RE: [microsound] power settings - thoughts

["Dominic Lanzone" <dubvurt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> on 9/3/03 7:42 AM, microsound-digest-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > i would hate to feel that somewhere out there are some parameters
> > set by someone (talking about power issues) which alone determine
> > quality of art.
>
> some early morning coffee-fueled thoughts:
>
> you can't escape this...trying to escape this raises a logical
paradox...any
> time someone 'selects' one thing over another they are exercising their
> right or ability 'to choose' which is a form of power...and by selecting
one
> object from many others the selector inadvertently shrouds the object in
an
> aura that has a culturally perceived property of 'quality'...these
> 'selections' travel as cultural memes and influence others to make similar
> selections and hence form concentrations of objects/services, i.e.,
genres,
> email lists, record shops, etc
>
> an essay I read recently recounts an incident where the night janitor for
an
> art gallery 'cleaned up a mess' that was actually a piece by Matthew
Barney
> which was on exhibition...the janitor obviously didn't perceive the piece
as
> containing any of the commonly known aesthetic signifiers that constitute
a
> 'work of art'...he lacked the cultural knowledge pool which is used to
map a
> set of signifiers to other signifiers...
>
> any record label, music shop, festival, magazine, concert venue, webzine,
> etc is a collection of choices made by those who hold the purse strings
> (power over both people and process via capital) and hence reflects a
> hierarchy of power or a power structure...any entity that is actively
> involved in exchanging money for a service or an object becomes a part of
a
> larger power structure (economy)...so how does one break this loop?
>
> droplifting is one possible way to achieve a break in one area as it
> involves a minimal engagement with money and control/power structures...it
> feeds parasitically off of these structures by embedding itself into them
> for little or no cost and offering an unsolicited chance to choose...
>
> I am reading James 'Postmodernism' in which he describes the concept of
> 'wrapping' one conceptual object around another...droplifting can possibly
> be described in this way as well...
>
> speaking of which, I will put up the invite for the droplifting project
this
> weekend...

Kim, 
i'm not even sure that would break the cycle. i'm thinking once the
droplifting process happens at a frequency that it gets truly noticed by
the system it is being droplifted into, a decision to assimilate or reject
it will be made by the system, and in either case droplifiting it's self
will become part of the system. 
like punk rock or hip hop & all the other rebel signals (microsound, too!
that sample CD!)
not that it's a hopeless cause, or you shouldn't do it, i think it's a
great idea cuz in the moments before droplifting is assimilated, it opens a
little chink in the 'truth' of the systmm for a few unsuspecting people,
and does it through a positive too and effective tool like wonder. 
 i'm not sure wther the system is altered by the act of assimilation, but
it must be at least a little. like one drop in a bucket. 
i don't know, just some thoughts. 

i have this chunk of text glued in one of my sketchbooks from an article
that my faulty memory seems to think came from The Wire some years back on
Lee Perry, i'm not sure if it was really form The Wire or who wrote it but:
"........the figure of the scientist is not so distant from the spirit of
the trickster that runs throughout this tale: Both seek to befriend the
strange, not so much striving to 'reduce' anomaly as to use it as a passage
to a larger order... like the scientist, the trickster always yokes just
this world to a suddenly larger world." 

_dominic 

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