[Reader-list] reader-list Digest, Vol 63, Issue 151, Da indi code, operation evangelism.
rajendra bhat
raja_starkglass at yahoo.com
Sun Oct 26 15:11:14 IST 2008
This is purely a work of imaginations of looney moron but all the facts written are true and derived from the society that this moron lives in.
Bishops conference in Delhi.
It was solemn occassion. pope had okayed the sainthood for the Kerala sister Alfonso. Sister Abhayas' murder case in the seminary by the priest and nun was in the control mode of madam with CBI fudging the two reports of forensic lab, high court judge being assured of the promotion of elevation to supreme court, was slowly but steadily coming in line.
Now more important was the general elections in the country, decaying oldest party has had to do some emotional issue to rake up the communal passions and then the publicity would be effectively handled by the friendly journalist fraternity, some of whom were already awarded the awards of padmashri, some were released with ads from the national exchequer to see that media bosses were fully co-operative to side line the "communal" BJP., and bash the leadership of BJP also.
The action taken to appease hindu votes with raids in Jamianagar had backfired and that idiot Amar singh had messed it up with "intellectuals" breifed to be only dramatic had overdid the drama.That idiot Gulam nabi azad was told specifically to be careful to involve Mehbooba in announcing the lands for yatris, but that idiot had gone overboard and made mess of that also.. If that issue of 100 hectares of land "giving " had gone off smoothly, hindu votes in the rest of the nation would be big boost for the oldest party and BJP would have totally lost face as temple they had not been able to put in Ayodhya,was already working against their votes, thus they had let down the core votes of hindus.
Rahul has been asked to more active in mayanagari of uttarpradesh as madam can not be risked to move against maya, the most unpredictable leader of masses.
Oldest party has had track record of sidelining its popular leaders and loosing them to accidents right after 1969.First it was Shastri who met with poisonous death in Tashket thanks to KGB co-operation. indira had to control her son, who was becoming more popular, so accident it was for sanjay.Devaraj urs had given new life for Indira, but he was growing too big for his shoes, so another fatal dose of insulin by accident. rajesh and Scindia were now leaders with their own mass bases, something had to be done, so accidents do not happen, they are caused.
The group from Kerala had been the think tank of oldest party, but some had liking only for indirect violence, never direct involvement, so much sophistication come from only drinking salt water of gods own land.? Ofcourse the systematic buildup of support bases with those with christian spouses was complete and "inetellectuals' now left out by left had assured total help in deciphering DA INDI CODE.
Ravi , slaman and ajit had no issues in siding with madam, but the maharashtra strong man was secretive, with sugar lobby and pratibhas talent in the pool, controlling this pawar was not an issue,, but to tackle the pride was an issue in marati.
That the emotional dravidians could be easily held captive, because which ever be the party all that they would need is contracts to dredge the ocean, kickbacks in spectrum allocations and pie in power.Problem was in Karnataka with so many commune factions, the kurubas sulking for their leader siddhu, shivakumar acting for gowdas,lingayaths now deserting the oldest party was real headache and veerappa and poojary with loose talks did not help much to consolidate vote base.. margaret has been loosing along with these two consistently all the elections and catholic votes were slowly but steadily drifting towards the r BJP and Janatha parivars. That sangliana has promised to be true christian only after recieving the full amount and not before., was to be tackled on priority.Bishop moras promised to attend to these issues.
At this stage Bishop dsouza took out the blue print of DA INDI CODE JUST RECIEVED FROM HIGH COMMAND , highest body of german origin, Oscar had brought it when he went for the occassion of secular nation representing labour of the secular nation with secular christians representing secular nation. Plan was looking very complicated but actually was simple, it was hitting two birds with one stone, left which had ruined the oldest party by not only barking but now biting in the N-deal, had to be curtailed, so attack would be with lots of money to maoists, all killings would be done by maoists for a price. left had to keep quiet as they need them for their works also. The operation would start from southern states with attacks on prayer halls and arrogant idiots in bhajrang dal would claim the credit for attack,siiting thousand miles away, who shall be immediately neutralised by arrests
Orissa could be bit difficult, as the patnaik, western educated had clean good image, so threat of art.356 had to be used in correct measure. But a rape and few killings would help as new life and new hope had pumped enough money for the benefit of the christian rule, figures of population has been kept fudged at 2 percent with new converts have been asked to continue with their old names so that numbers would be realistic to evoke enough sympathy factor.?
