[Reader-list] Antarctica: An Artist Dialog

[Paul Miller]

Hello Iram, and thanx for  responding to the post. One thing - I shot  
and put together a film, but it's also an art installation. I just  
thought I'd clarify.

in peace,
Paul aka Dj Spooky


On Oct 26, 2008, at 4:03 AM, Iram Ghufran wrote:

>
> 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 knowabout 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 like stuff 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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