revision 2 COMPLETE scheduled for publication
Kevin Logan
Kevin Logan An artist's statement ‘Seamless’ is a compositional performance mediated through the lens of two video cameras. An unidentified man sits at a table, he sonically manipulates a teapot, smashes it – then reconstructs it using Gaffer tape. Jump cut edited, what starts as aural documentation evolves into an electroacoustic composition. If Laurel and Hardy were to have extended their ineptitude into the practice of musique concrete, their 1932 short film ‘The Music Box’ may have been a precursor to this.With a nod to the oeuvre of English
comedian Tommy Cooper, ‘Seamless’ objectifies the faceless entertainer, dislocating the event from its history. The title ‘Seamless’ makes reference to kintsugi, the ancient Japanese art of fixing pottery with lacquer resin seams, whilst also winking ironically at the virtuoso dance music DJ in his / her endeavour to make the transition from one record to another imperceptible. Although the incitement by traditional ceramic restoration methods is one of a more esoteric nature, this strategy for a composition takes these notions and re-purposes
Still from tambourine experiment #2 (questionable cause) 2011 Digital Video 00:28 (Loop)
them. Its inspiration extends from Vaudeville to Metzger’s 1959 manifesto ‘Auto-Destructive Art’, from the unpredictable humour of Fluxus concerts, to contemporary laptop electronica. My practice-led exploration of sound through performance has developed into an investigation of how, by means of a processing of the sonicevent via technological re-staging, concepts of authenticity can be destabilised. By engaging with conventions of listening as they are established in Film Theory, and reconsidering late twentieth century Performance Art’s contested definitions of
‘liveness’, I am asking how is the ‘real sonicevent’ mediated through technologies? And, how is the ‘live’ re-presented through these mediations? In particular low-key and low-fi sequences of performed tasks, re-constructed, re-purposed and ‘re-punked’, bringing into question the authenticity of their first instantiation.
Kevin Logan
Still from To Have & To Have Not 2012 Digital Video 03:50
The first time we have watched your work Seamless were really impressed by the way you have adopted a performative research in digital media avoiding any metaphoric/metonymic approach to filmmaking. How did you come up with the idea for this work? I am from a Contemporary Art background, and as such have less respect for the grammar of filmmaking than if I’d been trained in film or media.On saying that I have also worked in sound design and there is a great deal about the combination of the audio/visual in cinema that influences this work. One of the more obvious references is the misalignment of diegetic and non-diegetic sound, especially in the genres of comedy and horror. I should emphasise that
central to my practice is the ‘sonic’ in its many guises. In Seamless, what starts as performance documentation evolves into an electroacoustic composition,and ends assomething else, I’m still not quite sure what.It is filmed using two tripod mounted mini-DV camcorders. The sound is recorded using two condenser microphones and two homemade contact mics (which record only matter-bound sound). All the sound recording equipment is visible in shot, which of course is sacrilegious in the world of filmmaking. Alternating between pointsof view underlines the re-staged nature of the performance.Thevideo is jump-cut edited, a sort of secondary act of repair, of breakage and
Installation view All night long you’ve been looking at me. Digital Video 00:46 (Loop). ASC Gallery, London. 2012
reconciliation. The video is not arecording of a performance, but an expanded ‘sonic-event’.
introduce our readers to this fundamental aspect of "Seamless"?
As you rightly point out in your question,in my work the performative is as much a research methodology, as it is a ‘type’ of practice.
I’ve always had a particular liking for Japanese pottery, and at the time of making this work I was looking at the sonic properties of various types of ceramics. I’m also very interested in yobitsug (the practice of repairing pottery by inserting alien ceramic pieces), and tomotsugi (The practice of repairing pottery using only original fragments). Ihad been exploring how these might be comparable to sampling and plunderphonics as compositional methodologies.
As for how I came up with the idea, well, It is one of many works exploring crossdisciplinarycombinations. It straddles film, performance, and sound composition, and as such I think it is awkward in any one camp. I like to think of this video piece as being a little difficult or obstinate, uncooperatively tongue-incheek. The title of the work referes to the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi: could you
The original tilte was ‘Seamless: The Sound of Kintsugi’, however I decided that this occidental appropriation was somewhat problematic and did not need to be made explicit in the title.
Still from Re(c)order(ing) #2 (Quartet) 2012 Digital Video 01:00 (Loop)
Still from Her Master’s Voice / His Mistress’s Voice 2011 Digital Video 04:26
As you say, itmakes reference to kintsugi the ancient Japanese art of fixing pottery with lacquer resin seams. Kintsugi in turn relates to the aesthetic of wabi-sabi, that which accommodates deterioration and decay. In kintsugi the re-assembled ceramic conveys traces of time and event, in a similar way to that of the re-presentation of performance.Wabi-sabi could be seen as an anti-aesthetic, an ancient re-punking. Just as amplification epitomises the spatiotemporal rupture that shapes aural perception post-recording technology. This is analogised with the bonding of elements in a kintsugi ceramic, it assimilates the event and its reproduction.
This is an interesting question, very open ended, but also highly specific to my current concerns. Recently I have become more and more interested in ‘everydayness’, by which I mean the quotidean, the non-exceptional, the run- of-the-mill. The scrutiny of everyday routine experience has fascinating philosophical and creative implications. The things that I find most engaging at the moment are the sounds and noises that go unnoticed. The clicks, hums, bumps encountered on a daily basis, rather than ‘interesting-sounds’. This has parallels with the non-virtuosic and the non-auteuristic, which has a great provenance within avant-garde art and music.
