Sounding the Subject

7/28/2019 Sounding the Subject

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SOUNDING THE SUBJECTDaniel Birnbaum and Mechtild Widrich, Curators

VIDEO TRAJECTORIESCaroline A . Jones , Curator

With introductions by Jane Farver and Pamela and Richard Krarnlich


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6 IntroductionJane Farver9 IntroductionPamela a nd Richard Kramlich

SBUNDINC 'T'HE SUBJECT12 Sound ing the Sub je c t: An In t roduc t ionDaniel Birnbaum and Mechtild Widrich14 Sound ing Sub je c ts : Ec hoe s, De lays , Tape d Conv e rsa t ionsDaniel Birnbaum24 Stars u nd D i le ttantes: On th e Voice in V ideo Art

Mechtild Widrich3 3 Artists i n t he Exhibition

VIDEO I'KAJECTOKIES50 Vide o Trajec toriesCaroline A. Jones72 Biographies

7 8 Exhibition Checklist


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Sounding the Subject:An Tnrroductlon

Even a ma n ' s exac t imz ta tion o f t he song o f t hc n igh t inga lcdrspleases us when wc d i srover t ha t it is a mim icry , and notthe nrght inguleIrnmanuel I


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the acoustic-sometimes, anthropomorphic voice-and the vis-ible. The sound can be delayed or detached from the images,sped up or down, sampled, or bottled to an uncanny surroundalmost below the threshold of hearing . The effects of interiorityproduced are the object of our investigation and juxtaposition.

When Jane Farver, Director of the MIT List Visual Arts Cen-ter, invited us to curate an exhibition drawn from the Pamelaand Richard Kramlich and New Art Trust collections, we con-sidered the st ruc ture of thi s university-based contemporary ar tinstitution an ideal setting to take on more than the curatorialchallenge of presenting a selection of this extraordinary collec-tion to ou r viewers. From the beginning of t he project, ProfessorCaroline Jones of the History, Theory and Criticism program inMIT'S Depar tment of Architecture was enthusias tical ly involved,hatching a plan to teach a course on video art with works inthe exhibition. This soon gave rise to th e idea of a wider, his-torical overview, and at the beginning it was unclear whetherthis was to be a study room or a separate Part of the exhibi-tion. Given the fact tha t the Kramlich and New Art Trust collec-tions include many of the milestones of new media art since the1960s, we hope to have established a st ruc ture for the exhibitionthat affords the audience at least a glimpse into this enormouslyrich field: apart from the main gallery with the abovementionedwork, the Bakalar Gallery, conceived by Professor Jones, invitesthe viewers to pursue a more historical trajectory through ourtheme, from early black-and-white exper iments to more recentengagements with subjectivity and sound .

This project posed profound and unforeseen challenges due tothe simple fact that new media a rt does not always have set sizeconditions, and often has a challenging need for specific, some-times outdated, equipment. List Visual Arts Center ExhibitionDesigner Tim Lloyd provided the technical guidance throughthis jungle, painstakingly reconstructing the technical appara-tu s and redrawing floor plans according to new discoveries. Wewould like to thank Pamela and Richard Kramlich for their per-spicacity in collecting these works and their generosity in shar -ing them. Christopher Eamon, curator of the Kramlich Collection,has helped us gather the necessary information, and answeredquestions that arose over the course of many months' work onthe exhibition. New media a rt allows and d emands a reorienta-tion of our established views of how technology impinges onhuman life, and we are thrilled to work in the media-friendlyand knowledgeable environment of t he Massachusetts Insti tuteof Technology.


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Stars and Di l e t t a i ~ t e s :On rhe Vsice 111 Video A r t

Mechtild Widrich

In a short fable by Franz Kafka entitled "Josephine, The Songstor, The Mice Nation," the narrator is ambivalent as to whetherleading character Josephine has any true abilities as a sin"Those who have not heard her sing do not know the powersang,' it is announced at the beginning of the Story, althouas we gather later, the sound she produces in her performancundistinguishable from the "general popular squeaking," whis "one of [the mouse nation's] more thoughtless habits.lT2 sa uniquely talented and admired singer, unit ing the nationtimes of danger and distress, or a dilettante, narcissistically dictatorially insisting on the importance of her performafor the well-being of her audience? The narrator is unwillingdecide her ultimate merit, but whatever Josephine's abilities,is obviously able to channel social energy for and through audience. "Maybe it is the Same way with Josephine's singingadmire in her that which we do not admire at all in ourselveThis moral splitting allows no place for reciprocal interactwith her listeners:

