Rock My World: Recent Art and the Memory of Rock 'n' Roll

[Group exhibition catalogue]
Rock My World: Recent Art and the Memory of Rock 'n' Roll
San Francisco, USA: CCAC, 2002
95 pp., 5" x 7", hardcover
Edition size unknown


Small catalogue for an exhibition held from March 23rd to May 11th, 2002, at the CCAC, surveying new art that draws on rock music as a critical reference point. The catalog includes three essays: "Untimely Meditations" by Ralph Rugoff, "Time Out of Mind: Video Art, Romanticism, and Radical Nostalgia" by Ann Powers, and "Mutations: Some Thoughts on the Work of Jeremy Deller, Martin Creed, and Margaret Thatcher" by Matthew Higgs (the curator at the CCAC Wattis Institute).

The featured artists include Jessica Bronson, Martin Creed, Jeremy Deller, Sam Durant, Rodney Graham, Evan Holloway, Christian Marclay, Erik Parker, Dario Robleto, Marina Rosenfeld, Steven Shearer, Frances Stark and Mungo Thomson.

Alan Licht | Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories

Alan Licht
Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories
New York City, USA: Rizzoli, 2007. Hardcover.
304 pp., 16 x 3.1 x 23.5 cm., hardcover
Edition size unknown

A rare still-in-print single author overview of the subject, Licht's title features a foreword by Jim O'Rourke (see below) and a compact disk with almost an hour of material, including Harmonic Bridge by Bill Fontana, Rust by Steve Roden, Terre Foisonnante by Jean Dubuffet, Jam Smear by Destroy All Monsters, Still And Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas by Alvin Lucier and 57A by Bernhard Gal.

Sound By Artists

Dan Lander and Micah Lexier (editors)
Sound By Artists
Toronto, Canada/Banff, Canada: Art Metropole/Walter Phillips Art Gallery, 1990
386 pp., 22.5 x 14.5 x 3 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

The most enduring aspect of Art Metropole's publishing ventures is the ...by Artists series, which is now 37 years old and features 7 titles. It began in 1976 with the publication of Video by Artists (edited by Peggy Gale), one of the first books on the subject of artists' video. It was followed by Performance by Artists in 1979 (edited by AA Bronson and Peggy Gale), Books by Artists in 1981 (edited by Tim Guest and Germano Celant), Museums by Artists in 1983 (edited by AA Bronson and Peggy Gale and with a cover by Daniel Buren), Video by Artists II in 1986 (edited by Elke Town), and Sound by Artists in 1990. While I was at Art Metropole I was working on a title called Retail by Artists, with Jordan Sonenberg, which eventually was released as Commerce By Artists (2011, edited by Luis Jacob).

All of the above titles - with the exception of Video by Artists II and Commerce By Artists - are long out of print and sell for many times the cover price on the secondary market. The first Video by Artists sells for around three hundred dollars, and Performance... and Museums by Artists for between one and two hundred dollars.  Sound by Artists, which is considered (alongside Broken Music) one of the most important volumes on the subject, is typically valued at between $300 and $500.

This price may come down with the launch today of the reprint, published by Blackwood Gallery and Charivari Press, though I imagine the flexidisk included in the original (much like Broken Music) is a big part of the appeal for collectors. Called Soundpage, it's a clear flexi record by Christian Marclay, that is bound into the book, and therefore unplayable. It's a record object much like the 12" vinyl disks Marclay was releasing at the time.

The reprint does not include the disk, but is close to facsimile in most other ways, I understand. It includes essays, artist projects, a discography and bibliography.

The texts includes The Future of Music: Credo by John Cage, The sound of One Line Scanning by Bill Viola, Listen by Max Neuhaus, parole / mots / words / wörter by Maurizio Nannucci (see recent post), Speaker Swinging by Gordon Monahan, Cut and paste: Collage and the Art of Sound by Kevin Concannon, I am sitting in a room by Alvin Lucier, Audio art in the Deaf Century by Douglas Kahn (see Noise Water Meat, below) and Mimicry by Rita McKeough. Other contributors include Daina Augaitis, Bruce Barber, Max Bruinsma, Moniek Darge & Godfried-Willem Raes, Suzanne Delehanty, Jack Goldstein, Graf Haufen, Ihor Holubizky, Richard Kostelanetz, Christina Kubisch, Marysia Lewandowska, Annea Lockwood, Donal McGraith, Ian Murray, Mystery Laboratory, R. Murray Schaeffer, Stelarc, Rod Summers, Gregory Whitehead, Hildegard Westerkamp and Caroline Wilkinson.

