Progress and a Bright Future

"One might justifiably wonder if the true master narrative of our era -- the presence of which is so blinding, we fail to perceive it -- is actually this: that there is not, and no longer can be, any master narrative." -- NB

Nicolas Bourriaud takes on post-modernism and the end of the master narrative in the beefy middle section of The Radicant. Having elder relatives who lived through the Great Depression in America to contrast with the subsequent generation who believed in progress and the miracle of technology helps us understand Bourriaud is pointing out. We feel lucky to have crossed paths with elder artists whose views presage the AlterModern.

Jodi Sedlock on Bat Catching (Case Study No. 8)

She started out an art student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but ended up studying bats as a scientist.  A fateful internship at the Field Museum in Chicago where she was given the charge of drawing a chipmunk penis and rat feet lead Professor Jodi Sedlock to bats as subject matter. As an associate professor of biology at Lawrence University, she believes that "by drawing it, we get to know it." In her biology courses, she often requires students to draw the parts of dissected specimens to learn them. Since 1996, she has traveled to the Philippines to identify the vast number of bat species making the archipelago a "hot spot" of bat species diversity. Her field work mixes photography, drawing, sound recording, and video to create "bat portraits" (see example left) that help humans understand the delicacy of creatures and their habitat.

This is the Modern World

We were thinking about students contemplating the idea of Modernism burning out, turning in on itself (e.g. Post-Modernism), and regrouping. We looked at this phenomenon through the lense of rock performance as demonstrated in the youth subculture movement in Britain that derived its name from Modernism: the Mods. Here in the U.S., we associate this movement with The Who. Their song Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere from 1965--with its lyrics ("Don't follow the lines that been laid before") reflect the prevailing mid-century cultural forces of mass-production, advertising, self-absorption, disregard for sustainability and an emphasis on artistic novelty that are aspects of Modernism. Viewing The Who's performance of Anyway showcases four lads on a path to self-destruction (RIP Keith Moon).

We compared The Who to The Jam, a band that directly referenced The Who's 1965 style.  We see the same attitudes and ideas take a different sahpe as The Jam revive The Mod movement. There is more specificity and self-consciousness in their songs Art School and The Modern World. We'll still do what we want, but with an awareness of contemporary cultural resistance and historical precedent. The rage is focused on the music. Everything about The Jam's version of the Mod seems more contained and streamlined.

It's Work (Advice from Andy)

Andy was a Catholic

the ethic ran through his bones

He lived alone with his mother

collecting gossip and toys

Every Sunday when he went to Church

He'd kneel in his pew and say

"It's work, all that matters is work."

He was a lot of things

what I remember most he'd say

"I've got to bring home the bacon

someone's got to bring home the roast."

He'd get to the factory early

If you'd ask him he'd tell you straight out

It's work

No matter what I did it never seemed enough

he said I was lazy, I said I was young

He said, "How many songs did you write ?"

I'd written zero, I'd lied and said, "Ten."

"You won't be young forever

You should have written fifteen"

It's work

"You ought to make things big

people like it that way

And the songs with the dirty words

make sure your record them that way"

Andy liked to stir up trouble

he was funny that way

He said, "It's just work

Andy sat down to talk one day

he said decide what you want

Do you want to expand your parameters

or play museums like some dilettante

I fired him on the spot

he got red and called me a rat

It was the worst word that he could think of

And I've never seen him like that

It's work, I thought he said it's just work

Andy said a lot of things

I stored them all away in my head

Sometimes when I can't decide what I should do

I think what would Andy have said

He'd probably say you think too much

That's 'cause there's work that you don't want to do

It's work, the most important thing is work

It's work, the most important thing is work

John McKinnon on Warhol (Case Study No. 7)

John McKinnon, the Milwaukee Art Museum assistant curator of modern and contemporary, will give a lecture (in the Lawrence University Wriston Auditorium) on the Andy Warhol: The Last Decade exhibition which closed last month. It is the first U.S. museum exhibition to explore the late work of Andy Warhol with all its Last Supper and Christ-figure imagery. The show is currently touring museums around the nation and was curated by Joe Ketner. John received his master's degrees from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in both arts administration and art history and has a bachelor's degree in studio art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While in grad school, he was an intern at the Museum of Contemporary Art and at the Art Institute of Chicago. We worked with him in Madison and later Chicago in the early 2000s while we were showing with the Wendy Cooper Gallery, since closed. As director of the gallery, John maintained our film loop installations, provided information to critics, and helped install our work. He was always over-the-top helpful and we're happy to see him come to Lawrence to talk about the Warhol show. He's also written for slick publications such as Artforum, Time Out Chicago and Flash Art.

