Should art have words?
poetic and absolutist
In the Museum of Contemporary Art in western Massachusetts, on the fourth floor of the back wing, there stands a wooden table, about dining room sized. If you sit on a chair at one end of the table, put your elbows in front of you, and clap your hands over your ears, you can hear music. It is weird and cool and most importantly, it feels like an art experience and no one had to tell you anything for you to appreciate it as such. It can be presented without words, without any theory at all.
The theory, should you pick up a Mass MOCA pamphlet, is this – the idea “began when Anderson was using an electric typewriter, and, in a moment of frustration, put her head in her hands, elbows on the table. She then heard the sound of humming transferred through the wooden table, up through her arms, into her ears. She says about the project: “I wanted to make songs that were more like remembering than listening. So it would seem like you’d heard them somewhere before. In the end, the same physical gesture – the head in the hands – was used in the invention as well as its reception.”
The first part — Anderson sitting at the typewriter — that’s not the theory. That’s just context, the personal record of things situated at the same time as the idea came to be. It’s not theory until someone starts talking about concept.
Anderson (a musician) continues: “I wanted to make songs that were more like remembering than listening. So it would seem like you’d heard them somewhere before.”
Songs that are like remembering… a lot of nostalgia music does this. They’ll take a sample that sounds like a recording of radio music, or tweak the reverb until it sounds like you’re in the back room at a club. It can be done really well, though it’s also a bit of a sentimental gesture. Remembering and listening, both abstractions but also plain physical gestures. “In the end, the same physical gesture – the head in the hands – was used in the invention as well as its reception.” Pure theory now. Whimsical rhyming. We’re in ArtLand.
***
I was in ArtLand for the last three weeks (and also indefinitely, as a state of mind). I was in Europe for two dance festivals: B12 in Berlin, and Bolzano Dansa in Bolzano. B12 is an experimental contemporary dance festival that goes on for the month of July. It is full of workshops in the day and student/teacher performances in the evening, and it’s relatively lowkey in that all the performances are either cheap or free. Whereas Bolzano Danza is the High Art counterpart with more funding and more publicity from the city and more Theory around the production of the dance itself. Both festivals are attended largely by professional dancers, usually a mix of college dance majors and European company dancers.
A sample of Theory, from Bolzano Danza:
What happened is that I was at Oleg Stepanov’s performance in b12 one evening. He had created a giant cubic balloon (think ten by ten by six feet) out of Mylar emergency blankets, and placed in a dimly lit room with techno playing in the background (many of the classes/performances played techno, it was always very good and never on Spotify) and sort of pulsated it, moving around inside of it so that it looked like it was moving around by itself, sweeping along the floor and billowing gently. There was an unconscious body lying on stage, and a distorted recording of his own voice speaking. It was altogether extraordinary sensations between the balloon the deep techno and the Dancing, and I asked Oleg after the talk whether the feeling of the piece came from a particular memory and he said he made the balloon while he was thinking of one of the immigrant ships that sank a while bank, he was thinking about the ocean while he made the balloon.
And that was kind of it, he didn’t have more to say. Very understated, perhaps. Tacit art culture.
I texted J about this. J was at Bolzano Danza, watching the Darkmatter piece above. J texts back (sounding flippant but likely in total seriousness) “I think art shouldn’t have words.”
Should art have words?
SHOULD ART HAVE WORDS?
***
There was another performance that week at b12 by Johannes Wieland, featuring thirty dancers on a dimly lit stage. There’s no recording of it but here’s 2023 video of something else he’s done in the same vein. His piece was intense. Here are my notes while watching (the festival didn’t allow any recordings at any time):
Clutter, mind collective, licking the floor, emergent movement, no faces, crispy wrinkled spiders
Bland, overexposed, divine, blessed look. INANE. The power of the mesmerizing brute to start an orgy at any time.
Johannes Wieland has something relevant to say here, which I’ve peeled out of that Youtube video: “I hope people have an interesting time watching the piece and that it triggers something. I'm not a big fan so much of telling people what to think and what to, you know, in a way what to take away because they should just have an experience and see what that does to them.”
A, standing next to me, says this is a meaningless statement. (A has been standing next to me for years now).
I think it is two steps above a meaningless statement. It is an artist’s statement that marks a position around how a piece should be consumed.
A has a story about an old friend of his. This person set up a room with a grain of sand on a pedestal. And covered the walls with 60 000 words of text of artists’ statement. Because art is often used as the vessel for some kind of verbal statement as opposed to the actual expression of something.
I take this away and chew on it for a while. The thing is, it’s just dissatisfying to be given too little of what is needed to understand. A piece might feel interesting, and be profound on the level that it operates. But I find myself craving the good theory.
***
This is all reminding me of classic style (A says I’m stretching the analogy to classic style too far).
Dear reader, classic style is a style of prose writing. The idea is to present information about the world in a clear and succinct way. It removes the author’s feelings about the subject. No self-consciousness. Delete the author.
Steven Pinker says, about classic style – “The writer knows the truth before putting it into words; he is not using the occasion of writing to sort out what he thinks. Nor does the writer of classic prose have to argue for the truth; he just needs to present it. That is because the reader is competent and can recognize the truth when she sees it, as long as she is given an unobstructed view. The writer and the reader are equals, and the process of directing the reader’s gaze takes the form of a conversation.”
Probably the best quote on classic style to exist comes from the original authors of the Classic Style Thomas and Turner “When we open a cookbook, we completely put aside—and expect the author to put aside—the kind of question that leads to the heart of certain philosophic and religious traditions. Is it possible to talk about cooking? Do eggs really exist? Is food something about which knowledge is possible? Can anyone else ever tell us anything true about cooking? … Classic style similarly puts aside as inappropriate philosophical questions about its enterprise. If it took those questions up, it could never get around to treating its subject, and its purpose is exclusively to treat its subject.”
The analogy is that trying to present art that stands by itself, with no theory and no explanation and no authorial traces, this is a kind of classic presentation that draws back to classic style.
A says classic style, by attempting to create work that stands for itself, is actually trying to set the highest possible bar. It means creating something that works on a visceral and subverbal level.
These are good words. They might even mean something. The performance piece did work, and left a lasting impression. Even so, it’s not enough. I want to hear a voice. I feel like it's just an asshole move to make something and not bother to explain it other than to the niche in-group that already understands it. A piece can be interesting solely because of where it comes from, even if it’s not really appealing to the viewer. A lot of historical art is like this. If I knew what the artist has been through, I can appreciate the piece as a sort of message from another world. This makes it appreciable to the broadest possible audience. Art should explain its context. Art should explain its symbolism. Even though there is implicit power in not explaining.
***
Structure now: SHOULD ART HAVE WORDS?
Yes
Context around the process and history is usually good. This is the easiest to argue for, it doesn’t include adding the artist’s intention or any kind of oppressive facade like that.
The right words broaden the audience for a thing
No
Let a work stand by itself, don’t try to seek explanation from somewhere external, just examine your own reaction.
Words cannot stand in for the viewer’s experience / materiality of the work, and so they are ultimately a bit of a distraction.
Is there secretly a derision for explainability hidden in here???