1)
“I’ll
Be Your Death” – The Death Killers
In this
audio track by the brother and sister duo “The Death Killers” they use this
album to convey a tangent of expressive vocal melodies. For the most part
nothing is coherent or well articulated, sort of a free styled rock and roll
glossolalia. In “I’ll Be Your Death” the only rendered vocalization is really
there annunciation of “One, two, three, four!” and the stating of “I’ll be your
death.” I almost feel that if I was watching them record it would be parallel
to watching them just goof around live, cause that’s what it is. Hardly
anything is known about this audio cassette but it’s a showcase of siblings
having a vocal ball, with no constructed coherent thought but what fun to
express oneself with such openness.
2)
“Unpretentious
Proclamation” – Tristan Tzara
I feel that Tzara’s “Unpretentious
Proclamation” really hits the nail on the head in how lettering form can
influence the mental processes of the reader. We recently had an awesome guest
speaker Brian Cassidy that explained this in in-depth detail, I thought of him
immediately when reading this poem. While the content is interesting and makes
a definitive statement on how the art world is in the direction of a whatever
works for me mentality the more interesting focus is on the visual presentation
of this work of art. This is a fairly straight up black and white example of
how poetry can functioning flexibly like water to fit into any cup of any shape
or size.
3)
“The
Life and Times of Marshall McLuhan” – Out of Orbit
I’m sure one would ask themselves, how
the hell is a CBCNEWS documentary poetry? But I feel that the very nature of
the one and only Marshall McLuhan is vitally important for the poetic field that
I had to give it a watch. A genius, Joyce scholar and author of the “Global
Village” and more popularly “The Medium is the Message”- both previous artist
The Death Killers and Tristan Tzara embody the philosophical writings McLuhan
was emphasizing, I would almost argue that McLuhan is one of the most important
philosophers in the realm of poetic thought especially if were talking about
poetry being conveyed through different mediums. The documentary begins with a
man stating that, “Marshall saying that the medium is the message… Now that,
that is a poetic thought.” The documentary than continues in this cutting off
the previous scene video format to narrate the life works of the medium guru.
4)
“Lecture
on Nothing” – John Cage
So John Cage is
a name that’s been thrown around ever since I began taking this class, but from
what I can tell he’s a deliciously controversial man. I gave this lecture a
gander while paintings as background music and I felt that I was suppose to be
lying down and accept this brainwashing program. At first the girl talks like
she’s speaking on behalf of society with that hour-long ring that drives you
nuts. Needless to say it was hard to peak into the mind of Cage while painting
so I had to put my brush down a couple times. But surprisingly and eventually,
like 45 minutes in I sort of caught the groove of the vibe he was intending to
convey and starting to enjoy the long ran beeping melody, it almost became
weirdly meditative. The “Lecture on Nothing” is really just that, it constantly
sounds deep and possibly even threatening but she isn’t getting to a point, she
says at one point that “Slowly… we are getting there, Slowly…” But there is no
culminating statement about the whole piece, which to me is the effectiveness
of the work.
5)
“Rant
1” Francis E. Dec
The beginning of this sounded
like another TV commercial that one is programmed today to immediately dismiss,
Frankenstein this and Frankenstein that in a rambunctiously attention seeking
tone. You expect it to stop so you wait. And wait. Than you wait some more only
to get that what he’s doing is subjecting you to his bafoonery, if I can use
that word. Much like John Cage’s “Lecture on Nothing” Dec is using these Rant
series to do exactly that, rant. The difference is in the tone and delivery he
reads it in, what strikes me is how different a reading becomes depending on
who is reading the poetry. It’s equally relative to the differences in visual
format; again six minutes of commercialized talk can be disconcerting. If we
got Maya Angelou, Morgan Freeman or any other freckled African American to read
any of the jibber jabbering sentences in these Rants the flavor would be so
much more different and calming.
