Mr. Feedback : The Video

Art has not longer a social meaning this days.

Art Making is an empty ceremony; a rehearsal for a play that will never happen;
Art stopped having a social meaning after the death of Basquiat; whatever happened since the day after his dead to our days is what we all know as inertia.
Of course the consequences of the early inertia where provided of equal quality as the ones (works of artists) previous to Basquiat and Basquiat's dead, but it is not quality what counts here since we are talking about social meaning not quality; and i mean "social meaning" as "the importance of being an artist".
I guess Terry Richardson is the last famous WW artist this days, maybe more so than Damien Hirsch. But again, I am not making a statement about fashion here, I am only only making a reference, a reference to the day that social meaning of art and the social meaning of being an artist died; and it died with Basquiat. basquiat was a sophisticated Van Gogh, a suicide-ed by society.

Designers are excluded of this discrimination, designers create functional objects and they profit more or less fast or faster that the lonely soul who's trying to paint or sculpt or compose a useless masterpiece. And even if we do momentarily profit, there's no much more social meaning in it than going to the park to feed the pigeons.
Since success became more and more an accidental event than a reward for your merits
or skills also the quality of the artworks and music declined to the lowest levels and also the disappearance and forgetfulness of famous artists during or since early 90s; when the last famous visual artist was Damien Hirst.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Future_of_Art_-_Damien_Hirst.jpg
Or do you dare to remember any other famous artist name this days?
Don't even try because there's no any left. Curators and gallerists were and maybe they are trying to be famous or celebrants of themselves promoting artists on line but for some reason the name of the curator or the gallerist/art dealer will shine first.
We also have a fest of art consumers, ex artists, connoisseurs, collectors or wannabes that please themselves in "not getting it". Not getting it is a safe position.
This very peculiar reaction to art of "not getting it" today is mainly an expression of denial to protect their senses from a mental/cultural collapse. ( The Freudian "fantasy of the end of the world"). Because even the charming decadent aesthetics of the post modernism in the early and middle 90s reflected this "if"; while on one hand were a signal of the apocalypse of art as social phenomenon it was also a loose link enjoyable by the snobs and the avantgardists. On the other hand was a hybrid aesthetic itself. also enjoyable by Sunday museums and gallery visitors.
Today's standards put equal values either on the enjoyable "don't get it" as well as the
"smile of understanding" both vacuous fields of celebration of the death of art.
The Music revolution last scream and legacy is definitely most of the soundworks or musics produced by the British Record labels 4AD and em:t ; but of course this besides being mainly a matter of opinion, has not value as a treasure or cultural relic; unless until now; with the exception of a few crazy souls that are trying to make it a treasure at paying over 300 dollars in ebay for certain em:t cds.
Time will tell. . .

About Improvised Music

Improvisation in opposition to what most people and "experts" in music believes or see and value as a lower kind or way of making music; turned to be a new tradition marked by new ethics and rules. Abstract or concrete rules dictated by aesthetics of sound. If music is sound that suffices itself no that any sound is music but any music is sound, Is this fair? I don't think so.
Maybe affected by our vicious Western functionalism of turning everything into a profitable and understandable link to boredom. More probably that maybe.
When in case "they" decide that improvisation is good, it is good or "make sense" only as part of a bigger piece, like in Jazz where the improvisation is based and expected to be performed on the basses of a theme or in Rock where virtuosity plays a main roll and turns the player into a super hero, a cartoon a ridiculous object of desire. To be artistic the image of the artist should disappear as much as posible to leave not even the minor chance for the ego to project any shadow. Of course Progressive Rock and Krautrock are exceptions here, this two types of Rock Music if well written are focused in the invocation of the magic or assaulting realities. Isn't it a reflection of its own nature. . .?

But also this physical virtuosity that characterize Rock Music takes the act of music making out of its artistic context and re-locate it as an Sport. And this is what Rock Music has turned to be at least for the last 15 years. Rock music after Nirvana has turned into a Sport. A competition Sport far away of of the prestige of being called Art.
There's no way that you can find any remains of Art in it. Not anymore. No wander why major Rock concerts are performed in stadiums....
And what is that aim for getting the best and more expensive instruments when nobody really play more than two chords on them.. ?

Notwithstanding the almost political opposition that permanently confronts it,
Improvisation it is today not only a genre in its own right but also a superior one.

Why superior? :

Because written music not always happen to be catalyzed by emotions or by artistry but most of the time by automatic execution and by repetition of patterns and cliches that are guaranteed to "work". As the predictable and safe seems to please and secure the expectations of the mainstream whose members are marked by regular standards of intelligence and therein deprived by their own limited capacity to perceive "other worlds" or simply, more of this one.

Improvised music often seen as apparently elitist and arrogant (and sometime it really is ), however Improvisation socially developed for the last 20 years and represents today not only a new genre but also and probably the future of music.

The future is here, it is happening now...

"If written music is merely related to memorizing or an automatic lifeless way of "reading and play" improvisation is a deep relationship between the musician and the instrument."

Of course both ways of music enclosures good and bad exponents but improvisation when made out with quality it is far superior to written music, at least in experience because it requires mental velocity, a very fast way of thinking and play, an exigency to react faster to send the signal to your instrument than that of your own thoughts; something like a 6th sense or higher intuition. And finally a lot of guts to accept the big risk of falling into the abyss.

But you know what? Down in the abyss is where knowledge lies.
Many musicians this days have decided to leave the comfort zone if they ever were there and jump definitely into the abyss. Even if the chances of surviving and success are none,
the trip will be indeed interesting.


D.O.

back from darkness smiling

Inmostility

Why is it called Inmostility..?

Because the fish was never eaten
and the UFO was never seen.

images from the book GONE

Avant TV

Tonight while over watching Ugly Betty the name of my next music project came to my mind:


Avant TV


Avant TV will be my next band, solo or with astonishing musicians. Doesn't matter.
Its name will honor cult shows that made history but most of all bizarreness of production.
Strange music that get stalked in our minds, scoring the soundtrack of our everyday now.

self portraits