0 i . l c c . i! iiappened : i i a i v.li.iile losepliirie was siiigitig. sorne insIiiiii.. iiiiilg i i i r i i e ai;dii?ncr I~eqano squealc too i i i all innocei !. i t ~ o u l d~ a v e ~reri tnposs ib ie to point out the dif f eren c~> , , . - , iii~rirec:li;iti


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ming along with the songs, but mostly using lyrics as riffs onthe theme of seduction. This is a case of both conceptual andliteral overdubbing: the piece is an audio mix tape overdubbedby an "amorous" performance recorded on v i d e ~ . ~et us t ry tountangle the possible interactions in the piece.

The absence of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, the fact that theyare inaccessible to Acconci (and us-this is why we buy the irrecordings) indicates that Acconci is encountering mass cul tureprimarily through the recording, as consumer. If we look intothe hierarchies between the recorded material in the video, and

Vito AcconciT h e m e Song, 1973V i d eo , b l a c k - a n d - w h i t e , s o u n d , 3 3m i n u t e s 1 7 s e c o n d sCou r tesy o f E lec t ron ic Ar t sI n t e r m i x

the recorded video, we See that even though we are presentedwith one "coherent" piece, the interaction works on several lev-els: the taped music is the materializat ion of t he intimacy tha tpop songs try to produce, and also of a private past moment, inwhich they have been strung together on tape i n a specific order.Acconci's embodiment of this music and his pos tur ing towards adislocated single spectator, do not constitute a re-enactment noran additive process (as in the overdubbing), but a jolting oscilla-tion between performer and audience. Part of the appeal of thispiece, and its slight discomfort, lies in his use of bad-qualitymusic tapes rather than professional material and the intimateappearance of his "home" video. It is this dilettantism whichcreates the porosity that still allows us to interact either withthe music (we can take on Acconci's role), or with the art ist 's per-formance (we take on the role of Acconci's audience). It remainslargely unresolved who sings for whom. Similarly, the distinctoptions for performative interaction a nd self-expression both forthe ar tist and the audience remain Open and if anyth ing, sugges-tive. The performance can remain ambivalent even in th e mostdesexualized works of Conceptual art .At the beginning of the video Baldessari Sing s LeWitt (1972),the artist with big glasses and untidy hair, dressed in an infor-mal shir t, sits down at a table that looks like the cheap simula-tion of a T V news studio, and announces the coming attraction:

Baldessari seemingly uses all the means at his disposal topopularize LeWitt's artistically influential manifesto. First,through the transfer from written text to lyrics sung to the mel-odies of popular songs such as Yankee Doodle and th e national


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JohnBaldessariBaldessari Sings Le Wi t t , 1972Video, b l ack-and-whi t e , sou nd , 1 2m i n u t e s 50 s e c o n d sCourtesy of Elect ronic ArtsI n t e r m i x

anthem, in a vain attempt to render the sentences charming,funny, and memorable; and second, through the medium of vid-eo, which stands for magical, instant access to a vague notion of"public." However, Baldessari is obviously not deceived by thepromises of new media (whether his voice or the camera). Heironically undermines the concept of reaching a broader publicthrough the choice of performing incompetence. Taped with asteady camera, without Crew, like many early video pieces, hisstiff performance is as uncompelling as h is monotonic modula-tion, which obscures LeWitt's "idea" and reduces the sentencesto an inchoate mumbling. Worse still, when one actually suc-ceeds in making out the tunes, attention to the words evaporatesaltogether.The performance is slapstick at its best, with Baldessari's efforteventually shifting into what might be called a liturgical mode,a "public service by a citizen," perceptible in the strained wayin which the artist dutifully repeats some of the sentences forthe purpose of improved reception ("this one was too fast"). Thelonger he tries , the more he restates the impossibility of reach-ing his audience, of freeing the "Sentences" from th e confinesof the a rt world; ultimately, the work collapses into a n ironicdocument of the binding obligation of ar ti sts inside avant-gardecircles to state and restate their artistic heritage and theoreticalpositions.In the video, text and its performative reanimation struggle forprimacy, and although Baldessari's humble performance seemsto play second fiddle to LeWitt's text, the popular melodies sup-plant it. Part of the humor lies exactly in the contrast betweenthe "popular" Songs and the "recondite" theory, and the beg-ging of the moralistic interpretation that media popularizationinevitably compromises the "idea." More important ly, Baldessariis playing the dilettante for the knowing art-world, intention-ally failing to fulfill his "role," and confirming its prejudicethat broadcasting "difficult art" does not add up to the utopiandream of reaching the masses. Acconci's and Baldessari's worksboth point towards the instability of subject, object, and the dif-ficulty of using the taped voice for authentic expression. Thisshould not be mistaken as an exemplification of the impossibil-ity of voicing as such: both succeed in opening up the questionof subjectivity and authenticity in more th an just one direction,while acknowledging the mediated condition-the "recorded"and documented-of video and their own selves.