6)
“The
Metaphor” –Jorge Luis
First thing I heard was that
strong accent, is this going to be an impressive philosophical talk? Boy I hope
so, but as usual poetry flips it upside down and it’s a man going off on a
tangent of personal metaphors. Its interesting nonetheless cause it begins to
have this European droning feel to it after hearing his style of back and forth
speaking and pausing. I like to imagine how the audience is sitting in relation
to the performance just hearing metaphor after metaphor without a line of logic
carrying the metaphor as it regularly does. It speaks two important facets
under the presentation of poetry, first is that the poet’s decision on how he
speaks determines the flow of the reading and secondly is the amount of silence
he leaves between each sentence creates an added affect to the audience.
7)
“Psychosocial
Implications of HIV Revelations” – David Wojnarowicz
In this
short film featuring Phil Zwickler, the narrator speaks openly about his
homosexual identity and relative to the time it was semi-controversial but more
controversial was his open expression on his experience in having HIV. In the
video he talks about his sexual partners and goes into detail as if he’s
talking to himself, he said he made this film because he felt that any partner
he would possible encounter would now have the consent and knowledge of his
sexual situation, aside from admitting that he was using the sexual disease and
a catalyst for controversy/attention. The video is shot in a sporadic fashion
where rave lights of pink and green constantly bounce onto the bodies of nude men
humping the air, he speaks in his own comfort about the whole picture that the
viewer is watching and hearing. At the time this was pretty ballsy to do and
presents the power words hold when speaking from such a private place and on
such a dirty topic.
8)
“Lucifer
Rising” – Kenneth Anger
Lucifer
Rising is another short film by Kenneth Anger, the film presents a series of
events where different cultural canons present there form of ritualizing a
darkness that takes form as Egyptian shadows, Aleister Crowley magick rituals
or giant green demon spirits. For the most part, I really enjoyed the film for
its wild and successful attempts of capturing religious drama and the almost
outlandish quality of the whole story. This is a good example in using cultural
archetypes to tell a story or carry a tone which is not only important for
poetry but for all art in general. There is such a heavy amount of symbolism that
the whole film begins to paint a picture of just a giant ritual. This film is
another account of the flexibility that poetry extends itself onto, using
little more than poetic symbolisms and eerie music.
9)
“Sound Sculpture” –
Sound Sculpture is a PDF downloadable
text of images and writings of artwork that produce a certain sound, and before
writing about the texts I want to emphasize again that I’m writing about the
text. Not the artwork in the book but the functioning of the book with images
of artwork that produces sound in the book. The first thing you witness that
can be really witnessed in any art book is how the words carry the exact intent
of the artist, the importance of this is tremendous- I mean this is the whole
point of having an artist statement. But this book stands out more in its
relation to this class because the writings of these artworks on the effects of
sound and vision in combination with one another. The combination is this, that
when an art object contains the element of a voice in any fashion it ceases to
be one-dimensional but becomes a conduit of perspective. In other words the
element of sound automatically is one of a narrating quality. The book quotes
Harry Partch, that “His (Man) last step was almost automatic. The metamorphosis
of the magical sounds and the visual beauty into something spiritual. They became fused with his everyday words and experience: his ritual, drama, religion - thus lending greater meaning to his life. These acts of primitive man become the trinity of this work: magical sounds - visual form and beauty - experienced ritual." Thus in the same fashion that the noise adds onto
the artworks we experience we have poetry as a vocal form of narrative the
emotions that dwell in our lives.
10) “The Run South” – Terry Allen
This was what I considered to be the most
expected style of poetry for the most part. It is a direct reading of Terry
Allen explaining a sexual encounter, he reads off positions and the series of
events that took place in the nude. A flat out read narration of Mr. Allen’s
emotions, I felt that I had to include one poem that was traditional of reading
a poem. While obviously one can make a comment on his Southern accent and what
that culturally signifies but just as a man reading his mind I appreciate the
simplicity and refreshing clarity of keeping something considered standard out
there. So while poetics are wonderful off the page and I advocate it, it
doesn’t mean that poetics on the page is any weaker.
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