Thoughts of the Day #33/2015: Jacques Derrida

  

"Le don et l'événement n'obéissent à rien, sinon à des principes de désordre, c'est-à-dire à des principes sans principe. "

- Jacques Derrida

Thoughts of the Day #32/2015: Jacques Derrida

 

"Il va re-marquer en abyme supplémentaire cette dissémination absolue qui destine le texte à partir en cendre ou en fumée"

- Jacques Derrida

Thoughts of the Day #31/2015: Jacques Derrida

"Ni la mort ni la vie immortelle ne peuvent jamais donner, seulement une singulière survivance."

Jacques Derrida

A Skull and a Rabbit

(photo by SKG)

A Skull and a Rabbit

 

(a series by skg)

A Skull and A Rabbit

(photo by SKG)

The HNW-Q No.9: Charlotte & Julien Skrobek

(photos by SKG, taken from "The Guardians of the Galaxy")

Dear Readers,

I am very proud to present the HNW-Q No.9 featuring this time Charlotte and Julien Skrobek. I stumbled across their works in the second phase (after its unnoticed and nameless initialization during approximately the 1990's) of the unfolding of the HNW-universe: the ruthless epoch of its fetishization and brainless exploitation. Or less pretentious: the totally annoying and brainless imitation of Romain Perrot's kingsize intellectual invention almost worldwide. This imitatory and levelling flood destroyed nearly all promising, different and original projects. It opened all doors for totally worthless HNW-projects despite the courageous attempts by some label owners (e.g.:James Killick, Joseph Gates, Grégory Henrion and the Skrobeks) to moderate the flood. But who can honestly moderate a flood of garbage ?

Another ugly side-effect of this eurocentric hegemony of one HNW-paradigm that was unnecessarily derived from and connected to HN (the second awful acronym) was the total erasure of different ways to spell out HNW. This led to a severe sales problem, because no one could explain why one should own more than one HNW-recording. Uniformity and stupidity became synonyms and trademarks deliberately chosen by most of the HNW artists, because they were too stupid to understand Perrot's invention and his serial production method and to uninspired to develop different ways of HNW that could or should have been connected to a critical reception of the works of Richard Ramirez and Sam McKinlay or to other forms of Classical Minimalism and Experimentalism in Music, Sound-Art, Electroacoustics and the Fine Arts. But the HNW-industry prefered to chain itself deliberately to a misconception about the HNW-sound - being brutal or extreme (how stupid is that ??) - instead of serious aural research of an unmapped territory of Non-Music or the infinitely close to music and its backdrops in the High Art or Avantgarde worlds of the XX. century. Sadly HNW is most of the time popmusic of the worst kind: it takes no risks, it is absolutely predictable, it is a cheap and sedating factory music. Remember: It is really difficult and close to impossible not to fall in the deadly traps of late capitalism.

The totally regressive and depressive development of HNW from a public, mildly discussed and slightly commercial phenomenon (yes, there were times when people liked to pay for this in large groups) to a mere ignorant underground trade thing killed all my interests over the years. And I am still not sure if I should spend more time exploring this area of sound in detail again. Why should I listen and comment HNW when there are so many better composers and projects around that seriously work in the field of a re-mapping of the crucial distinction of Music and Non-Music, Silence and Sound ? The amounts of violent stupidity, anti-intellectualism, misogyny and ignorance in the underground ( I call it igno-ground now) are absolutely intolerable. Disgusting artworks (your grand grandmother was not really shocked, but anyway you were the king in your kindergarten noise group for one day !) combined with talentfree sounds straight from the assembly line produced in a sad basement located in a land called I.D.O.C. If you are still absolutely clueless about the official and unofficial music history of the XX.century, then please stop making sounds !

