /><br />4. Performing Taku Sugimoto's <span style="font-style:italic;">two timbers</span> (2008) at Listen/Space in New York.<br /><br />5. "Machine Gun" by Portishead<br /><br />6. Masafumi Ezaki, <span style="font-style:italic;">Othello/3 Minutes</span> [Slub Music]Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-67822771839195104772008-10-02T17:13:00.000-04:002008-10-02T17:14:52.522-04:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K7ZzSx6RKZ4/SOU5k-8ABHI/AAAAAAAAAA0/23aVjdvsiNU/s1600-h/8.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_K7ZzSx6RKZ4/SOU5k-8ABHI/AAAAAAAAAA0/23aVjdvsiNU/s320/8.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5252667847930283122" /></a><br /><br />Silent Music<br /><span style="font-style:italic;">4'33''</span> and beyond<br /><br /><a href="http://maltedmilk.org/433">maltedmilk.org/433</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-91386969044903148752008-07-21T14:52:00.002-04:002008-07-21T14:56:40.224-04:00"These are the points:<br /><ul><br /><li>Creating music that refers to the "world" with its (acoustic) conditions - nevertheless, these are caused by the inside, that means by social mechanisms, or by being forced upon people by another culture or power; from the outside to the inside;<br /><li>Composing music that is not only referring to an obsolete reality but - at least subliminally - to people, their feelings and their health; <br /><li>Composing music that refers to and deals with existing problems in society instead of neglecting, covering or even idealizing them; <br /><li>Composing music that shows social gashes and intensifies problems in society, even referring to them in a toxic way;<br /><li>Composing music that strengthens resistance and sharpens the emotions and ways of thinking instead of creating illusions of harmony and happiness; <br /><li>Composing music that refers to its own specific qualities and that offers food for the mind and soul in a multilayered (which does not mean complicated) way. Music should expand cognitive and emotional perception instead of reducing the reception of music to a level of animal-like reactions to superficial sentimentalities; <br /><li>Composers who do not capitulate at the sight of existing problems, but deal with diseases by transferring them into their work. Composers who provoke, shock and cause irritations in order to destroy social crusts and to show perspectives that lead to a free and broadened perception of social phenomena in society; <br /><li>Composers who develop clear positions and show alternative worlds to a daily routine - creating systems that refer to a change of existing conditions in an allegorical way; <br /><li>And composers who try to do these things with a certain verve, enthusiasm, fantasy, and serenity in order to open positive rooms, "alternative rooms and skies" (Luigi Nono); And<br /><li>An audience that is willing to open its minds and to be curious; <br /><li>An audience that replies to provocations and disturbances with its own engagement and thoughts; <br /><li>Listeners who learn to decipher musical contexts and to integrate these auditory experiences in their ways of thinking as a part of cognitive and emotional knowledge. And, as a consequence: listeners who increasingly react to acoustic environmental pollution - as caused by the worldwide tendency to background music, by noises directly or by music creating dull feelings - in allergic ways;<br /><li>An audience that is basically able to enjoy unsolved phenomena, and listeners who formulate questions without expecting definite answers. As a result, we have music characterized by specific places and situations and at least dealing with material that embodies everyday experience as well as its historical conditions and its meanings for the future;<br /><li>Composers who consider questionable phenomena as an important, even most decisive principle and who try to create a basis for opportunities to sharpen the senses. Questions - when answered - should at least cast new questions.<br /><li>An audience that demands these points and expects new music to refer to the past from a present point of view. The past tried the same in its times and as a result it developed out of the same principles."<br /></ul><br />- <a href="http://www.gerhard-staebler.de">Gerhard Stäbler</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-21256209041685280812008-04-27T18:05:00.000-04:002008-04-27T18:06:29.497-04:00<a href="http://www.lissongallery.com/#/artists/lawrence-weiner/video/">Lawrence Weiner</a> interviewed by Dazed Digital at Lisson Gallery, 2008Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-26516346984987890302008-04-26T12:52:00.001-04:002008-04-26T12:53:55.176-04:00Kyle Gann, <a href="http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/2008/01/in_dispraise_of_efficiency_fel.html">In Dispraise of Efficiency: Feldman</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-26372220328216317112008-04-11T08:48:00.001-04:002008-04-11T08:50:50.331-04:00<span style="font-weight:bold;">Six thoughts (for Kieran Daly)</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />4. My work is opposed to a capitalist culture that values both nostalgic humanism and the virtual, symbolic or imaginary experience.