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Just received an email link to the text below, which would seem relevant to
the current discussion. Here we see that the "score" itself is being
remediated, not by a technological apparatus but by a legal and financial
one. The transaction focuses on the spoken words of the artist as they are
"fixed" by a legally mediated "listener". What is being transferred here? Is
this an example of the performative in its most pure state? If so it is
interesting in its own right. However, when I see money, lawyers and
commercial galleries involved I can't help being cynical and assuming that
what this is really about is money - and a clever artist, a gallery dealer,
a lawyer and a dumb public institution creating financial value where there
is none. It's basically corrupt. I can't understand how artists can work
with private galleries. I did it for a few years and it gave me the creeps,
always thinking about how something you make (or don't make), thatis of
abstract value, can turn into money, something that on one level is abstract
but on another concrete, in that it is a token of fixed value.
BTW, Johannes Goebels comments were spot on. The only thing I would add is
that the score's main value arguably lies in its interpretation, the manner
in which it can assist release of further instances of creative activity.
The art exists not in the score but in the process of interpretation and is
manifest in the energy then released (that's simple Derrida and reader
reception theory). If that instance is recorded the process of remediation
occurs again, with the listener or viewer of the recording interpreting the
recording at a later date. However, a score is designed to be more open to
interpretation than a recording (although neither is totally open or closed
and are variable depending on various factors) and thus generally functions
as a better medium for latent creativity that can be released when the
appropriate agents come into play.
Best
Simon
POMPIDOU CRITICIZED AFTER PURCHASE OF SEHGAL WORK
Not everyone is happy with a recent acquisition made by the Centre Pompidou:
Tino Sehgal¹s This Situation, 2007. As Le Monde¹s Michel Guerrin reports,
the artist Fred Forest has used the purchase to reopen an ongoing debate
about the prices museums pay for artworks. In the early 1990s, Forest asked
the public museum to be more transparent about acquisitions to avoid paying
higher prices. In 1997, the Conseil d¹Etat (State Council) sided with the
Pompidou while noting that museums actually pay lower ³privileged prices²
which could not be divulged to the public without destabilizing the art
market.
The acquisition of Sehgal¹s This Situation, in April 2010, has given Forest
a chance to revive the old debate. On his website webnetmuseum.org, Forest
recently posted an open letter to Alain Seban, the president of the
Pompidou, and asked him to divulge the conditions behind the purchase of
Sehgal¹s work, a performance piece involving six actors discussing themes,
determined by Sehgal yet inspired by a host of thinkers. Of course, Sehgal
is well known for transferring his works in person; there are meant to be no
documented traces of the performances, whether photographs or certificates.
Sehgal¹s distinct conditions raise the question of how the Pompidou will
recreate This Situation for future exhibitions. ³This purchase was the
subject of an oral meeting on April 20, 2010 at a lawyer¹s office,² explains
Alfred Pacquement, the museum¹s director. ³The artist was there, a curator
[from the Pompidou], a representative from the Marian Goodman gallery, and
myself. The artist set out the rules that govern this work so that we have
them in mind and so that we could then record them in a dossier kept at the
museum.² As Pacquement explains, other museums, like MoMA, acquired Sehgal
works in the same way.
For Forest, what¹s troubling is not the ephemeral performance piece but the
financial transaction. While the buyers must pay in cash, according to
Forest¹s own research, Sehgal does not deliver an artist certificate or a
receipt. Only the lawyer¹s oral testimony allegedly serves to seal the deal.
Forest wonders how a public institution like the Pompidou can operate
without receipts. But Pacquement contests that version of the sale. ³We have
a bill from the Goodman gallery,² he explained to Le Monde. ³And we did not
pay cash. We followed the normal rules. If we had had to pay cash without
receiving a receipt, we would have been embarrassed.² Forest, not one to be
discouraged, sees this exchange as compromising the intellectual, moral, and
commercial value of Sehgal¹s work.