One last remark before I return to the outstanding projects of Charlotte and Julien. I am absolutely sure that no one (writers and normal consumers) is really listening to HNW with respect and attention. One look at the reviews and the debates is sufficient here: always the same annoying descriptions. It does not matter at all if the piece lasts for 10 hours or 1 minute and how it was produced. In the end this only proves how helpless the reception of post-Cage-Soundworlds still is ! The following question still remains largely unanswered and undiscussed: how do you review a work that does not follow the classical criteria ? Consequently HNW tapes, Audio Files and CDs will hang around lazy in the sun for a very long time to come waiting only to be traded and traded and traded again and again without purpose and final destination. These questions remain: Why are people producing things no one needs ? Why is someone trading loneliness for a climate of open and critical debates ? Why is HNW - being around for several years now - unable to develop itself in terms of critical evaluation and inventiveness to an amount that keeps it thrilling and unpredictable ? After all these more general and polemical remarks, I would like to come back to the featured artists.

Charlotte and Julien Skrobek are two of the most versatile, adventurous, experimental and non-orthodox artists in the field of HNW. Consequently I would like to call the field in which CJ are working no longer HNW, but Experimental-Non-Music (ENM) and/or Silence/Music (S/M). I think these two acronyms catch the impetus of their works far better and individualizes their complex approach and entries in this field. And I can avoid the moronic acronym ANW. The names Charlotte and Julien Skrobek stand for a wide range of thought provoking, innovating, courageous and often irritating projects. Charlotte and Julien are trying to map and conceptualize the ENM and S/M-field using a wide range of systematizations, production-techniques, intellectual references, original artworks and designs. Most of the projects affiliated with them (eg. Ghost, Ruine, The Sandman wears a Mask, Figures of Solitude, Static Park, Absurde) are very good examples for serious aural research about sonorous silence.

Charlotte and Julien Skrobek  also put the problem of stasis and kinesis, volumes and textures, a refined spelling out of a certain manierist trompe-l'oreille-effect and the mapping of the inaudible silence (a nickname for no-musical-content or no-information) on their agenda. They are treating the production devices(eg. distortion-pedals, microphones, recording-machines or other electronic maniupulation devices) used in HNW like new instruments that desperately need attention and research to avoid artistical arbitrariness. With equal ferveur they try to develop what I have called a psycho-acoustics or simpler a research of the impact of sounds on our brains. HNW seen as a S/M-device for a sobering up of our ears -- to listen, finally  -- with our brains in standby beyond corny processings! Another paradoxical effect of HNW (in my opinion this is also a target or important part of CJ's work) is that it changes our relationship to sounds. It generates a strange effect: it is shocking when it starts and it is even more shocking and uncanny when it stops. As if music presents itself once and for all in all its fragile intensity. Sounds appear out of silence and disappear in silence again. HNW-sounds are maybe like a dramatic curtain: staging this minimal definition of music: on/off or zero/one/zero/one etc..

One final remark about Charlotte and Julien Skrobek as label owners. In retrospective the name of their first HNW-label Slow Death was very funny, sardonic and a little prophetic, because HNW was already dying slowly back then and it is still dying. But the name "Slow Death" is for me also connected to the finest releases and most unorthodox artworks ever in this field. Who has no lasting memories of these red covers ? Who has no lasting memories of the 2011 releases like Angström's "La chute des anges rebelles" , Askell Grochen's "Cri", Skrobek's own projects Ghost, Bones & The Sandman wears a Mask and Alois Richter to name a few before the label folded surprisingly in 2011. After a hiatus of few years the Skrobek's returned in 2013 with an new label called Ink Run Recordings with refreshingly new artworks opening new perspectives on Static Noise (relating  it closer to Modern Art and Graphics) and a bunch of interesting projects (to name a few) from Flesh Clocks, Cuttings (with Charlotte and Clive Henry) to The Girl with the Stanley Knife. Their newest label is called Ensemble Vide Records (click here) it started recently in October 2015 with a series of Multi-CD-r-Sets with works by Absurde (Julien and Charlotte's new project), Black Matter Phantasm, Vomir, Chier (looking for a different body orifice than Vomir ;) ), and a new release by Ghost.

