3 peter manson from “sourdough mutation” 8 malcy duff letterbox 9 SOME RESPONSES TO the evacuation of the great learning INSTAL 2010 14 ASH REID G O U D E N U D E LA I DT OT H E S LYT H M 16 ROB LYE (Title Withheld) (Detail) 18 MARK WEST LOUD SILENCE: THE OBJECT VOICE & LANCE OLSEN’S HEAD IN FLAMES 24 GREG THOMAS poems 2010
peter manson from “sourdough mutation”
siren mares to the river open source
• a dove in salt occurs loan sharks attest
• gazon gazette
• devalued lute oud glut
• styptic gel core of anger berates perborate bystander apathy
• covert aquifer off-hand dowse
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soil improver orpiment moves in oil
• escrow workers berserk hair shirt treasury users do ersatz Tzara ra ra ra
• future mature you stammers a mercy-dash shadow sermon no mercy sees you o useless semen nemesis is blind
• listless eyesore roseate eros belittled deltoid noiseless trilemma ameliorates pay your rates
• gum-loving ribbon lips spill no complete boletus when first I saw the mushroom head dead though I was I saw that my caul be tanned and shade in the flash my ginkgo a poet tattooed
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sow rhymes with P.O.W. in serenity a stye inheres to do nothing with
• all a colloidal dalliance you rue the odyssey fit of inhibitory scum to risk all on musk a renaissance scepter redacted mania was calmed to berserk ammo moist stoma oiled little pharma laid dialled-in bravo arbiters weep alleged ending
• bell elbow wobbles this house issues knees to choose scenic senescence over sound recto plasma breath therapy pyrethrum id pin-eyed Diana glyphs inking cobra seers Ptah hatpin at pinnacle of Cleo
• heroic coir choir heir today a dot on tomorrow’s horizon no zeros to warm monotony why not in ominous ouster o id bleeding dong
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toy yacht ungrateful some emotional tome comet tail garlic split chloroform rag outsourced ludicrous eel over eyesore sister shunned of yore arrived to bank occlusive visual is well lucid pellucid yod jealous idiot toadies in pain step up to the brie oche choir be thought puppets emetic ketamine enematheque
• lips anvil bodies pretty girning tank anchor circuit what bisects rhyme Amherst patty thirsts aver salt rook alter nates a test eaten sated salt rising dough coughed ahead
• garbled dry hirpling ensign if I can’t antagonise by tagging his ginseng awed killer relict precarious debt debut I milk a dying bet his wall locks smiled mild rap interjections shunted hapless listerine blistered turducken cover me ill matched cheddarised Sir
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in gold so red
policy of herpes meant to please a clubbed seal debulked lubber lube ebullient nihilism resilient easy lies salep cutter pales away from signed gnawed known now owning non-garrulous soul retching
drypoint blanks
anxiety etiquette to ride peridot yew topiary hates you bless lesson or a take on conic sub wayfaring sectile shallow halls pike epic fail a tiny basic kissability billet do-wop loops upside germicidal misdialled allegation crocs rock your scoria of metals in fusion noisefloor lures a lum bagel gelatinised latin pan alloy meaner aneroid hem meh diorama right or wrong gnaws swanlike aniline fisher dog is heard eardrum murdering fenced passivisation imp here I go a tergo ogre ekphrastic finally dross
• comma and oh passionless home ocean noise gate belong at a bell deck talkers crisp response sonant you catch up on hooks
bellows blown below
Moloch honed a pow sound horny gall wasp seen lagging termites it escapes from form renascent packet botox chewer of tares strenuous green bang blustering sham delirium sucks all aerating tongs foe minded beat descendent a featherless bawbag that likes drugs
crestfallen gong cast to LC time constant tanner talks caraway in among olive pits got ergot Ebow tannic spit evolve love collar boat cobra seer little eye polltax timeout your edentate talisman with fingernails
Edited by Greg Thomas
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SOME RESPONSES TO the evacuation of the great learning INSTAL 2010
The Evacuation of the Great Learning was a three-day series of workshops at Instal 2010 in which Ray Brassier, Mattin and the nebulous Glasgow Open School joined with anyone else who wanted to attend and endeavoured to think about improvisation and the festival, and devise the last evening’s events. On the Sunday evening, the main space was given over to improvised movement in an event named ‘Dare to Dance’; a loose group of workshop participants joined and left a covers band ineptly playing karaoke favourites next door; some readings happened in the foyer; a male workshop participant re-enacted Vanessa Place’s powerful reading from earlier in the festival; a conversation happened between Mattin, Brassier and attendees upstairs; and some smaller groups and individuals made sounds in spaces around the Tramway. This is our impressionistic remembering of it; we couldn’t find a review that discussed the Sunday. We invited some workshop participants to relect upon the experience.