John T. Gates vs. Klaus Nomi (Case Study No. 6)

As a bass soloist in Germany, John T. Gates (Lawrence Visiting Assistant Professor of Music) sang more than 1,000 performances over a period of thirteen years. His appearances were often accompanied by multimedia elements ranging from a simple boom box switched on and off to video feedback projections to add a feeling of sensory overload and push the limits of the traditional opera form. His academic research examined communication in modern opera and romantic dualism in Schumann. We worked with him a couple years ago to make a 16 mm black-and-white short film (music video?) of his performance of Franz Schubert's "Fruhlingssehnsucht" juxtaposed with his ruminations on romanticism. Student Wil Herbon had the impulse to dress in a bunny-suit that term so we included him skipping through the freshly fallen snow.  Dish soap suds became a mask and close-ups of John's face conveyed a sense of inner torment that seemed an apropos to the content.

The  Nomi Song: The Klaus Nomi Odyssey (c. 2004, 96 minutes), a documentary by Andrew Horn, reflects on the life and art of the self-taught German performer Klaus Nomi. Using vintage archival footage and interviews with Nomi himself as well as friends and collaborators tries to understand how it all went down. Nomi appeared at a pinnacle cultural moment when new wave was truly new and considered avant-garde and Nomi's "alien persona" resonated with counter-culture types in New York, France and oddly, the Midwest. In interviews featured in the film, Klaus spoke of singing along with Maria Callas records and dreaming of being a singer while a boy in Essen, Germany. Nomi came to New York City in the late 1970s where he took his countertenor voice (which some believe is in the  tradition of the Castrato) into a lower east side night club context. Our friend Stanley Ryan Jones photographed Nomi when he performed in Milwaukee. Stan wrote us in a recent email that: "Klaus was very professional and serious as were the people with him. It was a strange occurrence in a strange time. Jaded jaws did drop when he took the stage at the Starship. Nobody knew what to think. It just didn't fit into any box. There was a party after the show where I got my good shot. I got the impression he would have had more fun at this party if I would have photographed him all night long. Of course he only had that one expression. He seemed like a sweet man in over his head but so was I." Just as Nomi's "alien charisma" was nearing its pinnacle complete with television appearances, a record deal and European concert tours booked, he became increasingly ill. On Wikipedia and elsewhere the following dismal factoid is noted: "Nomi was one of the first celebrities to contract AIDS. He died in 1983 at the age of 39 as a result of complications from the disease." His performing career and life, like those of many artists of the era, was cut short and we are left to contemplate the ways he made something old new wave again.

Abigail Disney Case Study (No. 5)

Don't let the Disney name distract you. Abigail Disney (grandniece of Walt) produced Pray the Devil Back to Hell, a 2008 film directed by Gina Reitcker (whose credits include editing Michael Moore's "Roger and Me" and producing the PBS series WIDE ANGLE) with Kirsten Johnson as Director of Photography (whose cinematography is included in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and other Academy and Emmy-winning documentaries). Disney, an activist and philanthropist, chose to make her first film a documentary about the impact of the non-violent resistance of the women of Liberia.  They camped out praying, chanting with handmade signs calling for peace, printed peace t-shirts and threatened to strip naked in public (a cultural taboo that spoke volumes) to communicate their message of peace through the media and on the ground to leadership and world. Disney has amplified their actions in her film and will deliver a convocation titled Peace is Loud on Thursday, January 28 at 11:10 at Lawrence University Chapel.

Nicolas Bourriaud and The Radicant

"The last continent to be discovered is time" -- NB

The facebook Altermodern Quiz says we're "hanging on to the last Millenium" because our music comes in inches. How could we give up our collection of vintage vinyl in order to be fully 21st century Altermodern? Ananda Shankar's cover of Jumping Jack Flash? Xavier Cugat and his Rumbas or Klaus Nomi singing arias? The Altermodern Manifesto proclaims Post Modernism dead. Thank you. Through these social-networking and branding antics promoting last year's Altermodern exhibition at the Tate, curator Nicolas Bourriaud sought to "share an artistic and theoretic moment" with the artists in the show. He also authored The Radicant as a way to articulate the theory informing the exhibition and to "create a space for dialog" about "inventing this new modernity, which is global from scratch."