I want to close the introduction with a description of the very early phase of our universe (source: Wikipedia) and reconnect it to the beginning of my text in which I related HNW to this process. Let's hope that HNW returns to its hot phase again: 

In the first phase, the very earliest universe was so hot, or energetic, that initially no matter particles existed or could exist perhaps only fleetingly. According to prevailing scientific theories, at this time the distinct forces we see around us today were joined in one unified force. Space-time itself expanded during an inflationary epoch due to the immensity of the energies involved. Gradually the immense energies cooled – still to a temperature inconceivably hot compared to any we see around us now, but sufficiently to allow forces to gradually undergo symmetry breaking, a kind of repeated condensation from one status quo to another, leading finally to the separation of the strong force from the electroweak force and the first particles.

[written by SKG, 
1.10-19.11.2015]

This is the HNW-Q No.9
brilliantly completed

by Charlotte & Julien Skrobek:

The HNW-Q No. 9

[1] I discovered and invented HNW for myself, when I was looking for something new in sound-making.

[2] The initial radicality of HNW would be preserved, if it got archived properly.

[3] HNW is the contemplation of a harsh noise texture until it causes an auditory hallucination.

[4] HNW is not completely music.

[5] I like the acronym H.N.W. because it says what it does.

[6] HNW is pure contemplation.

[7] The sounds of machines are frequent but not a necessity.

[8] HNW helps the way one's brain works to be revealed.

[9] Monolithic Walls are richer than non-monolithic.

[10] The Future of HNW would be recognition by the academics.

[11] The Death of HNW would be recognition by the academics.

[12] HNW should be related to Malevitch to understand it better.

[13] Singularity and Originality in HNW are marginal but a human necessity.

[14] HNW should be called Static Minimalism, because that's what it is really.

[15] HNW should not be called Static Minimalism, because it sounds pretentious.

[16] The permanent repetition of the HNW-Mantra (No ideas, no change, no dynamics, no development etc.) leads to an imitation of Vomir.

[17] Volume in HNW is unimportant to us. 

[18] Distortion in HNW is one out of many tools.

[19] My Unconscious is sometimes called upon in HNW.

[20] Narratives, Analogies and Metaphors in HNW are impossible in sound, only in thematic imagery.

[21] Time and Space in HNW are arbitrary.

[22] HNW is musically the nearest you can go to absolute Nothingness.

[23] My HNW amplifies sonic details and imagination.

[24] Minimal Music and Cosmic Drones are relatives of HNW.

[25] Conceptualism is the byproduct of HNW.

[26] The main ingredients of brilliant HNW are the ability to trick the listener's mind into thinking there are changes and movements when there are none.

[27] The purpose and the concept of my HNW are absurdity, chaos and order.

[28] The distinction between ANW / HNW is harshness.

[29] The philosophy of HNW can change from one person to the next.

[30] My first words about HNW were this is a musical revolution.

[31] My final words about HNW would be that is what it is.

[32] The phrase I would like to add to this questionary is HNW is the same as near-silent music.

(photos by SKG, taken from "The Guardians of the Galaxy")

 Merci beaucoup, Charlotte et Julien !
Please support their label EVR
and their various projects !

Further informations
HERE 

Sounds Reviewed #9/2015: The Quash Wagon Reclusion - Introducing: A-Question-of-Will T'retett

"Introducing: A​-​Question​-​Of​-​Will T'retett"(bandcamp XI/2015) is the fourth release of The Quash Wagon Reclusion. And yes, it is - a question of will. And these are axeperimental sounds or axercises in aural axeiomatics. In the case you like to follow the weird mainstream substitution of "axe" for guitar. It is in any case axe-factor-music or enigma-music with primordially established rhythmic tribal drum grids, patterns or coordinate systems and counterrhythmic ("gegenrhythmische Unterbrechungen" - Hölderlin wrote this in his scribblings about Greek Tragedy) guitar interventions or mock-dialogical interruptions: le lisse contre le strié, peut-être or twin-riffings over pregiven neutral mock-consensual spaces. This project always works in between or works the in-between - a deleuzean inter-mezzo. This is not only a matter of music -- it's also matter of living: "C'est n'est pas seulement affaire de musique, mais de manière de vivre: c'est par vitesse et lenteur qu'on glisse entre les choses, qu'on se conjugue avec autre chose: on ne commence jamais, on ne fait jamais tabule rase, on se glisse entre, on entre au milieu, ou épouse ou on impose de rythmes." (Gilles Deleuze).

