IASPM'd - day.one

["tobias c. van Veen" <tobias@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

[report on day.one of IASPM Montreal]

Here's a few words as posted to the Afro-Futurism email list on day.one of
IASPM :

hi list,

As requested, here's a few words on the first day of _5 full days_ of panel
presentations (often with _three concurrent streams_). IASPM is the first
conference I've been to where there is somewhat of an even balance between
the under 35's and over, as well as a passable cultural-racial mix (at least
the conference is truly international, with participants from Mexico, Spain,
the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, France, Eastern Europe, the African
Continent [trying to figure out who and where from] and all over Canada and
the US...  so the conference has some good energy to it (also as evidenced
by the fine social drinking last night). But onto the goods --

Without further ado, I caught Nabeel Zuberi's paper entitled
"The Transmolecularization of (Black) Folk: Space is the Place, Sun Ra and
Afrofuturism." Zuberi, a U of Auckland Prof, was apparently on this very
list up until about a month ago -- in any case, like all 20 minute marathon
presentations he touched on more than he could analyse in-depth, but managed
to present a basic overview of Sun Ra in the development of an
"Afro-Futurist" aesthetic (replete with a great clip from the film _Space is
the Place_). Fairly straightforward for those knowledgeable of the history,
although he took the time to point out Sun Ra as a precursor to Detroit
techno and threw in a good quote of Kodwo Eshun. Zuberi also went into a bit
of detail surrounding Ra's (mis)use of the mini-Moog to create his wacked
out, distorted sounds, and explored the pastiche elements of the film via
its collaborative creation. As the panel was focused on sound in film, the
focus was more on the ways in which Ra's abstract jazz and use of
synthesizers drove the film than theoretical or historical elements of
Afro-Futurism (I would have preferred to hear more of the latter than what
amounts to me as basic film analysis). Nonetheless Zuberi's paper was the
best of the session -- I'm looking forward to speaking more with him today.
Apparently he's got some work coming out in that new _Afro Futurism_ volume
culled from last year's (I think) _Social Text_ (71).

There was also two papers on Cronenberg and Godzilla respectively, but
nothing really mindblowing, mainly dealing with the use of synthesizers and
Japanese traditional music motifs respectively. Strong film analysis, but
little extrapolated beyond that into the social or political.

The other panel I managed to snag was on cyborgs -- I'm always up for some
cyborg analysis. Steve Dixon from U of Salford gave a rather .. well,
lacking paper on Stelarc (esp. for those who have read Brian Massumi's
brilliant work in _Parables for the Virtual_) which failed to mention
Stelarc's use of sound completely (he mic's his machines / robot apparatuse
/ and his body and amplifies it) & dealt with the Deleuze and Guattari
theoretical aspect at a very self-described "cheeky" level which just came
across as  .. well, "cheeky" -- lacking substance. To Dixon's credit, he was
analysing cyborg and robot art (including Stelarc) as _camp_, which I found
fascinating, although I couldn't see the thesis as credible. Stelarc's work
is anything but camp for me.

Moving on, Catherine Langabeer, also from the U of Auckland, delivered a
paper that began to analyse Bjork's recent work with computers and laptops
in terms of its paradoxical presentation of digital subjectivity (Bjork
sings about closeness and samples her breath while being oh so far away,
etc). Unfortunately Langabeer only began to touch onto the laptop aspects
and claimed that digital sounds "connote" their digitality; this being in
stark contrast to current theses of "areferential" sound from Achim
Szepanski and others (ie. "clicks and cuts"). The paper was enjoyable, but
suffered from the usual cultural studies perspective of "apply analysis to X
object" -- and there's been a good deal of work done on laptop performance
and digital sound that could have aided her work. Nonetheless, it was
exciting seeing someone reference Matmos and Twerk, at least in their
abstract, and her final direction is one I can agree with: "popular music
theory needs increasingly to become a cyborg creature in order to
accommodate this emergence [of 'the cyborgian relationship between musician
and computer-mediated musical practices']."

Well -- I'm off to a few more sessions today, one featuring a paper on
"Dance Tribes and Club Cultures" and another panel on "Semiotics and
Meaning" -- both of which have papers tying into various aspects of rhythm,
dub, reggae and other black diaspora musics and cultures .. as well as shit
like simulacra and The Matrix. And tonight I get to DJ for the academes and
lay down some techno turntablism -- I think it will be a night of Detroit
and abstract minimal techno .. Underground Resistance meets the Germans --
Afro-Germanic .. 

best,

tV

tobias c. van Veen -----------
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org
http://www.thisistheonlyart.com
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