Mladen Bizumic’s Colonial Atmospheres at The Physics Room, Christchurch. 15 November - 15 December 2007.
Bizumic’s DVD installation here is a typical video work from this artist, with a haunting aural soundtrack and imagery that is dystopian in theme appropriated from Godard. The music though is a soundtrack Bzumic has now used twice, the first time in a work that’s part of the Chartwell Collection in AAG, a video called Hauturu – the Maori name for Little Barrier Island.
For this soundtrack Bizumic took an orchestral arrangement of The Rolling Stones’ standard Under My Thumb and slowed it right down. And it is absolutely gorgeous.
So gorgeous in fact that it dominates the experience in viewing both installations. Now many authors have been fascinated by the power music has over the human mind and the pleasure centre in the brain – prompting books on the subject for example by Oliver Sacks and Anthony Storr. The point I have raised about aural domination in Bizumic’s show I would also apply to the films of, say, Len Lye.
In most of Lye’s great films such as Particles In Space or Colour Cry he incorporated music taken from his large collection of jazz and blues 78s. I have always felt that in doing this Lye was admitting his visual material was insufficient by itself, and that he remedied the philosophical dilemma by making kinetic (and noisy) sculpture later on.
In Bizumic’s case, the Jagger-Richards song was recorded originally in March 1966, and the Godard film Weekend, released in 1967, so historically as source material the original image and melody do match. A clever pairing.
16 comments:
Hi John
Personally I don’t see Lye’s use of music as a sign that his visuals are inadequate. Rather, I would relate it to his overall idea of an ‘art of movement’. Dance is a fundamental human activity – human beings have always danced to music. Music has many of the same characteristics as moving images – it unfolds in time, it has rhythms, it has physical resonance, it swings, and so on.
Even Lye’s very first formulation of the idea of kinetic art referred to music (‘If there can be musical figures, there can be figures of motion’). Also relevant is an interesting essay (‘A note on dance and film’) in which he explains the relationship between a film and its soundtrack in terms of the images being ‘a vicarious form of dance to the music’. His sculptures also can be said to dance, and they make their own music (although Lye did experiment at times with added music).
It is also significant that he tended to use repetitive, rhythmic music which was easy to edit and also did not upstage the visuals. Unlike Fischinger (who used elaborate classical music), Lye used popular dance or drum music that didn’t have too many tempo changes or complex melodies. All this is to say that it is not a case of the music upstaging the visuals, but of the two working together - as dance - within his overall aesthetic of motion. Music plus physical movement (i.e. dance) goes with a heightened sense of physicality all round. I know that whenever I have projected Free Radicals I have always found it difficult to sit still!
Best wishes
Roger Horrocks
Thanks Roger for your quick response. I adore those films of Lye's but I've always had this little nagging voice at the back of my mind saying that the soundtrack is an addition. Whereas in Blade for example, that the sound is an inherent property of the material within the moving sculpture mades the relationship betwen sound and image purer, more integrated. Simpler - and I guess to me - better.
I see what you are saying, John, and it's true that a film like Free Radicals could be seen as a step towards making the relationship between sound and image purer and more integrated - since the music is of a more
rhythmic and repetitive kind, and Lye dispenses with colour. It's much tighter than (say) Colour Box, and it is my favourite Lye film. BUT I am nervous of too reductive an aesthetic -- we could start to get too pure and Greenbergian here. Idioms of excess can also be valid. The most extreme example is Lye's film All Souls Carnival which deliberately avoided synchronizing sound to images -- so the two aspects go along in parallel. Which reminds me of Merce Cunningham's very free-wheeling 'parallel' approach to music. Dance too tightly integrated with music starts to get on my nerves after a while, and I'm always glad that Lye is never too tight. In most films he keeps in touch with the music but likes to do a bit of syncopation or idiosyncratic counterpoint every few bars. Interestingly, the
women who had danced with him at parties used to describe his style on the dance floor in exactly those terms. He was a very unusual dancer, challeging and quirky, but the women also thought him very sexy!
-Roger Horrocks
You are right, there is something Greenbergian in my critique of Lye's films' separation of image from sound. However though I love Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee by themselves, I admit seeing/hearing Len's use of their music is an extra treat.