The Quash Wagon Reclusion thins out the Power Trio Aesthetics again this time together with its triangular-dialectical discoursive robotics or logics down to the surplus-value or better surminus-value (the below zero so to speak) of a guitar-guitar-drum-trio. Ripping out the bassplayer - evoking a trinity without trinity - or rather paralectical (Mark C. Taylor's word coined in his reading of Maurice Blanchot in his "Tears") guitar-twins with a differiffing dna. Maybe the word "trio" stutters already in the last word of the title. Is this the first powerless Power-Trio whispering: "YESWECAN'T add up as ONE without murder" ? Keep the following Derrida-formula in mind while listening: "Dès qu'il y a l'Un, il y a du meutre, de la blessure, du traumatisme. L'Un se garde de l'autre. Il se protège contre l'autre, mais dans le mouvement de cette jalouse violence, il comporte en lui-même, la gardant ainsi, l'altérité ou la différence à soi qui le fait Un. L'Un se fait violence.".

Since this seems to be a mock-trio here comes the third remark. This one is related to the conceptual networks that seem to inform the project's deepest intentions creating different spaces to live in - playful states without pregiven identities  instead of nationalstates. I read this in their urge to relocate themselves permanently. This time it is Kobe, Japan. Maybe it is a dangerous form of deterritorialization in the sense Deleuze and Guattari wrote about the "missing people" and the "earth" in their book "Mille Plateaux". Claire Colebrook sums this up in an essay about Deleuze/Guattari when she writes: "One might start to consider how the earth – not the world – might generate a people to come, a people without right, ownership or propriety. Such a call for a world in common without propriety, without identity and without nations and that would be beyond the world by thinking the forces of the earth would not be easy." In any case listen to one of the most important and thrilling projects around today  !!

Mosaic post-scriptum:"Autrui est toujours plus près de Dieu comme moi " (Maurice Blanchot).

(10/10 Admiration points)

[SKG]

Thoughts of the Day #29/2015: Martin Heidegger (33)

 

Martin Heidegger

"Die eigentliche Kehre, d.h. die dem Ereignis gehörende: der Wandel des Ge-Stelles in die Ge-Stellnis als Vorbotin des Ereignisses."

Martin Heidegger

Thoughts of the Day #28/2015: Martin Heidegger (32)

 

Martin Heidegger

"Zu hören ist die Stimme in der Bestimmung der Sache des Denkens: die Sache (Anwesenheit) ist der Sach-Verhalt: das Ereignis."

Martin Heidegger

Listening: Bird waiting for a sound / My Reading Traces

Derrida, waiting for a reader/writer !

Thoughts of the Day #27/2015: Martin Heidegger (31)

 

Martin Heidegger

"Befreiung von der Zeit

im Durchgang durch die eigentliche Zeit.

Befreiung wohin ? Nicht in das Langweilige einer leeren und ratlosen Ewigkeit.

Befreiung in die Jähe des Unwiederholbaren.

Die unergründbare Einzigkeit des Selben.

- Martin Heidegger

Thoughts of the Day #26/2015: Martin Heidegger (30)

 

Martin Heidegger

"Das Unterwegs als Aufenthalt verfügt ins Entsagen des Unsichtbaren."

- Martin Heidegger

Listening: Snails sticking on a wall / My Reading Traces

Be a syntheziser -

not a machine of hypocritical judgements !

Stop joining the Academy !

D/G, again.

Thoughts of the Day #25/2015: Martin Heidegger (29)

 

Martin Heidegger

"Das Eigene - ge-eignet in die Eignis des Ge-Vierts

Dingnis: Lichtung: Freigabe im bergenden Vorenthalt der Enteignis aus Befugnis."