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tion in David Lynch's film Wild a t Heart (1990). To some extent,Rist lets the settings of Isaak's music clip inspire her own set-ting:1 both clip and video include dramatic cloud formations;the beach, which serves as the Stage for Isaak's dealings witha sparsely clothed beauty, reappears through pixilated photo-graphs of women (Rist herself?) in bathing suits floating over theScene in a digital pastiche. Rist's video is adorned with rudimen-tary Computer graphics, and we hear her taking on Isaak's Partwith her high, semi-professional voice, backed by the flat bassof a male friend. While mocking the atmosphere of her source,she is also inserting scenes and images personally meaningfulto her, however abstruse: we See goings-on at the Cafe Prckelin Vienna, a hangout for intellectuals just opposite the Instituteof Applied Art s , where Rist studied. One sequence shows a fold-er with the labe1 "Pipi" on its back, undoubtedly stuffed withsteamy documents about the singer. Rist's piece resembles thepainstaking yet awkward redoing of a clip by an obsessed fan ,who cannot help blending her intimate memories with her objectof desire. The instrumenta l par ts of Isaak's recording are direct-ly incorporated, and although Rist sings the piece we do not se eher perform it for us. She only juxtaposes her voice and the videocollage, which seems like the history of some past event, thedelayed moving images appearing oddly retrospective, as if vid-eo's mediatized condition is being made manifest.

1s there anything authentic about her experience, or does itonly become so through mediation? 1s Rist exemplifying thefeminist voice, loud, aggressive, and "real"? And, where exactlylies the difference between the two concepts? Maybe the authen-tic lies in the act of collecting, in her personal file? Or are wewitnessing the collapse of personal experience into the com-mercialized product-is she the ideal audience, a conditioned"victim"?

Let us remember Kafka's Passage in which the girl mouse inthe audience begins to squeak, not with the intention of disturb-ing, but because she is herself immersed in Josephine's perfor-mance, spontaneously adding to the performance in her ownway. Could such a disruptive live encounter be envisioned in thetransference from one video to another? Towards the end of thevideo piece, Rist overdubs her own voice with a desperate squeak,frantically screaming the main line of the Song: "I don't Want tofall in love!" Hoarse, upset, and angry, she yells th is mantra a tthe Song she has been singing. She wills her personal affairs tobe a certain way, by "voicing" them very differently from thedreamy conformity of the lead singing. I say it, thus it will be so.The scream tries to be the performative blade through the medi-


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ated haze. Yet by its very urgency we r e a l i ~ ehat it is caught ithe same logic of mediation: it is too late, everything has alreadhappened, and been recorded, and the unsettling voice disappears in the background.

Rist's scream, like Kafka's squeak, ha s pathos of its own. Thscream has a physical force: we can hear Rist's voice breakingthe mike oL7erloading, he \.iolent sound re ~w be ra ti ng rom thwalls of the studio. The recording captures the s cream in its contingency, and the audience, in tu rn , must interpret this encounter as a past, j7et authentic perforiiiative encounter.