But let me also say this: as a visual artist who has listened to music passionately most of my life, but who canot play an instrument, I am quite envious of my musician friends. I believe music reaches an emotional core far quicker than visual imagery. It achieves a greater physical intensity in the listener than what a visual artist can achieve with a viewer. This despite all the discussions about synaesthesia by Kandinsky, Klee, Malevich etc. and the cross-over of the senses.
Hi John
Just a quick additional note to say that you are certainly touching on something that was central to modernism. As you suggest, the analogy between music and (abstract) art was there right from the beginning, in many of the main modernist manifestoes. And it’s also a fact that many of the leading modernist artists were also passionate about music. Some painted (like Schoenberg). Some great film-makers like Walther Ruttmann were good players. The music-plus-visuals-multimedia happening was a specialty of the Bauhaus. The Ballets Russes (with their mix of great music, great dancing, and great painters who were designing sets and costumes) was another major vehicle of modernism. And of course film has had music, especially since soundtracks arrived in 1928.
For me, a lot of this tradition has to do with the fascinating abstract-ness of music, at least in terms of the rejection of ‘programme elements’ championed by composers such as Stravinsky. Music can perform its magic largely by pure shape (melody, rhythm), colour (pitch), and texture. The 1910s and ‘20s saw the rise of ‘absolute music’ alongside ‘absolute film’ and ‘absolute abstraction’ (De Stijl, Constructivism, Suprematism, and so on). To say that music is absolute and non-programmatic is of course not to say it can’t still be sensuous, funky, emotional, etc., any more than abstract art is necessarily cold or narrowly intellectual.
All this is just to say that any call to keep music and art in separate compartments would have to challenge the mainstream (or one of the mainstreams) of modernist art history, and I suspect an argument could be made (in different terms) for other periods too. The two areas of art are obviously different in fundamental respects, but it is undeniable that art has always been fascinated and stimulated by the affinities with music -- and by the possibility that one plus one (music/images) may equal a new kind of one -- like Lye's idea of the images as a vicarious form of dance to the music.
Roger Horrocks
Hi John
I have thought some more about the interesting question you raise, and I think I have a few more thoughts to offer.
1. While many people may regard “synesthesia” as a specialized or arty effect, we need to remember that some people have brains wired in such a way that it is an everyday sense experience. (If in doubt, see Oliver Sacks’ new book, Musicophilia, chapter 14.)
2. Len Lye was NOT interested in music/colour connections in that way (in the Kandinsky or Scriabin manner), but he did have a special feeling about the way music and images went together. The key to it is the fact that he was interested not only in the ‘art of motion’ but in the PHYSICAL art of motion. And for him, music or sound could intensify the physicality of images (provided it was the right sort of music). It’s not hard to understand his belief if we imagine first sitting and listening to a piece of music, and then dancing to it. If things go well (and it helps to have the right partner!), the dance is a more funky and physical experience than simply sitting and listening. We hear the music differently when responding with our body. I believe that’s the background to Lye’s view that music can act as an intensifier and that images can function as a ‘vicarious form of dance’. Of course, vicarious is more complex than literal dancing, but recent discoveries of neuroscience (such as 'mirror neurons') strongly support Lye's view. His primary concern was to persuade us to view his art in a more physical way (with more 'body english' or nervous system involvement), and the music did its job if it added that dimension, as music can do (especially jazz and other forms of music with strong rhythm).
3. At the same time, I think Lye always saw the images as primary. He selected music (dance music) that would intensify the images but not upstage them. And his images had an independent life of their own. They kept basically in time with the music but danced in a complex counterpoint.
4. As for the sculptures, the mechanical sounds they make (creaks, thuds, brushing sounds, impacts) also help to heighten their physicality, their ‘tangible motion’.
-Roger Horrocks
For all your discussion about Lye's soundtracks being 'dance music' what of the Foundation's audio recordings of the kinetic works? The movement of the steel sculpture is bodily I agree but not the soundtrack - in fact it is decidedly unbodily, though still v.exciting. A different sort of sensation and mood. Perhaps Len might not have approved as it is not sufficently 'danceable'?
Then we have Jean-Michel Bouhours' brilliant theory in the Pompidou catalogue discussing a reflexive dimension to Lye's practice, where film and kinetic works reference the machinery and mechanics of film projection. Maybe that side of things is just as important as the dancing body, even more, in looking at the synthesis of image with sound?
