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a child of pop and movies (Martha Rosler)
3:50
I still need what artists need,
Which is space and time
In order to have a generosity
Toward my own material
Is that terribly romantic? Yes
So, I am a child of pop and movies
I had an idea
Idea
Art needs to be defined as
A set of discursive practices
That bring with them
The creation of new social subjects
Art really can make a difference
Idea, idea, idea
They go: wait!
I would like there to be space and time
To do whatever I damn please
Yeah, I wanna annoy people
I wanna annoy people
Wait!
The failure of all kinds of male practices
To incorporate these softer elements
Wait!
It’s true
They go: wait!
What?
Wait!
The visuality
Wait!
The visuality
It looks like
But they’re: Just a look!
What?
A look!
They have either depth or humor
It looks like, but it's not
I suffer from overload
Idea, idea
The answer is: everything
Idea, idea
What?
It’s really important to emphasize that for me
Conceptual art and feminism both brought
The idea of art as an open process of inquiry
Idea, idea
Art needs to be defined
It’s true
I am an image
What?
An image
What?
I was a post-pop artist
Idea
My critique of pop was
Its paranoic insistence on
Naiveté and disconnection
From any kind of conceptual critique
It’s not existential angst
Wait!
Idea, idea
Wait!
They go:
Wait!
Idea, idea
Wait!
I’m rushed to be constantly involved in the production, re-production, installation and re-installation of work, and produce text, which I have to write in five minutes, literally, or, you know, in one day
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2. |
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a playground of possibility (Ed Ruscha)
3:33
I had to do,
To, to satisfy my curiosity
Erik Satie, Erik Satie
I had no quest
I didn't expect to
I had no strategy
Erik Satie, Erik Satie
I didn't know what to expect
I mean especially contemporary art
I woke up to the world of art
To the world of art, the world of art
Not just through painting, sculpture
That sort of thing
But also through musicians
A kind of a zoom
That kind of thing
(Interlude)
I had to do to satisfy my curiosity
Leonardo, Michelangelo
They eventually are forgotten
Aaa-almost forgotten
Riemenschneider, you know the wood sculptor
I woke up when I saw his work
Europe to me was something
Brand new and exotic
You have to go somewhere else
It’s like this cause and reaction
Abstract expressionism came along
And produced conceptual art
Inspired people to do let’s say the opposite
Do the opposite of what you are supposed to do
Then you will be doing right
Do the opposite, let’s say the opposite
I think that’s true with most art
It’s like cause and reaction
And even the driest kind of
Conceptual art has amusement
(Interlude)
I think it just exists in the air
Like a playground of possibility
This is food for thought, food for the future
Food for thought, food for the future
Voicing the same words, doing the same things
Voicing the same words, doing the same things
Playground of possibility
Living for the moment
Daily activity, artistic activity
Conceptual art
It’s so abstract this idea
I think it just exists in the air
Like a playground of possibility
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3. |
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oddly enough (Andrea Fraser)
3:24
Having a project
Means something that is larger than
A specific practice
But it’s an ongoing investigation
(Interlude)
Many of the symbolic revolutions of art
Have been more reproductive than critical
Having a project of reflexive critique
Different moments of reflexive critique
A critique is very, very difficult to accomplish
Collectors, trustees, curators
Spectacularized, celebritized vision of the artist
Collectors, trustees, curators
Oddly enough
The mechanisms of
The production and re-production
Of those interests and those fantasies
The social magic of institutions is
To constitute anything as a legitimate interest
Will create a kind of chaos of reflection
Will have to do with my own transgression
Collectors, trustees, curators
Spectacularized, celebritized vision of the artist
Collectors, trustees, curators
Oddly enough
The women’s art movement, feminism and
The influence of feminist theory
Conceptual art and pop art
All problematize the position of the artist
Closely linked to
Particular economic regimes
Closely linked to
Spectacularized, celebritized vision of the artist
As the free individual
Pursuing new forms of freedom and satisfaction
Closely linked to
A sort of ideological figure of
The neo-liberal subject
Collectors, trustees, curators
Spectacularized, celebritized vision of the artist
Collectors, trustees, curators
Reflexive critique, reflexive critique,
Different moments of reflexive critique
Closely linked to
A kind of chaos of reflection
Closely linked to
A reflexive critique
Closely linked to
A legitimate interest
And a specific practice
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4. |
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a serial progression Sol LeWitt
5:19
What I wanted to do was
Instead of an art of form
An art of content