The title also has a less esoteric reference, winking ironically at the virtuoso dance music DJ in his/her endeavour to make the transition from one record to another imperceptible, smooth, seamless.
As I write this at my kitchen table (the same table that Seamless is performed at), my refrigerator clicks on making a plethora of whooshing, whirring, drones and thrums.
We daresay that your daily experience is very important for your artist practise and thinking: could you explain this aspect?
I think the‘eventlessness’ of what-happenswhen-nothing-happens may be aviable antidote
Still from Seamless (redux) 2014 Digital Video 09:55
to the ubiquitous workings of modern goal driven capitalism. Marcel Duchamp said something or other about the sound or music which corduroy trousers make when one moves. For me this still suggests a very relevant way of hearing/seeing/thinking. It could be considered a specious question, indeed, nonetheless we have to ask you: does your art change people's behavior? Do you aim to create a sort of "micropolitical" artistic act reawaking in the spectator the awareness of his perception mechanisms and models? Again a very good question, my answer to the first is, I don’t know you would have to ask the audience, gallery goer, spectator. But it would be nice if it did. The second question is a little more straightforward, or at least easier for me to answer. The simple reply would be, yes.
Here I will try to resist the urge to make broad statements and grand suppositions about the creative process. But, I do honestly believe that all forms of creativity are political acts in one form or another. So, yes a politic with a small ‘p’ is very much an oblique strategy within my work, to liberate a Brian Eno phrase. As touched on in my answer to your previous question, any artist output that questions, challenges or circumvents the dominant market forces has a socio- political element. In this respect Performance Art has always lent itself to an act of defiance. This also leads to a whole raft of questions regarding definitions of liveness, the role of documentation, and the restaging of event based art practices. The title Seamless is a combination of what might be considered highbrow,the Japanese applied art form, and lowbrow, the reference to House and Dance music. The disregard for filmic convention, the comedic as a discursive device, the unidentified performers slapstick act of destruction,the cack-handed attempt at restoration. All of these, I consider to be
Still from To Have & To Have Not 2012 Digital Video 03:50
micropolitical gestures and have a metapolitical consequence. Your performance reminds us of Fluxus' early films. Can you tell us your biggest influences in art and how they have affected your work? Yes, I’ve always felt an affinity with Dada and Fluxus. I like impertinence it tests boundaries. I’m afraid I will have to be very unoriginal and clichéd and mention Duchamp again, in particular his ‘In Advance of the Broken Arm’. For those readers unfamiliar with it, it is simply a wood and galvanized-iron snow shovel, shop bought, ready-made, and that is it. Although it may not be my favourite work by him, when I first came across it many years ago it completely reconfigured my grasp of potentiality. I consider it to be a work of performance, the action takes place between the object and the language. I am fascinated by how a title and the thing it names can collude. In this example the most mundane of objects when combined with the most elementary of words, fashions a complete scenario, an entire
event frozen in time (no pun intended). It is a ‘sculpture’ with a backstory and future narrative. Perhaps more relevant to the piece we are discussing, is the influence that cinema and comedy has had on my work. I’m a big fan of the films of Jacques Tati, not because I find them particularly hilarious, but because the sound design is so audacious. But, for me the highlight of this sonic/comedic exchange would have to be in the 1929 Laurel and Hardy short film ‘Wrong Again’. In which Stan and Ollie make their usual highly idiosyncratic observations, in this case on the mindset of the rich. These observations, communicated to the audience via intertitles, are emphasized by a particular hand gesture. The gesture is accompanied by a sound effect, made I believe by a Swanee or slide whistle. This film is unusual in that although silent, it includes synced sound effects. The use of this sound effect is inconsistent and clunky to say the least. For me this film is a real oddity, a couple of years earlier it would not have been possible as the technology did not exist, a
Still from r’n’r radio 2013 Digital Video 09:15
couple of years later and the use of sound in ‘talkies’ had developed to the extent that this level of audio ineptitude would not of been acceptable. The troubled use of sound, in addition to a level of pathos that only the likes of Laurel and Hardy could add, makes this short film equal to any Beckett screenplay or contemporary performance work. I’m beguiled by art works that employ humour while disputing the physical and psychological parameters of the world around them. This is similar to my ‘acting-out’ the material and sonic properties of a teapot in Seamless. Infants engage with the world on a speculative level, often risking unknown dangers in order to accrue knowledge. I find a credulous preoccupation, both with sonic things and event based things, to be the most useful gadget at my disposal. Thanks for sharing your time and thoughts, Kevin. What's next for Kevin Logan? Are there any film projects on the horizon? A present I’m amassing a stockpile of lo-fi and fugitiveaudiovisualmaterial, what I call sonic-
deeds. They are made using a variety of mobile devices and cheap digital video recorders. These shun the allure of high definition and crisp resolution, for the relatively crappy democracy of instant capture. I’m enjoying working with fairly high end audio and low end moving image, this is an unusaul trade off. I’m also exploring different ways of dissemination, making some works to be shown exclusively on phones and/or tablets, and others purely for online access. This approach to moving-image takes from field recording and phonography for its methodology. I would compare these short video works to tracks on a recorded album. Like a compedium, the individual elements may be underwhelming when encountered individually, taking on a greater significance through their relational drift. k2.logan@yahoo.co.uk www.kevinlogan.co.uk Kevin Logan is currently a PhD candidate with CRiSAP(Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice), University of the Arts London.