Hi John
Thanks for your interesting feedback.
It’s true that Len did experiment with the addition of music to his sculptures in the early days, but I think as he went along he got more attuned to the sounds they made, and that was music enough for him. (Compare Wayne Laird’s wonderful CD of sculptures going through their programmes.) Len got interested in 'metal' music, like that of Anne McMillan, who'd been an assistant of Edgard (Poeme Electronique) Varese.
I think the important thing is to maintain a very broad definition of what music is, or what dance is. The term ‘dance music’ is perhaps misleading as today the term is so often associated with boring drum-machine regularity at 120 or 130 bpm – Len’s sense of music was a lot more complex than that. And to speak of the sculptures dancing, it’s important to remember that dance can be Merce Cunningham (a favourite of Len’s), not the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.
Anything that Jean-Michel writes is worth thinking about, and it’s true that ‘projection’ was always a key word for Len, with many implications. (For example he wanted to ‘blow up’ his sculptures to iMax size.) But I don’t think we should overlook the artist’s primary interest -- to intensify the physical experience of viewing movement. The music, and the sculpture sounds, work for me as intensifiers. The metal sounds can add tactility and physical presence, adding depth or a kind of third dimension to the visual experience.
While enjoying the intellectual symbolism of the kinetic sculpture as a film projector, I think Len would be more interested in the physical workings of the film projector as a kind of kinetic machine – hot, noisy, fast (as anyone knows who has spent many hours in a projection box). In the old days, when I was doing long stints of projecting for the festival, I used to have nightmares, at night after I went to sleep, of film-spools flying off, film unraveling, cutting my hands on the sharp metal of the spool, etc. It’s that kind of physical presence that a working projector has, up close, that reminds me of some of Len’s sculptures!
Dear John,
Congratulations on getting your site up and running. I read your review of Mladen Bizumic’s show with interest and particularly your reference to Len Lye’s films.
I think the philosophical dilemma you refer to in Lye’s work is a residue of a modernist reading (less is more) that you invoke when considering his work. I don’t think Lye was in a dilemma at all when he incorporated music and sounds into his films. Indeed, he seemed to move comfortably and effortlessly between stimulating our various senses (visual, aural, tactile, kinaesthetic) as he did when moving between experimental filmmaking and kinetic sculpture.
To this extent, I think Lye is more profitably considered as a ‘producer of theatrical experiences’ than (just) a filmmaker and kinetic sculpture. The notion of ‘theatre’ seem to capture a multitude of forms and means – a trans media experience – that was more natural to Lye than the constraining categories of modernism. The idea of art as theatre is well illustrated in Lye’s grand and yet to be realised works like the ‘Universe Walk’, ‘Temple of Lightning’ and ‘Storm Chamber’.
You refer to ‘Particles in Space’ as one of Lye’s films accompanied by jazz music. Interestingly, part of the percussive and rhythmic sounds we hear in this film are recorded from his sculpture, Storm King, and not from his jazz collection. The point to make here is that for Lye, there was a seamlessness between his various art forms and he exploited them all in his bid to create the ultimate kinaesthetic experience. He may not have been a musician in the pure sense of the term but he was certainly aware that his sculptures were composing ‘music’ (were melodic figures) as they were composing figures of motion.
In recent times, it has been refreshing to see (and hear) Lye’s film and sculpture presented with the theatricality he intended. Coloured lights, additional recorded sounds and the display of the films and sculptures together in the same space (Jean-Michel Bourhours presentation of Lye at Le Fresnoy, 2000) all contribute to a fuller appreciation and experience of what Lye was about.
Just opened at the Govett Brewster in New Plymouth is an exhibition of Lye’s Fountains, curated by Tyler Cann. In this exhibition Cann presents five different ‘fountains’ by Lye, and a close cousin, ‘Fire Bush’ all exquisitely lit with coloured lights and all accompanied by music as Lye intended. I recommend Tyler Cann’s essay published to accompany the exhibition, ‘Len Lye: Five Fountains and a Fire Bush’, which amongst other things, discusses Lye’s use of music in his work.