Guerrin assumes that Sehgal¹s terms and conditions have evolved with his
success, both institutional and financial. ³No doubt he worked differently
when he did not have a gallery,² says Pacquement. He is not the only one to
confirm a change in policy. ³Sehgal¹s first collectors could have paid
cash,² noted Agnès Fierobe, director of the Goodman gallery, ³but this is no
longer possible, it¹s become forbidden.² Some subtleties remain intact: ³The
bill is sent by mail,² added Fierobe, ³it is never in the form of a written
trace.² While explaining the details of the sale, no oneneither Pacquement
nor Fierobedivulged the price.
On 03/02/2011 22:55, "Sally Jane Norman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Nice score, Johannes!
>
> I guess this is why Michel Waisvisz was so contagiously obsessed with what
> at STEIM we called "Composing the Now". That razor edge walk between the
> "already" and the "never quite there" which justifies "trying again"?
>
> best
> sjn
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, 3 Feb 2011 17:32:55 -0500, Johannes Goebel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>> This is the other Johannes writing, the one coming from music - and
>> re-iterating to maybe have a closer look at music, especially when words
>> like "score" are used.
>> Scores have been around in western music (sorry for repeating myself)
> for
>> something like 600 - 800 years. And they were never the "main thing" -
> they
>> allowed speculation and construction of music, that was to sound. The
>> eventually "sounding piece" is the main thing. And the sounds changed
> with
>> interpretations over centuries, more and more details were notated up to
>> the
>> mid 20th century - but the difference between what was notated and what
>> sounded was always understood as the life of music or musical life. In
>> music
>> we talk about interpretation and not about reconstruction.
>> All that changed in the second half of the 20th century with graphical
>> notation - from notating traditional music in the shape of a pear to
>> non-traditional graphical stimuli for musicians. And then the scores
>> written
>> out in words with instructions what to do, what to listen to and what to
>> react to. This is when concept and sound, object and time-based
> experience
>> started to potentially live in different domains.
>> Only technical reproduction over the past 120 years made it possible to
>> store sound outside of time - but still music only comes alive in time.
>> Staring at an LP, CD if iPod doesn't quite make the music come alive.
>> Music always needs time and a score, notation or instruction has never
> been
>> identical with the performance. And for instance even the track in the
> past
>> 50 years to perform old, old music on period instruments with playing
>> techniques how they might have been back then, are not reconstructions
> but
>> new interpretations.
>>
>> The words of theater plays have always been edited, rearranged, cut,
>> expanded - a usual practice. Only re-mixing brought a similar effect to
>> music. But a collage by Max Ernst is something different than a remixed
>> song. In music we talk also about arrangements of pieces, which take the
>> main ingredients and touch them up with different colors. There is a
> major
>> difference between how theater plays and music are treated in the
> process
>> of
>> interpretation, in performing it.
>>
>> Coming to fluxus, which is that which flows, I guess. It's integrating a
>> time line. And then creating a multitude of scores, prescription,
> described
>> actions, with words or without. Is the "score" the "piece" or the
>> "performance" - many different points of view on this.
>>
>> Who cares if we play Bach like Bach heard it. We play it over and over
>> again
>> and it's "always the same and not the same". And playing a captured
>> recording is always the same but we experience it (hopefully) different
>> each
>> time. The delicate relationship between score, interpretation, sound and
>> experience as in music, theater and dance may bear some interesting
>> pointers
>> to the discussion of what is subsumed under the visual arts, which got
>> injected a time-line, and performance art.
>>
>> And certainly then the audience and the location and context come into
>> play.
>> Watching a tape or listening to music from stored recording always
> misses
>> the social environment - so it is bound to be a different perception and
>> experience and whatever we make out of it.
>>
>> Do it again? Well, maybe one should have a festival where all those old
>> "scores" from performance art are newly played/interpreted once everyone
> is
>> dead who can remember the original performances and once the video tapes
>> have fallen apart.
>>
>> And then we can find out what might be interesting and for which reasons
>> and
>> what is not interesting to perform but to just read or imagine. And the
>> most
>> brilliant compositions in music can be unbearable if the performer
> "doesn't
>> get it", cannot create the presence in and through the performance. I
> think
>> all this is quite simple an the level of performance and interpretation
>> (bringing it into time) and very complicated once we start to analyze.
> And
>> I
>> think interdisciplinary thinking or dialogue might help.
>>
>> (The other) Johannes
>
Simon Biggs
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http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
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http://www.elmcip.net/
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