Laurie Anderson & Asha Srinivasan Case Study (No. 4)

"Take nothing for granted, nothing" -- LA
 

Laurie Anderson started out a biology major en route to a pre-med degree at Mills College.  In short order, she decided to head to New York City to study sculpture and art history at Barnard College/Columbia. The dream state induced by art history lectures, with vast projected images, inspired her approach to performance incorporating manipulated voice, projections and high and low technology. According to RoseLee Goldberg in her 2000 book Laurie Anderson, Anderson was "always fearless in the face of technology" inventing "new uses for old equipment by taking apart cheap electronic objects found in second hand shops on Canal Street near her loft, and putting the pieces back together again." By the 1970s, Anderson packed her bags with microphones, projectors, slides and a violin and headed to Europe were she performed in small galleries and alternative spaces. The US was slow to embrace her multimedia performances. When her Big Science LP came out on the Warner Brothers label in 1982, she became a pop crossover sensation. Who'd think we'd be seeing a baby listening to the CD version on YouTube and remixes of O Superman in many languages nearly 30 years later? Anderson, a Buddhist, has remained active inventing, performing, exhibiting for four decades. She has collaborated with Brian Eno, Lou Reed among others. The Paul Tschinkel documentary, Laurie Anderson: On Performance from 2001 provides a point of departure for considering how Anderson has combined electronic tinkering in the spirit of Les Paul with the experimental mania of the Fluxus artists, and the power of the voice in storytelling. She has been dubbed the "high-priestess of performance art/rock" and introduced the popular PBS ART 21 Series 1 on "place" in 2001. More recently, she has been commissioned to produce and perform Delusion for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics in February. Stay tuned.

Asha Srinivasan, a 21st-century Indian-American composer and Assistant Professor of Music (Theory/Composition/Electronic Music) at Lawrence, performs her compositions at festivals such as the Electroacousitic Juke Joint, Spark and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music. She considers herself a hybrid person, "I am American, but also Indian." She writes for western instruments and has western training but India has increasing been a source of inspiration for her work.  Her compositions mix traditions, artforms, ideas in her compositions that sometimes take on political issues such as capital punishment and historic personages such as Ghandi.  She strives to get away from technology for technology sake and is instead interested in what technology can do for a musical piece. In the post-Laurie Anderson era, she has collaborated on works that incorporate dance, fixed media, live music, performance and projections.

Marcia Bjornerud on Buckminster Fuller Case Study (No. 3)

"I always start with the  Universe" -- RBF

Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) and his ideas continue to be unpacked by experts and the public. A recent exhibition organized by the Whitney and traveling to the Museum of Contemporary Art re-contextualizes Fuller as a "Philospher. Forecaster. Designer. Poet, Inventor Advocate of alternative energy" and not just the inventor of the Geodesic Dome. Marcia Bjornerud, Lawrence University professor of Geology and Environmental Studies and author of Reading the Rocks, remembers building a cardboard dome as child after visiting the 1967 US Pavilion in Montreal. She can also identify how Fuller essentially anticipated ideas in her field of environmental science (e.g. systems thinking, looking for hidden "architectures" in nature, understanding the unsustainability of the fossil fuel economy) by decades. His ideas about optimization and doing the most with the least seem visionary even today and have replicated in the public consciousness like memes. His vision--that we are all astronauts on Spaceship Earth, not the theme park version at Epcot, makes more sense now than it may have when he began talking about it 1951. The World of Buckminster Fuller, a 1974 eighty-minute film by Robert Synder, documents Fuller's infamous oratory style. Fuller spoke for 10 hours at a time and rarely slept as he travelled around the world giving lectures. According to Elizabeth Kolbert in her New Yorker article, "Dymaxion Man", Fuller's architecture classes at Yale lasted from 9 a.m. to 5 pm. Audiences, she reports, were "enraptured and mystified." In today's Twitter speed world, his lectures might best be considered poetry, performance art or sermons. "Bucky" the Harvard dropout who sometimes referred to himself as Guinea Pig B, thought of his life as an experiment and set out to find out what an individual could do "on behalf of all humanity." The ripples are still being felt.