That idiot, cunning pawar did something we bishops did not foresee, he has joined forces with junior beast of thackeray, and this lalu and paswan who are beasts themselves made things more difficult now as BJP will demand art. 356 in allied states also for law and order. be that may be, now we have to use the occassion to malign the BJP, catch some sadvis, police in maharashtra have agreed to co-operate for the next posting to CBI as directors and positions in plum posts, thanks to periera and reiberos.Any ways now that Uma is with us to hit at BJP, the job of change of perception of BJP will be much easier, we will attack advani and his secular trip to pakistan, violence of hindu terror and hindu votes will be scattered away from BJP and we will win and rule again. Even as safety net, we have our usual allies who are with us for power pie, lalu, paswan and only Mulayam is to be this time marginalised after an accident to amarsingh!
Confidential and secret
Madam has given a sphinx smile, so plan is approved...
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1. [Announcements] pourinfos Newsletter / 22-10 to 05-10-2008
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2. Fwd: Antarctica: An Artist Dialog (Iram Ghufran)
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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2008 15:23:38 +0200
From: xavier cahen <cahen.x at levels9.com>
Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] pourinfos Newsletter / 22-10 to
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:33:07 +0530
From: Iram Ghufran <iram at sarai.net>
Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Antarctica: An Artist Dialog
To: sarai list <reader-list at sarai.net>
Message-ID: <4904243B.4060906 at sarai.net>
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Subject:
Antarctica: An Artist Dialog
From:
Paul Miller <anansi5000 at gmail.com>
Date:
Sat, 25 Oct 2008 14:01:12 -0400
Hello people - this is an interview for an interesting conference coming
up at Columbia University/Barnard College called "Gender on Ice" coming
up in November. My film "Terra Nova: Sinfonia Antarctica" and Isaac
Julian's film "True North" will be featured.
An Interview with Paul D. Miller on his Antarctica film “Terra Nova” by
Elena Glasberg, ELENA GLASBERG. Adjunct Associate Professor, Princeton
University
Terra Nova – Sinfonia Antarctica trailer:
http://www.djspooky.com/art/terra_nova.php
Elena Glasberg
Question: When did Antarctica emerge into your world? Do you recall
images? Was it fiction? Or, learning of historic exploration figures?
Paul D. Miller
Response:
I guess some of my most formative film experiences come from early
cinema pieces like the two films – Melies ’ s 1902 “ The Conquest of the
North ” and the “false” history of Frederick A. Cook’s 1912 “The Truth
About the Pole” – I used to watch old films whenever I could, so I’d
catch this kind of strange dualism. Like the Lumiere brothers, Cook’s
film tried to portray itself as a realistic almost documentary kind of
scenario. I usually prefer the other school of though – Melies started
out as a magaician who wanted to apply magic technique to film. The two
films are about the opposite side of the planet from Antarctica, but
they’re both amazingly, eerily prescient about how discovery and the
“voyager’s path” would then take on almost surreal proportions. That’s a
similar motif for my “Terra Nova” and “Manifesto for a People’s Republic
of Antarctica” projects. They both use found footage, print-design, and
propaganda to show how exploration at the edge of the world is a prism
to view how nations look at one another, and how art itself is a highly
politicized medium. I guess you could say I’m inspired as much by Jules
Verne as I am by the exploration of the film “90 Degrees South” by
cinematographer Herbert G. Ponting, who was one of the first people to
get footage from Antarctica.
Elena Glasberg
Question: Your work engages in and emerges through tropes and modes of
globalism, the internet specifically. Yet you also dj for live
audiences. How does Antarctica figure within your view of a global
audience?
Paul D. Miller
Response:
For me, music isn't music - it's information. So much of my work comes
from the hard learned truth that collage speaks across many borders,
cultures, and yes, economic classes: if you want to deal with hip hop
and then give a lecture at places like Yale or Harvard, you really have
to be prepared to speak in academic pidgin as much as be able to flow in
the club scene etc. I never really thought of myself as “separate” from
the normal art and academic works that I create. My books, art shows,
and exhibitions are driven by the obsession I have with saying that
multi-culturalism, market forces, and the basic fabric of “The
Enlightenment” are interconnected. One of my favorite recent books
“Capital and Language” by Christian Marazzi - you can look at people
like him and his concept of new forms of “hoarding” as a way to engage
some kind of logic of culturally produced “value.” I always am astounded
at how little the artworld understands the kind of cultural economy that
dj culture emerges from. Nothing, after Wagner’s concept of
“gesamkunstwerk” exists in a vacuum: whether our culture is now taken
from youtube.com videos or material posted online from cell phones by
soldier’s in Iraq, we exist in a world where “documents” act as a kind
of testimony. But once something is recorded, it’s basically a file
waiting to be manipulated. That’s what links the concept of the remix to
everything going on these days – truth itself is a remix. Anyway, it’s
all about a new kind of relativism.