1. LIAM CASEY Can we start from nothing, or was there something already here? The social relation of this journal. Or us gathering in a space. I'm struggling. Some people came together and they struggled too. To be together. I'm trying to share that with you. A voice for collective action. I won’t be identified. I'm here to recall a moment – now past, being reenacted now, now looking back at previous efforts. Let’s
claim those efforts were for us. These things happened and we don’t start from nothing. Can we play together this page as an instrument? The social relations here; this paper, this ink, this rubbing and turning, this crease – this fragile context: from stasis emerges swells of risk, safety breached- these voices, testimonies forming an all too easy pluralism – or commanality uncovered in dischord at this union of difference – improvising on a contentious zone? Will these extracts be assembled to give a consensus – or to dismantle once-tight testimonies – the publisher’s word may be the last word here – can the writers trust the publishers? – can they play off each other without having done so live, still held together by the complicity in the act being testified to? Emerging from contradiction, obfuscation, reversions to self-expression – the immanent commonality, the collective experience, the struggle to improvise To be the network to be the rhizome each moving independently (read deleuze) union of difference – where is the cause – grasp it – can this collective become whole – where does it move – does it uncover new territory is this added or reformulated or fallen upon and now new? Uncreating towards (with eyes closed)
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the real. Desubjectifying. Getting out of my warm shit. Getting rid of my habitual self. Leave it open to sabotage – make sabotage redundant. CONDUIT 2. TOM BETTERIDGE A Confused Response to The Evacuation of the Great Learning Workshops & Performance, Instal 2010 Consider tension the grounding principle of both the drive to improvise & the improvisation itself; of the former, the feeling that something must change, that something is to be overcome; of the latter, the tension between impulse & restraint, between call & response, between audience & performer, between the artificial & the real. Improvisation is at once of the world then, but posited against its representation. And, in its various guises as sound-making, situationmaking, social space-making, it has the capacity to explore tensions inherent to social being, where that being is grounded in the continuous reinscription of capitalist relations of production - if there is to be a politicised improvisation perhaps it is to start here. Improvisation is at once reactive then, in its response to acceptable artistic form, acceptable sound, acceptable space, and a method of creative engagement in all of these inscriptions, through the protracted and unstable investigation of their precarious rigidity. Utilising improvisation’s explorative capacity, we may begin to approach a performance that thinks, that punches holes in visible knowledge and our web of social relations. With particular reference to sound-
making, ‘self-expression’ is often invoked implicitly or explicitly as the point of departure for performance. Consider the symptomatic and familiar axis of its utilisation: astride one end, the autistic escapist who, alone, sounds a bell in the woods, and falling off the other end, a catharsis of selves blowing out. At the one end we find performative hermeticism; the reaction to tension takes the form of escape, in this case to a realm deemed impenetrable by the commodification of performance. This reaction erases the problematic. The performer reacts to tension, yes, but refuses the possibility of engagement afforded by improvisation; subsumed under one body, the relationship between audience and performer, for example, is elided. More interesting, and more familiar in experimental music, is an approach to improvisation that harnesses the opposite end of this axis: the invocation of selfexpression in collective sound-making. The reaction to tension is in these cases, it seems, characterised by the will to break with the mediation of exchangevalue and acceptable categorisations. What results is all too often recourse to the spontaneous, to the impulsive, to some notion of direct expression, and, in its lack of restraint, the ultimate purging of tension via catharsis. catharsis n. 1. Purgation. 