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-48115545478804975392008-03-31T10:24:00.002-04:002008-03-31T10:27:48.847-04:00What I am looking for, it's not really the expression through gesture, words, mimics, but expression through rhythm and a combination of images, through their position, their relation and their amount. Before anything else, the purpose of an image must be the exchange. But for that exchange to be possible, it is necessary that these images have something in common, that they participate together in a sort of union. That's why I try to give to my characters a sort of linkage, and ask my actors (all my actors) to speak in a certain way, to behave in a certain way, which is always the same one.<br /><br />- Robert Bresson, from <a href="http://www.mastersofcinema.org/bresson/Words/Esteve_01.html"><i>Michel Estève: Robert Bresson</i></a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-56273198971103166682008-03-25T11:40:00.000-04:002008-03-25T11:43:14.994-04:00About ten years ago, somebody asked John Cage, "Well Mr. Cage, aren't you troubled by all the suffering in the world?" And he said, "No I am not. There is exactly the right amount of suffering in the world." When I first heard it, I was quite revolted and disgusted by that statement, but in the ten years since I've come to agree with it totally: that to protest against the suffering in this world is an incredible insult to the victims of this world. Their suffering is exactly what they have received because of the conditions which are imposed upon them. To protest against suffering is to degrade suffering, without an understanding of why that suffering was made necessary. This is why I think that the Hans Haacke piece, which is a description of the trustees of the Guggenheim Museum, is to show nothing but the badges of their triumph. We know we are ruled. The question is not whether we are ruled or not. It's how we are ruled. And believe me, we are ruled not by the crimes of the people who rule us, but by their legal practices. [...] What we have to do is stop protesting and start understanding, because we can never overthrow the rulers who rule us unless we understand how they rule us.<br /><br />- Carl Andre, statement from "Perimeters of Protest" Panel (1975)Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-13359085453619068232008-03-13T11:21:00.001-04:002008-03-13T11:26:12.956-04:00<a href="http://www.diegrossestille.de/english/">Into Great Silence</a><br />a film by Philip GröningJason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-4944020263284870652008-01-02T02:12:00.000-05:002008-01-02T14:36:22.928-05:00<b>Six Favorite Recordings from 2007</b><br /><br /><a href="http://www.aarondrake.org/Dogstar.htm">Volume 3</a><br />Dogstar Orchestra<br /><br /><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v395/electriksheep/rainspeak.jpg"><br />b-boim series [b-boim]<br />Radu Malfatti<br /><br /><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v395/electriksheep/septet.jpg"><br /><i>Septet</i> [IMJ]<br />Takefumi Naoshima, Hirozumi Takeda, Utah Kawasaki, Mitsuteru Takeuchi, Toshihiro Koike, Takahiro Kawaguchi & Yasuo Totsuka<br /><br /><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v395/electriksheep/es001_keith_rowe_the_room.jpg"><br /><i>The Room</i> [Erstwhile]<br />Keith Rowe<br /><br /><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v395/electriksheep/taku_unami_malignitat.jpg"><br /><i>Malignitat</i> [Hibari Music]<br />Taku Unami<br /><br /><img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v395/electriksheep/notbgm.jpg"><br /><i>not BGM and so on</i> [(h)earrings]<br />Mitsuhiro Yoshimura & Taku SugimotoJason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-37656454101794784362007-09-16T14:13:00.001-04:002007-09-16T14:13:47.784-04:00<a href="http://www.ronsen.org/monkminkpinkpunk/12/rowe.html">New interview with Keith Rowe by Josh Ronsen</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-36435951672034660572007-09-07T14:22:00.000-04:002007-09-07T14:30:10.130-04:00Now here I am, in my mid-fifties, and about a year ago I got very upset. Terribly upset. I began to wonder if music was an art form altogether. Now that's something to get upset about. And I think the reason I got upset about it is perhaps maybe because of my PhD students. Because none of them approach it as if it's an art form. Yes, it's a music form, it's a memory form, it's a form that is allegedly supposed to do this and that, if you do this and that. And so here I am; after all Beethoven only lived a few years longer than I am now, talking to you here. So I'm at the end of my life, let's say I'm at the end of my life; working since I'm thirteen; I wake up one day and I say to myself "What the hell am I involved with? Memory forms? Musical forms? Various type of almost like, set Avedon poses? Now we take a walk in the Alps ... Now we go slumming with peasants ... Now we thank God that we got rid of venereal disease, or whatever? I mean what the hell is it all about, all the set poses, the set emotions? Do we have anything in music for example that really wipes everything out? That just cleans everything away, from some aspect of illusion and reality? Do we have anything like - Proust? Do we have anything comparable to Finnegan's Wake? I wonder.