Talk with David Horton the other night got me thinking about another analogy/disanalogy case: art objects and text objects. If you take the first pressing of a book, any copy in that run is considered, for valuation purposes, to be identical. The difference between the first and second printings might be more salient, and the value of subsequent printings could only be augmented by a scholarly apparatus in the introduction or a discovery of some new bit of manuscript from the author. You might say similar things about woodcuts or lithographs or other fine art modes of reproduction, but the case of an oil painting (to pick an easy example) is not analogous- no prints are comparable in value to the original, singular painting. The only analogy to be made to painting could be to the author's manuscript, but these rarely reach the value of notable paintings.
You might say that all the dynamics of this situation were outlined by Benjamin in "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". But it seems one feature escaped that discussion, which is that, in each subsequent print edition, if it is in the same language and not otherwise altered, no one thinks the text itself changes- i.e. every print of On The Road is the same text, only the apparatus and the cover changes. The text itself is supposed to be some transcendent entity which, once fixed, maintains its identity through every material incarnation. I think it is this fact which prevents poets, even vispoets, from cracking into the world of plastic arts- they create texts (ostensibly), which have no object life because of this strange transcendent feature; whereas "artists" create objects (there's an obvious capitalist/materialist critique looming here that I won't belabor any). This is another part of what I mean by the portability of text/language.
Can the same be said about music? Kind of Blue is the kind of record that's been re-released dozens of times: as an analogue vinyl album, as an analogue cassette, as a digital cassette, as a digital CD, digitally remastered CD, digitally remastered with bonus tracks on CD, as an MP3 album, and on. The relationship between each of these is aesthetic (or partly historical)- you like each reproduction based on your taste in audio quality. It is an open argument whether there is anything at all that is identical across all these versions. While an argument could be made for the actual fidelity of one version over the other, no one thinks that the music itself exists on any of them. The music was an event on a Sunday afternoon in 1958, captured by (I think) two microphones and pressed onto an album. The event died when the instruments were packed away and only the record, transmuted into all these different forms, lives on. The record may be portable, but I'm not sure the "music" is.
Also, I'd realy like to hear where I might be wrong about any of this (O, blogosphere).
2 comments:
As to "art objects," I don't think it's quite as settled as your oil painting analogy might imply. Sculpture, especially bronze cast, gets into all sorts of reproduction questions (how many "originals," artist's lifetime, etc.), which has led into a need to police those distinctions.
"The event died when the instruments were packed away and only the record, transmuted into all these different forms, lives on. The record may be portable, but I'm not sure the "music" is."
The phrases at the top of my list are "Democratic Multiple" & "Literary Event." In each of these mediums (Plastic Arts, Design, Print Work, Writing, Music), there is a choice as both practician and recipient to focus on event(s) or product(s).
Much of the complex dualism is implicit in the language. One can refer to writing as a literal physical process or a manuscript, yet one can also refer to literature, which seems to reference the product as such. One can refer to making music or listening to music (which does not imply live or recorded), or one can reference records or recordings/ albums/ band names. In my experience, I've yet to hear someone tell me they can't go out tonight because they are making Art, but rather that they are painting, or recording, or practicing, or writing, or crafting, or sculpting, or conceiving. They are party to an event. It's art when you're finished, or more realistically, when you put it up for public display.
We need to focus on the event, and also, to expand the notion of the event, while more precisely defining it. Art is artifact, but not necessarily consequence. In my collaborative broadsides of poets' work(s), I try to conceive of projects which, though I recognize their being ephemeral productions, focus more upon the process (the event) of creation. I want the artifact(s), the multiples, to be recognized as instances of communication, of community [event]ualizing.
My ideal is a process which creates a product that publicizes the process, a process made of time, material & people.
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