 -Martin Heidegger

Thoughts of the Day #24/2015: Martin Heidegger (28)

Martin Heidegger 

"Mein Denken - ohne Titel und ohne Autorität 

und "Richtung".

Das übereilte Einfächern - entscheidet schon - "

- Martin Heidegger

Listening: Snails sticking on a wall / My Reading Traces

Pensée comme pathos -

following the chain Heidegger - Hölderlin - D/G ....

Listening: Snails sticking on a wall / My Reading Traces

Listening to the sound of the pages

of D/G, again

Sounds Reviewed #8/2015: Noordwiijk - Sailor Boy II

Listening. Deep Listening. Listening to the sounds travelling back and forth in time and space. Listening to Noordwiijks's Sound-art "guiding you across the Atlantic Ocean accompanied by a young boy in 1952" (label text) moving around in dreamstate like a tiny and fragile microtonal bubble or atom. Listening to the sounds or echoes of the classical avantgarde music transpierced by contemporary electronics. 1952, what a year ! 2015, what a year, too ! 

Although there are melancholical and retrospective subtones implemented in the sounds of Noordwiijk the project can also maintain a close and constant proximity to the masters of contemporary electronics (let's say: Carter Tutti's 2007 masterpiece "Feral Vapours" and their allies up to Nik Void). It is a constant morphing in between classical avantgarde sounds and contemporary experimental music at work here. Consequently all sounds bear the signs of transformation, transition, disfiguration and transfiguration. An alchemistic mixing of real instrumental sounds with and through electronic production devices. You can sense a tension or the integration of subtle interfaces between usually divergent acoustical strata any second. Marvellous aural memories of a future past or a past future Jérémie Jones has invented here ! 

Microtonal shiftings and spectral sounds spelled out and re-orchestrated as re-evocations out of and into the deep aural and melancholic fogs of classical avantgarde music of the 195o/60's and beyond from Edgard Varèse's Ionisation or Amériques, Stockhausen's early tape- and later sound-manipulations, Ligeti's Lux aeterna, Giacinto Scelsi or Olivier Messiaen's Harawi to the most refined aural manipulations of the late live-electronic Luigi Nono, Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening Project or Bill Fontana's beautiful sonic portraits. Jones has build up an infinitely rich dreamspace dissolving the borders between real instruments and electronic sounds and soundsources.

This is a poetic re-mapping and a feverish re-vitalization of avantgarde sounds. So don't miss it ! Please support this great soundartist (HERE and HERE). Already one of the best tapes this year and one of the best aural dreamspaces in a long time: an intellectual and sensual pleasure of the highest order. 

A document of Mon(t)-réal-ité, peut-être !
Highly recommended, in any case.

(10/10 Admiration points)

[SKG]

Listen like the snail :)

again ...

AUTUMN SPACES #44 / My Reading Traces

(No eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind;

No color, sound, smell, taste, touch, or thought-object.)

Autum Spaces, Reading Traces

D/G again, split pages

Listening (51): Snails sticking on a wall / My Reading Traces

 

(skg)

Reading D/G

Zero plus zero is nothing, but zero

Listening (50): Snails sticking on a wall / My Reading Traces

 

(skg)

Plus some of my reading traces again ...

yes reading reading .... D/G

My Reading Traces

Derrida, 

democratic or democritic ?

My Reading Traces

Derrida, the lost tapes ?
How would they sound ?

Listening (49): Snails sticking on a wall / My Reading Traces

(photo: skg)


Déconstruction, généalogique

Listening (48): Snails sticking on a wall / My Reading Traces

(photo:skg)

Three snails, three quotes, JD.

Le sujet deleted by sunlight !

Listening (47): Snails sticking on a wall // My Reading Traces

(photo: skg)



Another oreille stéréographique,
derridean repeatedly 

My Reading Traces

Jacques Derrida, sous rature

by sunlight - a refined teletechnic ?

Thoughts of the Day #23/2015: Martin Heidegger (27)

 

Martin Heidegger

"Lernt das Wissen.

Hört das Gespräch.

