[Dancecult-l] liveness, perfomativity, theatre

[tobias c. van Veen]

> "I was at a concert of electronic music in Cologne and I noticed that
> even though it was the most recent electronic music, the audience was
> all falling asleep. No matter how interesting the music was, the
> audience couldn't stay awake. That was because the music was coming out
> of loudspeakers. Then, in 1958-the Town Hall program of mine-we were
> rehearsing the Williams Mix, which is not an uninteresting piece, and
> the piano tuner came in to tune the piano. Everyone's attention went
> away from the Williams Mix to the piano tuner because he was /live/."
> (Cage interviewed by thom holmes for Electronic and Experimental  Music
> 2002 Routledge)


.. which only goes to show how far the 'live' is a social construct, as last
time I checked no one was falling asleep at a rave, or;

... which only goes to show that upstart La Monte Young hadn't imploded
Cage's expectations of loudspeakers yet with a serious dose of 140db
sinewave oscillation.

Either way, I think any discussion of the 'live' as it has taken place has
to historicize its findings in order to produce valuable research: the
'live' only came to be as-such with the birth of the recorded at the late
19thC. Like 'madness,' it is a concept of a discourse, i.e., a nexus of a
technics (recorded media), an institution (that of Music), peoplings (the
world over), practices (evidently) and concepts (as Cage, perhaps
unwittingly, displays above). It would take a metaphysical argument indeed
to claim that the 'live' exists as-such without reference and indeed the
necessity of the simulacra (recorded media), and, as philosophers say, de
jure and de facto, the recorded pre-exists the 'live' on all counts. No one
worried about the 'live' status of performance until broadcast media become
dominant (de facto) revealing the status of recorded media as untroubled
until its newfound media power produced an apparently extraoriginary
repressed (de jure: the live).

Mmmmm ice coffee in the heatwave,
& I am digging all this discussion,
    way to heat up the summer dancecult.!

    tobias


tobias c. van Veen -----------++++
http://www.quadrantcrossing.org --
McGill Communication & Philosophy