Month: February 2022

small steps against inertia

During the creation of my radio piece I was inspired by Coil’s music to play in the dark, and John/Jhonn Balance’s spoken performance on tracks such as Are You Shivering? and Broccoli.

My recent blogs have been quite meandering so I thought I’d collect and link a few things together:

My attraction to soundscapes, Chantel Akerman’s D’Est, agoraphobia, travelling through soundscapes, KLF’s Chill Out, Boards of Canada style plundering of a disconnected soundscape.

I’m not a well-travelled person and I’m often a bit of a recluse.

However I do try to read. Practical versus theory.

Below I uploaded something I made in 2020. I created it during a period of personal isolation, I often wouldn’t leave the house for weeks at a time (apart from walking the dog at midnight) and it probably reflects this – Looking through the crack of curtains at night into pure darkness.

It was made through sampling my favourite moments of D’Est, and was inspired by my listening to a lot of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Grouper, William Basinski and Tim Hecker.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I0BnyykKX4SwrHkgldOHjIFn2k7XzaeC/view?usp=sharing

Soundscape. Akerman.

Listening, waiting for something to happen. Slow paced, patience. Not tension or anticipation. boredom, mundanity, human perception.

Drifting.

I have always spent most of my time in escapism, be it in books, games, films. It’s one of the things that got me interested in working with sound. For me, music is one of the most emotional forms. We make strong emotional connections to sound and music.

I rarely listen to music outside of headphones, though I have been using speakers more since living away from home. Wearing headphones moves you to a different realm.

Do I want to create escapism?

That was something that always appealed to me with computer games, and part of why I’ve always wanted to make games – in combination with the concept of pure possibility both mechanically and aesthetically.

There’s something of a notion that escapism isn’t a practical thing. That its idle daydreaming, selfish individualism and unproductive.

Productive escapism. Utopia.

The act of creating impactful productive escapism is a fulfilling concept for me in the purpose of an artist and their art. In one half it fulfils the want to escape, to dream and shut out the world. The other half fulfils the want for social change, utopia.

Since starting this course I have been confused about my conception of ‘the artist’. Before attending uni I’ve always wanted to be someone who creates things, whether that’s designing and making art for games, graphic design or working with sound. Although conscientious, I am admittedly stubborn, and could/cannot see myself doing anything that is not creating things (what sounds like an awfully privileged mindset.) There’s something quite uncomfortable about someone calling themselves an artist as if what they create is some ethereal thing above the ordinary.

A slight tangent, this was not something I thought about much when I was young – My Mum used to draw illustrations of peoples houses for them and when asked what my parents did, I would probably somewhat smugly declare my mother an artist.

While watching the visiting practitioner zoom calls I have frequently thought to myself what the point is a certain person’s work is. I do think it’s rude of me, however, these feelings should not be repressed. Is this just ignorance in not understanding their work? Personally, I feel as though it isn’t (though I don’t deny in some cases it will be.)

I feel it is the role of the artist to create work that is not a commodity.

What I’ve written about productive escapism is something I’m deciding on. During the zoom call with Yan Jun he talked about ‘Tang Ping’ (lying flat), a movement in China. I was also reading about the anti-folk genre, rejecting the seriousness of folk music. A lot of Jun’s Work is similar to this, rejecting the seriousness, and ‘subverting’ the culture.

I’d say that that’s just how things work though, culture constantly shifts from fashionable to unfashionable. The only permanent thing is change.