BEST
BEFORE
A plastic
bag, a sticker with my name on it and the title: "Best f¿r" (Best
Before), compost with compost worms, reel-to-reel tape with a recording of the
sound of the same worms, and also a text recorded on a dictaphone and played
back while reading.
Commissioned
by NOTAM/Ny Musikk for the Pierre Schaeffer-anniversary in 2010.
Ok, So the
starting point for my work is listening to compositions by Schaeffer, while keeping
in mind the tape and the tape machine.
This is
the start.
And then I
ask myself what I hear and what I see.
The first
thing is: It seems to me that something here is out of date.
And that
is not the sounds, the concrete sounds, but the structure they are in. To me
they seem forced into the structure of composition. To the convenience of
something recognizable, repeatable, something that at first glance seems
meaningful. A uniform for art in sequential time that's been more or less the
same since Euripedes. – I use Euripedes as an example, because Schaeffer
points at him with the title of his composition Phaedra.
All this
is typical when artists seek authorization by leaning on institutionalized
past. It's retrogarde.
But
Schaeffer should be Avantgarde? Technically he was, yes, but the way he shaped
his material seems rather retro. Just like most new media art today.
But let's
forget about this for a second.
I was also
thinking of the explosive growth of stored information since the 1950's. The
tape and the machine as instruments dealing with time, memory and
representation. The tape material with the sound material on it. Played back by
real machines instead of human orchestra robots.
The idea
of this is what I think is essential and interesting in Schaeffer's work.
This is
what I want to deal with.
So I asked
myself what I have here, and what material I have that I can use to deal with
it.
(recording
this on tape:)
1) I have
something that was best before.
2) I have
Agnes' compost.
3) Audio
tape looks a bit like the worms in the compost. Specially when it runs through
a tape machine without reels.
4) The
worms in the compost make lots of sound.
4) The
sound doesn't mean a thing.
5)
Schaeffer would have become 100.
7) What
would he hear down there, where he is now?
8) If the
concrete sound really is so great, why do we have to compose with it?
9) (I
think I like it better uncomposed)
So what
have I done?
(playing
back the recorded tape while continuing:)
I've made
a composition of compost with worms, a plastic bag, a 28,5m long tape with
worm-sound on it and a sticker with my name on it and the title Best before.
Someone has to take care of it to keep the worms alive.
By doing
it like this, I tried to avoid doing something shaped by sequential time, and
instead doing something that shapes time. But now I add this speech, which
follows this shape and by doing that, I might ruin it all.