Elena Glasberg
Question: What do you think of Vaughan-Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica, as
music and as an historical artifact of an Antarctic vision?
Paul D. Miller
Response:
Vaughn Williams, it’s well documented, was pre-occupied with the concept
with the “end of empire” and the end of World War II. I really think
that’s when the concept of the British Empire and Commonwealth needed to
be re-examined, and if you look at the Indian liberation project of
Ghandi and Indian independence in 1947, that kind of stuff must have
really been foremost on the mind of the generation of composers that
needed to give the British something to think about after the war as a
way of looking forward to reconstruction. What had the war been about
except imperial ambition! By making Robert Scott, someone who had died
in service to the Empire, the film “Scott of the Antarctic” really set
the tone for how the twilight of the British Empire needed to look for
new heroes. Let’s not forget that the first composition to really engage
Antarctica started as a soundtrack for Vaughn'’s score to the film. I
enjoy playing with the concept of music as a mirror we hold up to
society – the Vaughn soundtrack, like the original music composed by
Joseph Carl Breil for D.W. Griffith’s film “Birth of a Nation” - was a
pastiche of themes and motifs that would speak to a film audience. I
wanted to update the same concept with turntables and digital media. I
really don’t think of music, film, and art as separate. There is a
seamless connection – it’s the creative mind at work.
Elena Glasberg
Question: I’m interested that you actually went to a part of the
Antarctic – I’m assuming the peninsula, by boat from South America. How
did your conception of Antarctica as a place interact with your embodied
presence? What was the most surprising aspect of being in Antarctica?
Paul D. Miller
Response:
I went to several islands, and ice fields that were near the Antarctic
peninsula but a little further down on the continent. I’ll be going back
in a while to check out more of the interior. We chartered a Russian ice
breaker called “The Academic Ioffe” and the next time I go, I’m going to
try and get to the Lake Vostok base. The most surprising thing about
Antarctica was the stench of penguin shit. You can smell them a mile or
so out in the water!!! I’m always “embodied” (I always tend to mix that
up with “embedded” these days anyway), so there’s no conflicted sense of
spatial issues that seems to haunt a lot of the discourse about what
physical performance is all about in a digital context. I live and
remember it all. The idea of the “journey” if you look at Melies film
“The Conquest of the North” from 1912, is still with us. It’s now just
“hyper-realism.”
Elena Glasberg
Question: Do you think people belong in Antarctica?
Paul D. Miller
Response: No
Elena Glasberg
Question: Why do people need to /hear/ Antarctica? How does this mode
distinguish itself from seeing Antarctica, which has been the
overwhelming mode since the turn of the last century and the accident of
near simultaneous advent of film photography and embodied access to the
inner continent? How do you see your mixed modes of approach –
embodiment and digitized representation - in the context of the history
of representing the (arguably) most mediated place on earth?
Paul D. Miller
Response:
Everything is I do is about paradox. It makes life fun. I think that
people need to “HEAR” Antarctica because it is at the edge of the world.
The idea of “mixed modes of approach” is a good term (of course, the
dominant theme in dj culture is “the mix” so there’s some salient
linkage there … ). The technical terms “heterodoxy” or “heterogeneity”
both find a solid home in me and my work. I celebrate that kind of
thing. One day, the software we use and the life we live will blur.
It'’s kind of already happened. But that’s why I go to places like
Antarctica. NY is probably one of the most mediated places on earth. If
I have a conversation at a café, someone will put it on a blog. If I
walk down the street, someone puts photos of it on flickr. It’s
irritating, but hey… it’s the way we live now. Antarctica represents a
place mediated by science – it’s literally almost another world.. Some of
my favorite science fiction writers like Kim Stanley Robinson’s
“Antarctica” or Crawford Kilian’s “IceQuake” who deal with Antarctica
come up with some of the same themes: science, art and the weirdly
un-worldliness of the ice terrain. I think of that kind of stuff as an
update of the speculative visions of Verne that inspired Melies with his
earlier films. My film “Terra Nova” and my gallery show “Manifesto for a
People’s Republic of Antarctica” are in the same tradition. Music from
the edge of the physical environment and music from the core of the
urban landscape. Watch them collide in paradox.