Wohnt in seiner Sprache.

Gehört dem Ungesprochenen des Gesprächs.

Beruht in der Stille des Ungesprochenen.

Seyd dem Seyn im Seyn.

So ist das Sein das Seyn. Es gehört sich selbst als das Selbe.

Also ereignet sich das Ereignis in das Eigentum der Enteignis."

Martin Heidegger

 

Thoughts of the Day #22/2015: Martin Heidegger (26)

 

Martin Heidegger

"Reicht kein Fragen dich hin

Zum Gefilde der Wahrheit -

Kehr in die Ant-wort zurück:

Beruh, Erwunkener des Winks,

Freudig im freyenden Dank.

Als die Beruhenden nur

Sind wir Wohner,

Wohnend im Hause der Huld

[Er-wunken = vertraut in den Schmerz der Freyheit

der Kehr zu Abschied und Verwindung ] "

Martin Heidegger

Thoughts of the Day #21/2015: Martin Heidegger (25)

 

Martin Heidegger

 "Fragen ist die erste Antwort

derer, die ins Hören

angefangen schon die Stille,

die sich bricht

als Schmerz ins Schweigen

- also spricht

die anfängliche Sprache

ins Gespräch des Seyns"

- Martin Heidegger

My Reading Traces

Jacques Derrida after all those years
this time in the sunshine, peut-être

Thoughts of the Day #20/2015: Martin Heidegger (24)

Martin Heidegger

"Da-sein als die Kehre

Die Kehre kein Be-fund auf Grund einer Untersuchung, sondern im erspringenden Erkennen in Gang gebracht - der Gang der Kehrung - ihr Geschehen nur im Vorgang des Vorgehens in das Inzwischen."

- Martin Heidegger

Thoughts of the Day #19/2015: Martin Heidegger (23)

Martin Heidegger 

"Sein und Dasein (Ereignis)

Die Kehre beider in einander im Ineinander der Kehre wesend.

Der ursprünglichste Sprung.

Die Blitzartigkeit und Augenblicklichkeit (Zeit) (Raum) des Seins.

Das Wesen der Kehre und das (Ereignis).

Die Kehre als Wirbel und dieser Wirbel als Zerklüftung.

Die ursprüngliche Eröffnung des Da !"

- Martin Heidegger

A Skull and a Rabbit

(photo by SKG)

Desire ?

A Skull and A Rabbit

(photo by SKG)

Not again ...

Why here ?

Thoughts of the Day #15/2015: Jacques Derrida (22)

"... la pulsion de mort est d'abord anarchivique, pourrait-on dire, archiviolithique. Destructrice d'archive, elle l'aura toujours été, par vocation silencieuse."

- Jacques Derrida

Thoughts of the Day #14/2015: Jacques Derrida (21)

"Le secret, c'est la cendre même de l'archive, le lieu où il n' y a même plus de sens à dire "la cendre même", ou "à même la cendre". Il n'a aucun sens à chercher le secret de ce que quiconque a pu savoir. "

- Jacques Derrida

Thoughts of the Day #13/2015: Jacques Derrida (20)

"Au fond, derrière la question de ce que j'appelerai encore la restance de l'archive - qui fait tout sauf rester au sens de la substance permanente d'une présence -, derrière cette question de la différance ou de la destinerrance de l'archive pourrait se dessiner, au moins le temps d'une séance, la silhouette de toute ce qui m'aparu mériter d'être discuter, puisque nous sommes ici pour discuter."

- Jacques Derrida

For an interesting review

of a Dieter Roth Exhibition

in Berlin by Joseph Nechvatal

CLICK HERE

Thoughts of the Day #12/2015: Jacques Derrida (19)

"Inutile de rappeler une fois encore que la déconstruction, s'il y en a, n'est pas une critique, encore moins une opération théorique ou spéculative méthodiquement menée par quelqu'un, mais que s'il en a, elle a lieu, je l'ai dit trop souvent, et encore dans Psychè, pour poser encore le répéter, comme expérience de l'impossible."

- Jacques Derrida