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Re: [microsound] Lovebomb



I think Thaemlitz's reading of the construct of "Love" is quite astute.

First we would need to recognise that what he is doing is not an
"anthropology," but closer to playing an agent provocateur of sonic
deconstruction. 

Next we would need to recognise his reading as not concentrating on a
negative reading of Love, as if it were Hegelian--and which would lead us,
perhaps ironically, to a transcendental "sacred" or "Real"-- but rather on
the reciprocal conditions of (im)possibility for "love" -- namely, that of
what is not-love: Hate.

By undertaking this move both sonically and in his writing, Thaemlitz
counters the humanist rhetoric of mastery and the "sacred," the "Real," that
many are at pains to save. I would extend his argument to say that anytime
we pose a "sacred," a "Real," we are setting up a transcendental,
exteriorized centre to (absently) ground a system of love/hate that takes as
precondition the Oedipal construct of the humanist subject of mastery (most
brilliantly played with in his track on domestic violence).

Thaemlitz is at pains to do anything but "reduce" "love" to "anthroplogy"
and "rationalism."

Thus "love" is not a focus on negatives, but the unravelling of "love" is a
project of understanding the cultural constructions of this humanist notion
of power and mastery. "Love" is a cultural construct, and all the worse for
its presuppositions of "universality."

What I would affirm in Thaemlitz's reading are hints toward an-other
thinking and experiencing of love that would not be bound to a system of
hate. I think this is what you are getting at too, although it would be a
mistake to confuse Thaemlitz's deconstruction with his gestures towards
an-other gesture of "love." And I will say that this album is predominantly
dark and melancholic, a requiem to the death of "love," (we might even say
the "death of god") rather than an exploration of its possible
otherness--which, I would perhaps say, perhaps remains "to come:" impossible
to announce or predict as it will come without warning, the impossible
arrival. Although this "love" would have nothing to do with claims of the
"sacred" or the "Real," which are the underlying problematics of the
love/hate dichotomy.

Personally I dig Thaemlitz .. very few people out there doing this kind of
thinking in their work.

best, tobias

> while i have always adored the sound of Thaemlitz's
> creations, his intellectualizations that attach to
> them have always been rather slanted/obtuse/missing
> the mark to me. i am halfway through listening to
> Lovebomb and i like it a great deal, but reading the
> accompaning booklet just makes me shake my head.
> reducing love to anthropology and rationalism? what
> ever happened to the idea of objective love, the
> sacred, the Real...? He would not do himself harm by
> reading a bit of Rumi...
> 
> he writes- "Love is... a redundant construction of
> pacifying hysteria, a mandatory insult to appease our
> senses. Its persuasive image of universality is its
> greatest act of culturally invasive violence. A
> perverse mirror of the cut."
> 
> 
> in all his anthropology, he seems to focus solely on
> how negatives can play themselves out. yes the
> negatives exist but so does love, beyond the
> negatives, not in spite of them...
> 
> hmph.
> 
> the music is beautiful though :)
> 
> -thad 
> 
> =====
> Thad Biggerstaff  ~ReSource~  daht73@xxxxxxxxx
> http://www.biggerstaff.homestead.com/
> 
> "Not to forget, I 'museumize' myself; so that then I pay myself a visit and
> find me again in all the relics, to hand down memories from one to the other,
> like a genealogical tree, as if it were morning!" - Massimo Toniutti
> 
> "Everything is a sign of something greater than itself." - a friend
> 
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tobias c. van Veen -----------
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org
http://www.thisistheonlyart.com
------------- tobias@xxxxxxxxx
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