Elena Glasberg
Question: You work among a wide variety of audiences, purposefully and
joyously erupting into places not usually associated (variously) with dj
culture, beats, aural sophistication, and academic-style
intellectualization. Where do you place Antarctica within your work and
audience.
Paul D. Miller
Response:
I have a degree of comfort with new places that makes life in this hyper
turblulent and digitally abstract contemporary life. Life is hybrid and
always has been. It’s just that digital media is making us realize that
it’s not about the “end of Western culture” because of multi-culturalism
etc It’s actually giving Western culture a place in whatever else has
been going on. Which is healthy… I just roll with it all. Edward Said’s
critique of Western classical music as a kind of involuted “samizdat”
(as above, so below…), rings true for my work. I really think that the
distinctions that defined most of the 20 ^th century are almost gone.
Technology has moved far more quickly to transform our social structures
than anyone could have anticipated. Dj culture accepts this and
celebrates this kind of phenomenon precisely because it’s not linked to
the production of objects – it’s obsessed with continuous
transformation, and that’s where I live. In total flux.
Elena Glasberg
Question: You are intrigued by Antarctica’s geopolitical exception – its
lack of indigenous and its never-nationalized status now under the 1959
Antarctic Treaty System. I see this reflected in your playful echo of
the title of a 1981 novel by John Calvin Bachelor, /The People’s
Republic of Antarctica/ , in your marvelous poster series. How do you
see Antarctica -- as an exception to global politics? A demonstration of
alternative possibilities to history? An opportunity for fantasy? What
vision of propaganda and history inspired the poster series?
Paul D.. Miller
Response:
If you look at the 20 ^th century advertising, as Sigmund Freud’s nephew
Edward Bernays, who coined the term “public relations,” was the hidden
architecture holding both capitalism and communism together. Everyone
had to get their message out! Whether it was Stalin who said that
“engineers are poets of the soul” or Chairman Mao, who put teachers in
chains and paraded them as false prophets, the kind of “stay on message”
type ethos dominated the media discourse of every nation. With my
“Manifesto for a People’s Republic of Antarctica” print design projects
and my film projects – I simply ask the question: what if the nation
state went away? What centrifuge would we all then call home? What would
be the point of looking at the state as a kind of generative
architecture? Would who be commissioning the designs, who would be
fostering the arts? The answer: corporations. I use the ironic motif of
stuff like the British East India company or some of the ways that we
have corporate sponsorship of exploration/high endurance sports etc as
examples. If you look at Rodchenko’s designs or Malevich’s early
minimalism, you can see an echo of that in my work – the revolution for
the U.S. after the fall of the Berlin Wall was untrammeled capitalism.
Look around and see what it’s done for us! The only competing ideology
at this point is radical Islam. I’m not so sure that people would like
to embrace Sharia economics, but if they look at the Middle East,
there’s lots of solid banking going on (unlike Wall street this week). I
guess you could say that my work is kind of an aesthetic futures market
where any sound can be you. That’s what sampling is about. The Terra
Nova and Manifesto for a People’s Republic of Antarctica projects are
mirrors held up to a world that is melting. I don’t know about you, but
I think it’s a pretty strange mirror to see oneself in. I read John
Calvin Bathelor’s book and enjoyed it, but aside from “sampling” the
title (I do this a lot!), there’s not much of a connection – except that
his book is a meditation on the end of norms of governance.
Elena Glasberg
Question:
How are you creating the sounds of Antarctica? What is the technical
process and how does it reflect Antarctic representation, its
challenges, and its history?
Paul D. Miller
Response: My gallery installation at Robert Miller Gallery and Irvine
Fine Arts is loosely based on the “false” story of Frederick A. Cook –
who went North. “The Truth about the Pole” (1912) was a self-promotional
docudrama in which producer Frederick A. Cook sought to have himself
treated as a heroic adventurer who discovered the North Pole, a claim
he'd been making since 1909. No director wanted credit for making it.
