{"id":302,"date":"2014-12-08T10:31:41","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T10:31:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/?p=302"},"modified":"2014-12-08T10:34:45","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T10:34:45","slug":"a-gap-in-my-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/2014\/12\/08\/a-gap-in-my-words\/","title":{"rendered":"a gap in my words by James Clegg"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Michel<\/a>
Michel Doneda<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A sound crystallising between that of a harp and breaking glass. Yet like breaking bread \u2013 a soft generous activity shared with a mesmerised audience. Through the lungs, the mouth and teeth, the guttural intersection of the body, saliva and the saxophone; noises pushed and pulled the space; piercing yet delicate rhythms formed by soft tissues and tongue; then sudden sheiks from unseen sirens and invisible harmonic orchestras.
\nI offer this verbose account of Michel Doneda\u2019s performance last week knowing that many such accounts of sonic art have been made; accounts in which language becomes a pantomime of the failure to adequately represent the ambiguous nature of experience. Especially that is, when artists avoid the accepted forms of representation (melodies, narratives, figures) that structure reality in an abstract, semantically viable way. One of my favourite discoveries in the Stirling University Archive, when we were preparing the Norman McLaren exhibition \u2018Hand-made Cinema\u2019 (McLaren being one of those artists who would place experimentation before any requirements to make sense) was a newspaper clipping that opened, \u201c\u201cBOINK! Kerplunk! Ploppity-squelch! Imagine a cow pulling its foot out of mud and set it to music. That\u2019s the soundtrack. Now think of two skeleton chickens fighting during a firework display. There\u2019s the picture \u2013 perhaps the strangest that\u2019s ever been made.\u201d
\nAnd listening to Edimpro, who performed a set before Doneda, and not wanting to reduce the complexity of the experience, I again found myself trying to give sense to the different sections and moods. Bernard Herman, who composed a lot of the Hitchcock sound-tracks and other weird sci-fi stuff, came to mind; as did William Burroughs \u2013 though not through direct association. I think through that post-war New York art scene I associate early experimental music to the literature of characters like Allen Ginsberg (who featured in some of Nam June Paik\u2019s work) and other \u2018beat\u2019 writers. The shrill slides and occasional frenzy, the repetition of some sounds, made me think specifically of The Ticket that Exploded. This was the second book in a cut-up trilogy reflecting Burrough\u2019s obsession with how technology was changing human consciousness. The fragmented nature of the book, with its vivid references to tape recordings as devices for hypnosis and assassination, seemed suitably foreboding, open and expansive to capture the \u2018flavour\u2019 of parts of the performance.
\nBut maybe I\u2019m trying too hard?
\nIf it is a clich\u00e9 to enact, as a drama, the difficulty of summarising in words an experimental performance; it is at least an interesting one. That it is a perennial concern shows \u2013 in my opinion \u2013 that artists are good at pointing us towards aspects of our existence that exceed or exist outside comprehension. And I\u2019m not being mystical; and neither am I being uncritical. There is a definite limitation to what we can understand, linguistically, and sonic art is particularly good at showing us where that line is drawn. When Joe Banks spoke about his work in November, I found it refreshing that he offered an eloquent account of the historical references within the installation, \u2018The Analysis of Beauty\u2019, but then said that the explanation was really just misdirection, allowing him to justify something that was really much more \u201cprimal\u201d.
\nAs we\u2019re now into the second thematic section of \u2018gap in the air\u2019, these are the kind of things I feel I\u2019m learning and thinking about. I want to find ways to take these experiences further, to find out from the artists and academics we\u2019re working with what to do with these ideas. Rather than reiterate the pitfalls of representing things in language, how do you refine your response? One of answers I\u2019m sure will be, \u2018listen to more stuff\u2019. And with its international playlist, that\u2019s what the reach section (throughout December) is all about.<\/p>\n

James Clegg<\/strong> \u2013 Assistant Curator at Talbot Rice Gallery<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A sound crystallising between that of a harp and breaking glass. Yet like breaking bread \u2013 a soft generous activity shared with a mesmerised audience. Through the lungs, the mouth and teeth, the guttural intersection of the body, saliva and the saxophone; noises pushed and pulled the space; piercing yet delicate rhythms formed by soft tissues and tongue; then sudden sheiks from unseen sirens and invisible harmonic orchestras. I offer.. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":306,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digital.eca.ed.ac.uk\/gap-in-air\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}