2. Outlet to emotion afforded by drama etc. or (Psych.) by abreaction. Catharsis produces a blank slate, the potential for the performance to last beyond itself is foreclosed. Yet, simultaneously, this cathartic flash-inthe-pan is utterly stable, it is completely visible, even expected - the cathartic
crisis of the individual is an encouraged response to social relations, for it expels the energy of subversion, purges the individual of their desire to engage with a problematic, and reinscribes the expressive romantic sub-hero as the point of departure for artistic practice. Under late capitalism, it is precisely the myth of the expressive subject’s autonomy that is most heavily proliferated. Catharsis forecloses improvisation’s capacity to think against what’s deemed visible in this way. Further, catharsis is immediate in its force. The purging of suffering is transparent in its immediacy, but results in opacity, in the blocking of prolonged engagement. It reaches some sort of universalism in its immediate comprehension then, but this is a universalism imbued with pathos for the suffering human animal; the suffering is not engaged with or overcome, it is pitifully expelled. Indeed, we might agree with Adorno that “To say something out loud is to put some distance between oneself and the immediacy of suffering, just as screaming helps mitigate great pain.”1 To work from self-expression towards a cathartic release is to distance that tension and leave it unexplored. Moreover, the collective experience of cathartic performance is to elide the subversive potential of the collective from the outset, for this gesture towards collectivity is quickly subsumed by each instance of individual impulsive release: restraint is required. The resort to catharsis, to shrugging off the tension, is to render the problematic at the heart of politicised improvisation over; both ‘performer(s)’ and ‘audience’ leave the room as they came in, grasping no lasting effects. If improvisation is to use tension as its material, then to present the stability of the cathartic moment is to deny this material.
Against this cathartic purging, this violent eradication of tension, consider a necessary lightness in the creation of sound, something akin to what Alain Badiou demands of the dancer: “By “lightness” we must understand the capacity of a body to manifest itself as an unconstrained body, or as a body not constrained by itself. In other words, as a body in a state of disobedience vis-à-vis its own impulses.”2 In order to improvise truly without constraint it is necessary to cast off the strictures imposed by impulse, by spontaneous ‘will’, and by the recourse to catharsis; there is no ‘free’ or ‘direct’ realm to escape to, it is towards the creation of such a realm that improvisation is posited. Indeed, “improvisation is not an action resulting from freedom; it is an action directed towards freedom.”3 To obey one’s impulses, to purge oneself of tension, is not to be free. But, by collectively restraining these impulses, by keeping suffering close at hand, the real subversion of social relations, of acceptable form may occur. But where does this leave expression? The attempt to dissolve the primacy of selfexpression is less an attempt to approach an impossibly austere anti-aesthetic presentation, a music that thinks but does not express, and more the attempt to present a real collective expression unhinged from the impulses of one individual/vulgar body, towards the expression of an idea, of thought, or perhaps most pertinently, of possibility itself. 1 Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, p.171 2 Alain Badiou, Handbook of Inaesthetics, p. 60 3 Davey Williams, ‘Towards a Philosophy of Improvisation’, The Improviser 4, p. 32.