Cook plays the starring role as himself. There is at least one appealing
set that attempts to be naturalistic, showing a frozen ship in the
distant background. Mostly it all looks pretty hooky. It's interesting
how little one needs for a quick jaunt to the Pole, a log-book, sled, &
American flag being the whole of it. All one requires to recover from
such an easy stroll is a nice wooden hut & one sip of coffee from a tin
cup. A silent film villain, Harry Whitney, is the evil scoundrel who
started the rumor that Cook's former claim to have climbed Mt McKinley
was a fabrication. This was (according to the revisions proposed by his
film) Whitney's newest salvo in a campaign to make Cook's polar
expedition appear to have been a hoax. I think it’s hilarious – I
repurpose this kind of thing, and flip it into Southern perspective. Who
owns the ice? Who owns the memory of the ice? My composition for the
installation at the galleries is based on gamelan music from the idea of
“shadow theater” mixed with string arrangements taken from my score to
Terra Nova. Debussy after all, was inspired by gamelan, and I guess you
could say ambient electronic music is about as “impressionist”
composition as you can get. I like the idea of ambiguity. It keeps you
on your feet, makes you think about paradox and the digital world of
relativity we live in today. When I went to Antarctica I wanted to have
a place where there was essentially a fresh perspective and where I
really needed to think about how I would interact with the environment
in a way that would free up some of the issues that drive normal hip
hop. The sounds in my projects come from nature – wind, water, the noise
of feet walking on ice… my project takes those sounds and uses them as
an acoustic palette. I mixed and remixed the material to the point that
bass lines come from wind and water movement, and the sound of human
breath can be a motif made into some kind of strange pattern. The score
for “Terra Nova” was written in a much more conventional way, but that’s
why I like to say I’m into paradox. You could almost say that the score
for Terra Nova is neo-Baroque, just on the edge of when everyone thought
that the Age of Reason had dealt a death blow to superstition in Europe.
Try telling that to Sarah Palin! I guess you could say that my project
is about the “sound of science.”
Elena Glasberg
Question: I’m struck by the influence of Gore’s documentary /An
Inconvenient Truth/ on subsequent representation of the Antarctic. I’m
thinking in particular of all the computer graphic simulations of
melting ice sheets in a pristine and remote Antarctic and the resultant
rises in sea levels of very well known urban locations. Do you see your
work in such a context of politicized – or catastrophic - simulation?
Paul D. Miller
Response:
I’m a big Paul Virilio fan…. Let’s call Terra Nova in terms of theory
speak (it’s just a different pidgin language after all): trajectories of
the catastrophic, or pure war. Antarctica isn’t a place: it’s a
location. It’s kind of like saying Buddhism isn’t a religion: it’s a
philosophy. Everyone knows that, but they still get it wrong. I always
try to get people to think about conceptual frames of reference: context
is important in my work, and so is content. How do you establish an
uneasy tension between context and content when everything can be
remixed and changed, and there’s no final “version” of anything? In my
film “Terra Nova” that kind of graphic design imprint is crucial to how
the story is told. If you look at the old Terra Nova expedition of
Robert Scott, you can only think: wouldn’t it have been great if they
had satellite footage to tell them they weren’t that deep into the ice,
and to compare some different routes to get out of the drift their ship
was caught in. Stuff like Apsley Cherry Garrad’s infamous “The Worst
Journey in The World” where he says “Polar exploration is at once the
cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been
devised,” is one of the most succinct ways one could put this simple
observation. Melting ice sheets look cool, but then again, so do solar
flares on the surface of the sun. They’re both harmful… but hey.. art
makes things look cool.
Elena Glasberg
Question: Your film will be debuting at the democratic convention in
August. How exciting. Obama will presumably see it. What would you like
him to see, to respond to, and to promote in his election platform (and
possible administration)?
Paul D. Miller
Response:
I really think it’s time to say goodbye to the 20 ^th century. So yes,
the Obama convention with Dialog City as the focal point for the
contemporary art scene was a breath of fresh air for me. I really liked
premiering my film at the Denver Opera House. The Colorado art scene is
a lot more progressive than NY! I think Obama will probably be one of
the greenest presidents since Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White
House. The Republicans went crazy, but in hindsight, it was really
really really cool. I likestuff like that – that’s why I premiered
Terra Nova at the Democrats convention.I think of Terra Nova as a
reflection site – a location for the politics of perception that we use
to look at the environment.
Elena Glasberg
Question: Antarctica and in particular the South Pole have been fantasy
objects for US and European imperialism since the early 1900s. Authors
populated the unknown south with wishful fantasies of lost races, arable
lands, and mineral wealth. Postcolonial nations such as Argentina,
Chile, and even Malaysia have fought and argued to be included among the
arbiters of Antarctica’s possible riches. How do you negotiate
nationalism and the history of imperialism in your own approach to the
territory?