<br /><br />- Morton Feldman, <a href="http://www.cnvill.demon.co.uk/mfmercer.htm">Toronoto lecture</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-59337754119422473412007-09-04T10:56:00.000-04:002007-09-04T10:59:08.938-04:00Liner notes in English for <a href="http://www.ftarri.com/meenna/333/index.html">Septet</a>:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.ftarri.com/meenna/333/naoshimanotes-e.html">Takefumi Naoshima</a><br /><a href="http://www.ftarri.com/meenna/333/tsunodanotes-e.html">Toshiya Tsunoda</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-86399811297367098622007-07-11T11:18:00.000-04:002007-07-11T11:19:20.457-04:00<a href="http://hose.hibarimusic.com/">hose.hibarimusic.com</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-60651058188186335912007-06-03T11:15:00.000-04:002007-06-03T11:20:21.206-04:00For any music's future, you don't go to the devices, you don't go to the procedures, you go to the attitude. And you do not find your own attitude; that's what you inherit. I'm not my own man. I'm a compilation of all the important people in my life. I once had a seven-hour conversation with Boulez; unknown to him, it affected my life. I admire his attitude. Varèse's attitude. Wolpe's attitude. Cage's attitude. I spent one afternoon with Beckett; it will be with me forever. Not his work; not his commitment; not his marvelous face, but his attitude.<br /><br />- Morton Feldman, <a href="http://www.cnvill.demon.co.uk/mfgagne.htm">Interview from <i>Soundpieces</i></a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-69137907252664251372007-05-29T11:58:00.001-04:002007-05-29T12:03:47.468-04:00An excellent interview with <a href="http://www.mattin.org/">Mattin</a> has recently appeared at addlimb <a href="http://www.addlimb.org/eng/pages/interviews/interv_Mattin.html">here</a>.<br /><br />I've been spending quite a lot of time reading threads on the <a href="http://www.criterionforum.org/">Criterion Forum</a>. Recommended.Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-48914407538492253452007-05-05T13:21:00.000-04:002007-05-05T14:10:54.476-04:00A few excerpts from Christopher Caudwell's <span style="font-style:italic;">D.H. Lawrence: A Study of the Bourgeois Artist</span><br /><br />"In bourgeois society social relations are denied in the form of relations between men, and take the form of a relation between man and a thing, a property relation, which, because it is a dominating relation, is believed to make man free. But this is an illusion. The property relation is only a disguise for relations which now become unconscious and therefore anarchic but are still between man and man and in particular between exploiter and exploited.<br /><br />The artist in bourgeois society culture is asked to do the same thing. He is asked to regard the art work as a finished commodity and the process of art as a relation between himself and the work, which then disappears in to the market.<br /><br />[...]<br /><br />But art is not in any case a relation to a thing, it is a relation between men, between artist and audience, and the art work is only like a machine which they must both grasp as part of the process. The commercialisation of art may revolt the sincere artist, but the tragedy is that he revolts against it still within the limitations of bourgeois culture. He attempts to forget the market completely and concentrate on his rleation to the art work, which now becomes still further hypostatised as an entity-in-itself. Because the art work is now completely an end-in-itself, and even the market is forgotten, the art process becomes an extremely individualistic relation. The social values inherent in the art form... now seem to have little value, for the art work more and more exists for the individual alone... and therefore ultimately results in the art work's ceasing to be an art work and becoming a mere private phantasy.<br /><br />[...]<br /><br />But the artist's value is not in <span style="font-style:italic;">self</span>-expression. If so, why would he struggle to achive the synthesis in which old social formulations are fused with his individual experience? Why not disregard social formalities and express himself direct as one does by shouting, leaping and cries? Because, to begin with, it is the old bourgeois illusion to suppose there is such a thing as pure individual expression. It is not even that the artist nobly forces his self-expression into a social mould for the benefit of society. Both attitudes are simply expressions of the old bourgeois fallacy that man is free in freely giving vent to his instincts. In fact the artist does not express himself in art forms, he finds himself therein. He does not adulterate his free self-expression to make it socially current, he finds free self-expression only in the social relations embodied in art. The value of art to the artist then is this, that is makes him free. It appears to him of value as a self-expression, but in fact it is not the expression of a self but the discovery of a self. It is the creation of a self. In synthesising experience with society's, in pressing his innner self into the mould of social relations, he not only creates a new mould, a socially valuable product, but he also moulds and creates his own self.<br /><br />[...]