One of my favorite chapters, written by Kevin Concannon (who often writes about Yoko Ono, and artists' advertisements), can be read here.

To purchase the new reprint (for $19.95), contact Julia Abraham, the Curatorial Assistant (and Collections and Archives Manager) at Blackwood, at j.abraham@utoronto.ca.

Sound By Artists Launch

Blackwood Gallery has scheduled an afternoon's worth of events to celebrate the re-printing of the seminal Sound By Artists anthology, edited by Dan Lander and Micah Lexier.*

The events begin tomorrow (Sunday February 3rd) at noon and run until 6pm, in the Music Room at Hart House, University of Toronto (7 Hart House Circle, Toronto). Admission is free.

12:00 – 1:30 Thinking Sound
Seth Kim-Cohen
Respondent: Martin Arnold

1:30 – 2:30 Editing Sound
Launch of Sound by Artists, conversation between Dan Lander and Jim Drobnick

2:30 – 4:00 Making Sound
Marla Hlady, David Merritt and Juliana Pivato
Moderator: Adi Louria-Hayon

4:00 – 5:30 Curating Sound
Nicole Gingras and Christof Migone
Moderator: Barbara Fischer

While there, check out the Christof Migone exhibition Volume: Hear Here, with works by Mitchell Akiyama, crys cole, Marla Hlady, Neil Klassen, David Lieberman, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Sylvia Matas, David Merritt, Ryan Park, Juliana Pivato, Alexandre St-Onge, Chiyoko Szlavnics, and John Wynne.

*See next post for details on the book.

Douglas Kahn | Noise Water Meat

Douglas Kahn
Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts
Cambridge, USA: The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1999
455 pp., 24 x 19 cm., hardcover
Edition size unknown


Contents:

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Listening Through History; Prelude: Modernism; Explanations and Qualifications
Part I: Significant Noises
1. Immersed in Noise
Sentient Sound; Interpolation of Noise; Protean Noise; Oscillator Noise
2. Noises of the Avant-Garde
Bruitism; Noise and Simultaneity; the Future of War Noises
Part II: Drawing the Line: Music, Noise, and Phonography
3. Concerning the Line
Resident Noises; the Gloss of the Gliss; Beethoven at Fifty Times Per Second; "I, the Accelerated Line"
4. The Sound of Music
Demarcated Sounds; Drawing the Line in Theory; Synesthesia as Noise Abatement
5. Ubiquitous Recording
The Rotary Revolution; Russian Revolutionary Film
Part III: The Impossible Inaudible
6. John Cage: Silence and Silencing
Much to Confess About Nothing; Canned Silence; Silencing Techniques; Cage and the Impossible Inaudible
7. Nondissipative Sounds and the Impossible Inaudible
Inaudibly Loud, Long-Lasting, Far-Reaching; Machines of Nondissipation
8. The Parameters of All Sound
Loud Sounds; Conceptual Sounds
Part IV: Water Flows and Flux
9. A Short Art History of Water Sound
Water Music; Dripping; Surrealism and Submerged Women
10. In the Wake of Dripping: New York at Midcentury
The Object of Performance; Allan Kaprow: Immersed Noisician; George Brecht's Drip Music
Part V: Meat Voices
11. Two Sounds of the Virus: William Burroughs's Pure Meat Method
A Culture for Growing Viruses; Schlupping; on Goo Behavior; the Cancer Virus; Cellular Phones
12. Cruelty and the Beast: Antonin Artaud and Michael McClure
Artaud in America; Musical Artauds: Tudor and Cage; Beats Language; Beast Language; Affected and Afflicted Screaming; Seraphic Screams and the Tortuous Blast
Notes
Index

Broken Music

(Ursula Block, etc)

Broken Music 

278 pp., 26 x 21 cm., softcover

Berlin, Germany: Daadgalerie: 1992

Edition size unknown

From (the English translation of) Block's introduction: "Broken Music shows works of visual artists created with and for the medium of the record: records, record-covers, record-objects, record-installations. In contrast to the composer or musician who perceives the record first and foremost as a vehicle transpoting his musical ideas, the visual artist is especially interested in the optical as well as acoustical presence." 

A curator and dealer, Block is one of the leading authorities on the subject and the proprietor of the artists' record store in Berlin called Gelbe Musik. She is married to curator and publisher Rene Block.