Paul D. Miller
Response:
You really have to think about Antarctica as a “possible terrain” – it’s
a surface we project on, but it doesn’t reflect us back. I always think
of the phrase Bruce Sterling says: the suicide bomber is the poor mans
cruise missile. There’s always going to be conflict over resources as
long as people think everything is completely limited. The weird thing
about the 21 ^st century is that we have perspective. That’s something
the warring empires of the past didn’t. We have history, comparative
science, and above all, a sense of urgency with regard to global
warming. And guess what – we still can’t get it together. Some of the
best recent films dealing with Antarctica: Werner Herzog’s “Encounters
at The End of The World” or the anti-whaling film “At the Edge of the
World” both have this kind of “rebel/misfit scientist” take on the
expatriate community that lives in Antarctica. The cracks in the mirror
are where some of the best images are to be found. Antarctica, for me,
is just a really big crack in the way we look at the land claims of the
“great nations” – I really think that my film project is a cinema-scape
in the same tradition of Nam Jun Paik, John Cage’s “Imaginary Landscape”
or Edgar Varese and Scriabin’s visual essays turned into sound.
Imperialism is such a concrete process: take the land, brainwash the
natives, make the people back home think it’s all being done in their
name… The problem with the 21 ^st century for that kind of schemata is
that no one really believes it any more. It’s just one fiction of many.
I tend to think that that’s a good thing. It’s time for a fresh
kaleidoscope! We need more paradox than we can possibly know right now.
And Antarctica is the place to manifest that kind of paradox. After all,
it’s the end of the world. I want us to look over the edge…
Elena Glasberg
Question:
The majority of people on earth will never come near Antarctica. How do
you want them to think of their relation to this remote and highly
mediated territory? Do you feel that you’re operating with a (excuse the
phrase) blank screen, or do preconceptions of the region cloud
collective action?
Paul D. Miller
Response:
How do people hear Antarctica? It’s a question that lingers over this
interview. Unmoored, unleashed, free floating - sampling derives it's
sense of free cut and paste aesthetics from the interplay of the kind of
"rip, mix, and burn" scenario of the 21st century's information economy.
But there are so many cultural resonances that kick in when we think
about "appropriation art." I love to throw in allusions and word play –
it mirrors what I do with sound, so excuse the aside: In 1964 Ralph
Ellison, one of my favorite writers, read a statement at the Library Of
Congress about the possibility of an artform made of fragments. The
lecture was called "Hidden Name and Complex Fate" and basically it was a
manifesto about a series of poems and music that was made into a "mix"
of music that influenced him. It was kind of a "sonic memorial" made of
fragments from artists and composers as diverse as Duke Ellington, Louis
Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Mahalia Jackson - but the selection was meant
to be a literary scenario that evoked music as a kind of text.
Of the jazz legends he invoked in his discussion, he simply wrote that
"the end of all this discipline and technical mastery was the desire to
express an affirmative way of life through its musical tradition... Life
could be harsh, loud and wrong if it wished, but they lived it fully,
and when they expressed their attitude toward the world it was with a
fluid style that reduced the chaos of living to form." As an artist,
writer, and musician, this kind of hybridity is something that drives my
work. I'm inspired by the destruction of old, boring, ways of thinking
and feeling, by the casting into the flames of obsolence all the stupid
old categories that people use to hold the world back from the interplay
of uncontrolled "mixing." Yeah, I say - we need to mix and remix
everything. There is no final version of anything once it's digital. Is
this a mirror we can hold up to society in the era of information
overload? Dj mixes, freeware, open source media... yeah - they say it is
possible. Antarctica is a realm of possibility because put simply, very
few people are aware of its story. That in itself is a rare and elusive
quality that the beginning of the 21 ^st century has brought front and
center into modern perspective: there’s strength in invisibility. You
have to think of the landscape and the way artists interact with it.
John Cage’s “Imaginary Landscape” from 1939 was composed of records
playing frequencies. But if you fast forward to his composition “In a
Landscape” from 1948, you can easily see early taste for percussion
instruments and "found sounds," as well as his interest in embedded,
recursive rhythmic structures, while the last two of the series,
composed in 1951 and 1952, exhibit the influences of Cage's experiments
with various kinds of pre-compositional chance operations. I think that
is what resonates with Antarctica for me: the space to be sonically
free. After all: it’s the only place on Earth with no government. What’s
the soundtrack to that?
Elena Glasberg
Question:
Most reporting on Antarctica these days tends toward the catastrophic:
ice melting, penguins starving, and now oil prices so high that
scientific research programs themselves are financially threatened with
extinction. What’s your main message amid this noise? And what if,
anything, do you think is the greatest threat to Antarctica directly? To
the globe more generally?
Paul D. Miller
Response:
See above!
------------------------------
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