I had the idea, to make a system
The first system was a form within a form
Then the idea, to make it all
Of the possible combinations
Which made it into a finite system
Art in series, art as an idea
Of movement and of content
The idea of a serial progression
Idea of a serial progression…
Of a serial progression…
A serial progression…
Serial progression…
Progression…
Gression…
Ion…
Gression…
Progression…
Serial progression…
A serial progression…
Of a serial progression…
Idea of a serial progression…
The idea of a serial progression
What I wanted to do was
Instead of an art of form
An art of content
I had the idea, to make a system
The first system was a form within a form
Then the idea, to make it all
Of the possible combinations
Which made it into a finite system
Art in series, art as an idea
Of movement and of content
The idea of a serial progression
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5. |
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the west thinks you imitate (Shilpa Gupta)
2:47
I think
The aim is experience
I, I ,I think
Working with ready-made stuff
People back home think you are imitating the west
And the West thinks you imitate
There is a certain hierarchy
Which is always built-in
Hey, you’ve copied from the West
Hey, you‘ve picked up
You have been influenced
Therefore you are not so good
I think
It is a struggle to negotiate
I ,I ,I think
Blablabla
Doing avant-garde art
Or doing net art
Or doing something with conceptualism
Or blablabla
You have been influenced
Therefore you are not so good
This whole business of having -isms
How strong are the paradigms
Walter Benjamin,
“Art in the Age of Mass Reproduction“
How strong are the paradigms
It just doesn’t work
How strong are the paradigms
It just doesn’t
It just doesn’t
It just doesn’t work
I think
The in-between thing
I, I, I think
Conceptualism
Or blablabla
I really don’t want
To fit into any of these brackets
You want to make something “in“
Because you want to make something “out“
It has to do with making fashion
And making fashion is
To make something “in“
I think
The aim is experience
I think
It is a struggle to negotiate
I think
The in-between thing
I, I, I think
Conceptualism
Or blablabla
A lot of people brand me as a conceptual artist
It just doesn’t work
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6. |
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a grumpy adornoishness (Art & Language: Michael Baldwin, Mel Ramsden)
4:45
MB: Cynisme ou subversion
Of the universityfication
As artists we were full of imposture
Ludicrous imposture
Sense of imposture, full of imposture
Ludicrous imposture
MR: And you can't do anything about this past
It just gets bigger and bigger
MB: A grumpy Adornoishness seems to me
In many ways preferable to
The fraudulent democracies
It’s connected and it’s plugged into that system
MR: And you can't do anything about this
MB: Certainly, a grumpy adornoishness
MR: Art & Language
MB: Art & Language and télos
(Interlude)
MR: In the mid-60s there was plenty
Plenty of mad art around
Plenty, plenty of mad art
MB: Is it possible to be subversive?
To think of a great deal of art
Has been the dream work of
The triumph of global capital
Is there a way that we can imagine
Resisting that co-option?
Is it possible to be subversive
Or is it mainly necessary to be cynical?
(Interlude)
MR: You didn’t know where it belonged
Did it belong in a book, did it belong on a wall?
Was it his, was it mine?
MB: An identity, it still does not
Constitute anything
Like an identity that could be purified
An identity, to be subversive, to be cynical
MR: Was it his, was it mine?
MB: To be cynical? An identity
MR: Was it his, was it mine?
MB: Identity, subversive, cynical
MR: Was it his, was it mine?
MB: This is Art & Language
(Interlude)
MB: It was a tactical move, yeah yeah
Tactical move
It’s often a quite interesting
Gedankenexperiment
MR: It’s this great kind of whoa
Judd, Morris, Robert Smithson,
Their writings as well as their work
Writings work, writings work
Is this great kind of whoa
MB: This is Art & Language
(Interlude)
MR: Aesthetics and beauty and contemplation
Start thinking in terms of
Epistemology, ontology, indexing
MB: You can’t have the mainstream and
A nervous breakdown simultaneously
MR: No
MB: Except you want to
MR: This is a seriously worrying thing
MB: You can say
I’m an artist who works with that
Or you can say, okay, get my Adorno done
I say, fuck it
The Pollock-model of the artist
Fuck it, oh Fuck
MR: And it was never called conceptual art
MR: How to work with the wreckage
MB: The naiveties of dematerialization
Ultra-minimalism tending to become absurd
MR: After modernism’s nervous breakdown
How to work with the wreckage
Discursive vividness
MB: Basically it‘s what we do
MR: Discursive vividness
MB: This is Art & Language
If we stopped, it would be as if we’d never begun.
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7. |
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to objectify desire (Lawrence Weiner)
3:38
A “the” to a “a”
It’s the changing of
A “the” to a “a”
I’m very involved in trying
To objectify desire
How can you objectify desire?
And what does that constitute?