The book is a compendium of artists' recordworks, many of which are illustrated, and the volume also includes a chronology, bibliography, and a flexi-disk record by Czechoslovakian Fluxus artist (and progenitor of altered records in art) Milan Knízák. 

The artists featured in the book include Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, Laurie Anderson, Guillaume Apollinaire, Karel Appel, Arman, Hans Arp, Antonin Artaud, John Baldessari, Hugo Ball, Claus van Bebber, John Bender, Harry Bertoia, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Mel Bochner, Claus Böhmler, Christian Boltanski, K.P. Brehmer, William Burroughs, John Cage, Henri Chopin, Henning Christiansen, Jean Cocteau, William Copley, Philip Corner, Merce Cunningham, Hanne Darboven, Jim Dine, Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Peter Fischli, David Weiss, R. Buckminster Fuller, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Jack Goldstein, Peter Gordon, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Bernard Heidsieck, Holger Hiller, Richard Huelsenbeck, Isidore Isou, Marcel Janco, Servie Janssen, Jasper Johns, Joe Jones, Thomas Kapielski, Allan Kaprow, Martin Kippenberger, Per Kirkeby, Milan Knížák, John Lennon, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Anna Lockwood, Paul McCarthy, Meredith Monk, Hermann Nitsch, Frank O'Hara, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg, Dieter Roth, Kurt Schwitters, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Jean Tinguely, Tristan Tzara, Ben Vautier, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, Emmett Williams, and many others. 

Considered one of the most important catalogues on the subjects, this volume is difficult to find on the secondary market, and typically sells for between $400 and $600. I used to plead with former employers to sell me their copy, but was told by one (Don Lake) "I can't sell that book. That book makes me money." I then would constantly check for it on Ebay, until Sting published a memoir with the same name, rendering searches futile. I met Block in Berlin a few years ago and, after initially telling me "no, no, I don't have copies of that to sell", I traded her a copy of Sound By Artists (see forthcoming post, this week) for a still-sealed copy of Broken Music. 

Germano Celant | The Record as Artwork

Germano Celant
The Record as Artwork: From Futurism to Conceptual Art
Fort Worth, USA: The Fort Worth Art Museum, 1977
121 pp., 17.5 x 17.5 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown


An exhibition catalogue published in conjunction with the show held at the Fort Worth Art Museum, Texas, December 4, 1977 - January 15, 1978. The exhibition, which also traveled to the Moore College of Art Gallery in Philadelphia, the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Montreal and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, featured artists' records from the personal collection of Germano Celant (who had previously published a book with a similar title, in 1973: The Record as Artwork). Artists featured include Kurt Schwitters, Yves Klein, Allan Kaprow, Jan Dibbets, Sarkis, Topor, Jack Goldstein, Jean Tinguely, etc.. Includes a discography and a list of works. Text in English and French.

Michael Nyman | Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond

Michael Nyman
Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond
New York City, USA: Schirmer Books, 1974.
154 pp., 25 x 15 x 1.8 cm., cloth
Edition size unknown


Michael Nyman remains best known for his score for Jane Campion's The Piano, and for his longstanding creative relationship with director Peter Greenaway. Nyman scored films all of Greenaway's features from The Falls in 1980 to Prospero's Books in 1991, after which they had a falling out over what Nyman saw as a disrespectful use of his music.

Six years prior to their collaborations, Nyman published this early look at experimental music. The book looks at composers and musicians (John Cage, John Cale, Gavin Bryars, Earle Brown, Cornelius Cardew, Henry Cowell, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, etc.) as well as artists (George Brecht, Robert Ashley, Dick Higgins, Alvin Lucier, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg, etc.).

The chapters include:

1. Towards (a definition of) experimental music
2. Backgrounds
3. Inauguration 1950–60: Feldman, Brown, Wolff, Cage
4. Seeing, hearing: Fluxus
5. Electronic systems
6. Indeterminacy 1960–70: Ichiyanagai, Ashley, Wolff, Cardew, Scratch Orchestra
7. Minimal music, determinacy and the new tonality

Many scores are reproduced, though it is noted that copyright issues prevented the inclusion of notation by Cage, Christian Wolff or Morton Feldman. The second edition includes a new forward by Brian Eno (who included Nyman as one of the ten artists in his Obscure Records series in the mid-seventies) an updated discography, and a historical overview by the author.


The first ten pages of the reissue can be viewed here.

*Nyman was unavailable to provide music for the 1987 Greenaway film The Belly of an Architect, which was scored by Wim Mertens, who has also published a book on 'experimental music': American Minimal Music, 1988