<br /><br />All art is created by this tension between changing social relations and outmoded consciousness. The very reason why new art is created, why the old art does not satisfy either artist or appreciator, is because it seems somehow out of gear with the present. Old art always has meaning for us, because the instincts, the sources of the affects, do not change, because a new system of social relations does not exclude but includes the old, and because new art too includes the traditions of the art that has gone before. But it is not enough. We must have new art.<br /><br />[...]<br /><br />But Lawrence remained to the end a man incapable of that subordination of self to others, of co-operation, of solidarity as a class, which is the characteristic of the proletariat. He remained the individualist, the bourgeois revolutionary angrily working out his own salvation, critical of all, alone in possession oof grace. He rid himself of every bourgeois illusion but the important one"Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-87685427005234135012007-04-13T01:30:00.000-04:002007-04-15T23:44:30.593-04:00What am I doing with my music? A dodgy question in that "doing" is rife with "intention," which I think is detrimental to the sort of music I work with. When having to think about music outside of itself, I prefer to think of the music I make as relational. How does this music relate to that or the other? What is the relationship between this music and emotion, what is the relationship between this music and environment (psychogeography), what is the relationship between this music and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, jelly doughnuts, Colombian death metal? And so on.<br /><br />For example, the matter of emotion. Music in general is prescriptive, a mood-alterer, manipulative. This is not derogatory, for the Beatles have saved lives; Maria Callas has found missing hearts; a dose of Hank Williams can help sometimes; Al Green for the romantically challenged; the Swan Silvertones for those haunted by dark clouds, and Deicide for those who take shelter in them. So music can be used to induce mood and emotion. But when I think about putting a music into the world, I see it not as manipulative, not as taking a listener to a specific place. Not with desire and intention. I imagine a music that is sensed by a different part of our being: music sympathetic to that which is not fleeting, forged by condition or circumstance.<br /><br />This way of thinking about music is as a heightened sense of awareness rather than a goal or intention, a "doing." It is without a desire to inflict or alter.<br /><br />There is a relationship between music and the grandness and minutiae of existence, from doughnuts to emotion and beyond. Considering these relationships helps me to form music, understand my surroundings, navigate, consume and live with satisfaction and awareness.<br /><br />Practically, with the music I make, I am able to indulge in my likes. I can make friends. I can travel without being a tourist. I can listen. I can explore differences and accordances and carve out something of a life. These "doings" are a pleasure.<br /><br />- Sean Meehan, <span style="font-style:italic;">Blocks of Consciousness and The Unbroken Continuum</span> (pp. 136-137)Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-91536043452560123622007-04-11T00:48:00.000-04:002007-04-11T00:51:06.111-04:00Keith Rowe, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20021214035346/http://www.l-m-c.org.uk/texts/rowe.html"><span style="font-style:italic;">Above and Beyond</span></a> (1997)Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-80882922239536528512007-03-26T17:37:00.000-04:002007-03-26T17:44:54.024-04:00Paul Steenhuisen: You have gone to great effort to find new types of sounds in your music. What was your intention?<br /><br />Helmut Lachenmann: It is true that I am trying to search for new sounds, but this is not my aesthetic aim or credo as an artist. With conventional or unconventional sounds, the question is how to create a new, authentic musical situation. The problem is not to search for new sounds, but for a new way of listening, of perception. I do not know if there are still new sounds, but what we need is new contexts.<br /><br />- From "Interview with Helmut Lachenmann - Toronto, 2003" in <i>Contemporary Music Review</i>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32865583.post-80602127484122315452007-03-20T21:03:00.000-04:002007-03-20T21:05:31.464-04:00I have become increasingly preoccupied with atmosphere, in particular the kind of atmosphere that one finds surrounding a Mark Rothko painting. When I am in the presence of a Rothko work (also after I have departed and later, upon further reflection), I'm struck not by "whew! what great brush strokes! what an incredible technique! what a painter!", but instead by a feeling of the surrounding atmosphere and its sensation.<br /><br />Somehow I wanted to move what I'm doing (intention) towards this notion of atmosphere, an activity where we're not aware of technique, of instrument, of playing, of music even, but instead as feeling/sensation suspended in space, perhaps what Feldman meant by music as time, energising the air, making the silence (unintention) audible.<br /><br />- Keith Rowe, <a href="http://www.erstwhilerecords.com/catalog/030.html"><i>Duos for Doris</i> notes</a>Jason Broganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03008773192982666716noreply@blogger.com0