For the fi rst two minutes of David Hammons' Phut Free, we onlhear sound. The screen is black, and the metallic din evokesjazz drun i solo by Mai< Koach, whose work was once memorably compared to a drum-kit falling down a flight of stair s. Onlwhen the image appears do we See the sound's producer: a ma(the ar tist) kicking a meta1 bucket do\z.n the s treets of New Yorat night. The camera follows him at a respectful distance, crossing an d re-crossing streets, capturing him from behind, movinto hi s side, while random passers-by gape. The song we might bawaiting neL7erStarts, and the piece ends rvith Hammons kickinthe bucket up to his hands and catching it gracefullj-.

What is usually referred to as Hamiiions' only video piece idescribed in the documentation of the work as a performance.lIndeed we See here elements of earlier st reet performanceby Hainmons that were concerned with the presence of African American men in urban space like Bliz-uurd Ball Sule from1083, during which the a rti st sold snowballs in Cooper SquareHow does the perforrnance in the street, parodying the stereotypical and "allowable" beha\.ior of African American men ipublic (sport, music), and observed by a street audience, connect to the video? The 1iL.e audience becomes part of th e worknot just because people happen to appear in the video but alsbecause Hammons addresses issues of life in urban neighborhoods, sound ing out possibilities of stree t life without losinhis skepticism about their mythification. That the performanctakes place on the st r e e t a n d not in the studio-makcs it morthan a subjective experience. The confrontation with the streeaudience is constitutive for the piece, particularly because thaL7erage eaction seems unengaged.

Hoar does mediation affect th is reciprocal effect'? Of Course, performative interaction also takes place once \Te, the audienc


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in a rt gallcries, watch the video. The dense layers of context thatare embedded in the piece might indeed come into full bloomhere, but I would a rgue, thc new audience canilot di spense withthe original one. Neither a transparent view into the utopianof an organic subculture somewhere in the stree t, nor a circuitbetween Hammons and his gallery audience, Phat Free unfoldsin the interstices between these two layers of meaning, at thepoint of mediation bi, the camera that gi\.es us a glimpse intoboth imagiiled worlds. There is a layer of documents a s well a sone of performance, and the subject of performance, while notsplit or schizophrenic, can only be sounded out from both ofthese d irections at once.

In performances for the camera, the problem betrveen therepresented and the "authentic" self-and it should be ob\.iousat this point that I am not advocating a clear split-comes tothe forefront. Artists activate precisely the tension between themediated and the immediate, and they acknowledged their ownmediated condition. This conception does not simply encompassthe construction of a self, but also a process of audience for-mation. The presumed split between authentic and representedsubject is thus transferred into a more complex model, in whichdif ferent levels o f med iat ion arc at play. In thi s process, the rolesof the performer and the audience became porous, taking ondi wr se positions. The title of thi s show can be taken \>ery it-erally then: As "sounding" suggests both making a sound andusing sound to locate a body in space.

I ivould like to thunk Carolitie Jones Mech t i ld Widr ich is a Ph.D. candidate in the H istory, Theory, and C r i t ic ism sect ionund Andrei l 'op for thei r udvi ce on this of the Depa r tment o f Archi tecture at MIT. She holds an M.A. (Mag. Phi l. ) in ar t h is-n ~a n u s cr i p t . tory f r om the Univers i ty o f V ienna, Aust r ia; a State Diplo ma (M.A. equivalent ) f rorn-hl.\V-. the Univers i ty of L inz, Aust r ia; and a Univers i ty Diploma in rnuseology f rorn theUniversita Internat ionale dell 'Arte in Florence, I taly. She has received an AvalanTravel Cran t, a Hyzen Travel Crant, and a Schlossrnan Research Award, all f ro mthe MIT Depar t rnent o f Archi tecture. She was a MIT President ia l Graduate Fel low,

is the recipien t of a Fulbr ight Scho larship, an Emanuel and Sof ie Fohn Scholarshipf rom the Fohn Foun dat ion in Aus t ria , as wel l as a pre-doctoral fe l lowship f ro m theMax Planck Inst itute, Berlin. She contr ibuted an essay to Memosphere: Rethink-ing Monuments t ha t was pub l ished on the occas ion o f t he exh ib i t ion Low-BudgetMonuments at the Rornanian Pavil ion of the 52nd Venice Biennale in Venice, I taly,and is prepar ing an essay on the role o f photograp hs in re-per forman ces that wi l lbe pub l ished by the U nivers i ty Press Leuven.


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Sounding the Subject

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