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Dear Sue, Two interesting events played out in each other’s shadows over the last few months and their intertwining reminded me to write to you. The first, a visit to a gallery, managed to illuminate the slump I found my thoughts in after my brief participation in a workshop. And all this reminded me of the project you were talking about the last time we spoke, the one about performing an improvised soundtrack to that city film. So I thought I should share these thoughts with you. When I went to Sheffield a few weeks ago I visited the Site Gallery exhibition For The Birds, I won’t bore you with the details of all the work, but I was really struck by Justin Bennett’s installation, Stimmung, which reflected on the eventful 1969 Dutch premiere of the Stockhausen piece. I know you’re clued up on these matters, but just in case, the Amsterdam event played out something like this: The spirit of the era sits uncomfortably within the performance; the six vocalists perform sitting in a horseshoe formation, it has the appearance of a hippy campfire jam, but in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. A few minutes in, the performance is interrupted by some of the audience who begin to sing. These interventionists weren’t hot headed iconoclasts. They wanted to participate, not stop the performance altogether. But they ruined the music. Now, the audience didn’t just get up and file out; a debate ensued between the audience and our young interventionists about the nature of their interruption. In Bennett’s installation, there are cushions on the floor in a horseshoe shape with headphones playing the uninterrupted Stimmung. You sit on one of the performers’ cushions, you can listen to the uninterrupted piece on headphones or a recording of the interrupted performance played on speakers, whilst watching a typescript from the discussion on a monitor. I chose a montage: wearing the headphones, listening for the muffled distractions and distractedly reading. The voices were lost.
And until the improvised discussion managed to reassemble a place for them, the voices of the audience outside the interventionist group were lost as well. I really don’t think that the young interventionists had the right idea, their gesture fell flat. By entering the Concertgebouw, they had assumed the responsibility of a collective, as part of the the audience; think about their gesture in the context of playing as an improvising group, they were just riding roughshod over the other members. Here, in this particular instance, Stimmung needed to happen. However precarious, there needed to be a fully articulated performance, or an object offered up for re-articulation before any dissenting act could make sense. I think Bennett’s installation constructs this out of the shattered performance, a shared point of investigation that could anchor action. In his installation there exist two separate artefacts - we can listen uninterrupted-interrupted, at a point of montage where the music can break down into everyday speech, but is still in tact. Essentially it appears as something always already broken. Although it was a shame Stockhausen wasn’t there to witness such a clash of improvisatory production, as he left after shouting ‘SHAME DUTCHMEN’ to the confused assemblage. Speak soon, R. S. PS: We should play together soon, July?
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Contributors TOM BETTERIDGE Tom Betteridge is a musician and writer based in Glasgow.
LIAM CASEY Liam Casey is a committed inhabitant of Glasgow. He finds this city constituted by the people subject to it; together in their being apart. He likes to explore and enact ideas in collaborations, he has written about this a bit. He works in a cloakroom at a night club. www.caseyliam.wordpress.com
Malcy Duff Malcy Duff is an ex-church league badminton player. www.missingtwin.net / http://missingtwinnews.blogspot.com/
ROBert LYE Robert Lye is an Artist and Musician based in London.
peter manson Peter Manson lives in Glasgow. Books include “Adjunct: an Undigest” and “For the Good of Liars” (both from Barque Press) and “Between Cup and Lip” (Miami UP, Ohio). www.petermanson.com for more.
ASH REID Ash Reid (b.1984) lives and works in Edinburgh. She is half way through her tenure as a committee member of the Embassy and permanently one half of Scrim. She has a blog which she tries to remember to update. www.paradisedigm.wordpress.com
greg thomas I live in Edinburgh, play in Helhesten with Ben Knight and Hannah Ellul, and have had poems published in the Edinburgh journals Scree and Anything Anymore Anywhere. There might be one in a Veer Press Anthology soon. I have tried in some of them to present in as lucid a form as I can something like the base-level ambiguity of experience (brain and brawn: clean-dirty), through the grammar of language, but also through its body and sound (bound). I hope the effect is penetrating and ephemeral like advertising. At the same time, I think lucidity may be suspect. For that reason the denser piece tries to be more like a cross-section than a distillation. gregthomaspoetry.blogspot.com • More details on how the Evacuation of the Great Learning workshops were anticipated can be found in the Instal 2010 programme: http://www.arika.org.uk/instal/2010/event-workshops-evacuation.php
psykickdancehallrecordings.com/putthemusicinitscoffin
Dancehall is published quarterly, in January, April, July and October. Cover image: Henri Michaux, Narration (excerpt) 1927