Evan Webb
Well Evan, it is certainly interesting thinking about the different presentations of Lye's works over the years in different spaces - the variety of approaches by various curators to the same works. I have seen a number of shows where washes of coloured light bathed the kinetic sculpture, and frankly it disturbs me. Again I go back to my original comment in my Bizumic review. It is as if Lye lacked confidence in his original idea. The guy kept changing his mind.
Dear John,
Lye didn’t lack confidence any more than he kept changing his mind. Indeed, he was often quite explicit about the presentation of his work. I think what you’re seeing in the different approaches to presenting his work is a process both of interpretation by curators and a cautiousness as they learn more about Lye. Therefore it was not surprising to see the earlier, posthumous, shows of his work presented in a pared-down and more austere manner – white on black – more formal and less figurative than more recent presentations by say, Tyler Cann (who this year showed Universe under a red light and against a red wall). So the changes you see in the presentation of his work say more about current curatorial practice and a shift away from modernism than any dilemmas you attribute to Lye.
Evan Webb
I don't know about this, Evan. I reckon if one thinks about all the curated shows one has seen of Lye's work - from about a dozen curators - there's a real range of presentational approach. With each curator claiming to be following the artist's wishes. This variation is due to the LLF archives being densely full of letters, lectures, treatises and amended proposals. The guy regularly changed his mind, and you are being slightly disingenuous placing the presentation styles upon the shoulders of the curators and postmodern trends. The variation comes back not to curatorial whim, but to the artist's owm musings on his practice, and his shifting of positions.
If I may add a few more thoughts to this discussion.
1. Light and colour have always been elements of kinetic art (cf Maholy-Nagy, Gabo, and other artists in the 1920s/30s).
2. It's true that Lye was not sympathetic to the ‘60s-style indiscriminate use of multi-media elements. In ‘A Note on Dance and Film’ he wrote, ‘I’ve never liked watching dancers with zigs of light whizzing around’ and ‘I certainly gave up being interested in both dance-motion and light-motion when a solo dancer or a group fiddle-faddle with flicking and creeping lights….’).
3. At the same time, he had no hesitation in mixing media when the match was right. He mixed images with music when he made films, and he experimented with music and colour lighting combined with sculpture. But he never mixed elements together unless he was sure they succeeded in intensifying each other. Hence, he experimented for weeks, sometimes months, in getting things right. When music went well with images, the images became ‘a vicarious form of dance.’ As he said in the essay mentioned above: ‘Therefore, the thing when mixing…, is to watch your vicariousness, baby.’
4. I agree with Evan that Lye had a strong sense of ‘theatre’. But his particular sense of theatre was still highly selective. He was a fanatic for details. His underlying rule (and I guess it goes back to a Modernist ‘less is more’ aesthetic) could be paraphrased as: ‘As much as possible, but everything has got to earn its place. (No passengers!)’
5. Curators will do what they want, and so they should. As Evan says, fashions and priorities change. There are enough precedents to justify a curator’s experiments in combining coloured light with the sculptures. Our only requirement should be that he or she does so in fear and trembling, putting as much care into getting the setup right as Lye would have done. Of course there is never going to be one definitive way to present Lye’s sculptures – a curator can try a different way next year, and we can ourselves judge the effectiveness.
6. What seems to underlie our friendly debate here with John is his apparent personal preference for a specialized focus (say, on motion). Personally I agree with this value as I think Lye’s greatest achievement as an artist was to create sculptures in which ‘movement can be the whole work’ (as Donald Judd said of Lye in a 1965 Artforum piece). But I think it would be excessively Greenbergian and reductionist for John to suggest that there is something excessive about all mixtures – as he seemed to imply when he worried about mixing images with music in a film. It’s a valid point of view to want to keep different cognitive functions separate (if I can put it like that), but I think Lye offers powerful examples where they do ‘dance’ together – movement, music, colour – and for Lye all the senses involved came from a common source (the same brain, via the same body). The combination may click, may dance, in a very kinetic way. It doesn’t happen often (and Lye was outspoken in criticising almost all films as failures) -- but let’s not be so purist as to assume a priori that such marriages can’t work.
-Roger Horrocks
This conversation about Lye is a wonderful drawing out of ideas based on a aside I made during a skimpy Mladen Bizumic review. Perhaps some readers have ideas that centre on Mladen's practice. Digressions on a thread can often be useful things - as is obvious here - but I haven't forgotten Bizumic's show in Christchurch.
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