– in a non-romantic manner
Objectify desire
In a non-romantic manner
Objectify desire
It’s the changing
Of a “the” to a “a”
And how to take the universal
and turn the universal into a specific
Which in fact is ambiance…
(noise: gallery space)
The language of art is material
Objectify desire, objectify desire
It’s the changing of the status of the plinth
If I make a mistake
I make a mistake – mea culpa
And remember
I’m not a doctor writing a script,
I’m not a pilot with people
Dependent upon my life
To control the mise-en-scène
I decided not to explain
A “the” to a “a”
A “the” to a “a”
Objectify desire
In a non-romantic manner
Objectify desire
In a non-romantic manner
But to speak about the authenticity
Is making a sales pitch
To play the artist
Is again trying to set up some sort of a position
That people can read
I accept this
to a “a”
to a “a”
to a “a”
to a “a”
And as most things it might be complicated to begin with, but it’s pretty simple in the end
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8. |
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using, subverting and utilizing conventions (Yvonne Rainer)
5:00
Gender…
Gender really enters,
Gender really enters in the `80s
Yah, gender and race
Gender and race issues
Race…
My work has gone from dance to film
Back to dance, to gallery installation
Certainly not a single aim
I’m still involved in using and subverting and
Utilizing conventions of narrative cinema
More and more, my films took stronger political
Positions in relation to current, topical issues
Work…
My goal is to reinvigorate
Reactivate the spectators‘ critical faculties
I’m always assessing
Whether I am pushing y’away or drawing you in
Pushing y’away
Drawing you in
Body…
(endless)
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Artists: Marc Matter & Stefan Römer
Title: Deconceptual Voicings
Format: 12 inch black vinyl LP (33,3 rpm) with printed innersleeve containig all lyrics
published by: Mount Analogue (MAA004) and Slimvolume (Slimvolume#10)
ISBN: 978-1-910516-09-6 (Slimvolume)
ISBN 978-91-983195-7-6 (Mount Analogue)
Distribution: Cornerhouse (UK) and A-Musik (GER)
www.cornerhousepublications.org/publications/deconceptual-voicings/
www.a-musik.com/artist/matter-marc-stefan-roemer.html
2019
Edition of 500
A 12" vinyl record of musical compositions from interviews with influential conceptual artists — Martha Rosler, Ed Ruscha, Andrea Fraser, Sol LeWitt, Shilpa Gupta, Art and Language, Lawrence Weiner, and Yvonne Rainer.
Selected statements were transformed into musical compositions, the audio material (field recordings) was turned into songs. Speech fragments, syllables and consonants were processed into rhythmic patterns, while slogans, statements and text passages were sampled into sprechgesang.
This is a homage to all the artists involved. Deconceptual Voicings suggests a global polyphony of positions and sounds.
Good ideas should be amplified.
watch:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYzmo3JFa98
___________________________
The project is based on an idea by Stefan Römer and Marc Matter (concept and composition), assisted by Lizzie Davis (sound engineering) and Dirk Lebahn (graphic design).
The sampled interviews with the artists primarily recorded for the film essay Conceptual Paradise (2006) by Stefan Römer:
www.conceptual-paradise.com
black-white photography at Barboncino_Golden Pudel Club: Claudia Höhne
released November 15, 2019
Gefördert vom Musikfonds e.V. aus Mitteln der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien.
Cover Artwork using the drawing by Ed Ruscha: SCREAM, 1964 (D.1964.09), tempera and pencil on paper, 34.9 x 30.50 cm
Marc Matter (Bad Säckingen)
Artist, Lecturer and Author, founding member of the collective Institut für Feinmotorik. Member of the clubmusic group The Durian Brothers. Since 2004 resident-DJ at Salon des Amateurs. Since a few years focusing on artistic research, Sound Poetry and acoustic literature, commissioned works for radio-broadcast (SWR, WDR, DLR Kultur).
Stefan Römer (Berlin)
works de-conceptual with images, films, sound and texts. He founded the activist artist collective »FrischmacherInnen (fresh-makers)« (1992); his essay film »conceptual paradise« (2006) on post-minimalist and three generations of conceptual art was internationally screened; his book »inter-esse« appeared at merve pub. in 2014. Band project: Stan Back & The Noise Glam; ADKV award for art criticism 2000.
Elizabeth Davis (New York, Berlin)
Musician and researcher working with sound and electronics. BA in »German Studies« and »Modern Culture & Media«, Brown University 2016. Currently working on her MA degree in the ›Sound Studies & Sonic Arts‹ program at UdK Berlin; composer in residence at Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm/Sweden in 2018 and regularly performs and presents work under her own name and the Wilted Woman alias »https://ww.virtual-slap.net/«. Radio producer with ties to WFMU, WBSR, and Cashmere Radio.