neo-modernism

[Ian Andrews <i.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>to the extent that glitch is a critique of technology, it's not a return
>to a pure art. but not all glitch is all that critical, and even some
>that is tends to oscillate between criticality and technological
>fetishism. I think the thing to keep in mind is that there are a variety
>of approaches to "the glitch". I'm not sure if I get this multiplicity
>from your analysis. Perhaps your contention that "post-digital" music
>embodies a desire to return to modernism risks suppressing the
>"post-modern" reality of the situation, which is more multiplicitous (to
>the extent that "post-modernism" can be understood as a tendency towards
>multiplicity, though that risks unifying "post-modernism as
>"multiplicity").

I agree.  I think that my position regarding the neo-modernist tendency is
in some respects a little ambivalent.  First of all, speaking for myself,
with my own work I have noticed a creeping return of modernist aesthetics.
Although I have always regarded my work as belonging to the cultural
practices of post-modern culture,  stemming from multiple (intertextual)
currents, and of being hybrid (or mongrel), I have recently been drawn
toward a desire for singularity which has manifested itslef in the form of
minimalism, exclusion of other content (text, meaning, etc.) and a
fasination with pure mathematical structure (as well as aleatory
procedures).   As I tried to point out in my essay, these tendencies share
much in common with the idea of pure art (which I am totally against). I am
thus well aware of the dangers of such a direction.
So I see possibilities and problems in both directions: the return to
modernism; and the logical extension of post-modernism.  I have tried to
find a way out of this by theorising minmalism as merely a starting point,
a kind of degree zero from which to rebuild from.  In this respect the
return to modernism is not full return, not an abandonment of multiplicity,
but rather a brief visit.  Or perhaps an oscillation between the multiple
and the singular.

Certainly not all post-digital art/music falls into the category of
neo-modernism or pure art.  But I do think that a dominant aesthetic has
emerged that can be described as a return to the pure (I'm thinking of
neo-minimalist music, blank CD covers and of course the manifestos of
Manovich et al). But maybe this really happened a couple of years ago and
we have all since moved on (the manifestos, as I said, being after the
fact).
I don't think that the aspect of the glitch as critique in the form of self
reflexivity is enough to save it from pure art.  This is why I brought up
the comparison with structural-materialist film. Those filmmakers sought a
political cinema practice concerned with the materiality of the filmic
substrate, but ultimately ended up reproducing the same essentialist
problematics as Greenberg and high modernist painting.  But then again, I
do find a lot of those formalist films quite engaging, and likewise much of
the music which falls into this category.  Such is the paradox that I'm
attempting to explore here.

best,

ian

Ian Andrews
Metro Screen
Sydney

Email: i.andrews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.metroscreen.com.au

Metro Screen
Sydney Film Centre
Paddington Town Hall
P.O. Box 299
Paddington NSW 2021
Ph : 612 9361 5318
Fax: 612 9361 5320

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