POPULISTA
presents
A DICTIONARY
ALEBEEK, RINUS VAN
--- played back Luc Ferrari “Cycle des Souvenirs” on the 29th of October 2010 in composer's flat in Montreuil. Waking around, he recorded it again – with his Sony Walkman. Brunhild Ferrari read liner notes of the CD release of “Cycle des Souvenirs”.
ASHLEY, ROBERT
--- American composer. Disease: tourette syndrome.
BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VAN
--- German composer. Disease: hyperacusis.
BIAŁOSZEWSKI, MIRON
--- performed his Mickiewicz “for himself only. On Tape” in 1965 wondering “how much mess in the history of words was caused by mishearings and nonintentional misrepresentations”.
BLONDY, FRÉDÉRIC & LENAR, DJ
--- played Mauricio Kagel “Ludwig van” live in Zachęta National Gallery of Art on the 19th of March 2011 as part of “Hyperacusis” music programme accompanying an exhibition “Stories of Ear”. The concert was recorded by Zosia Moruś and then assembled, edited, mixed and mastered by DJ Lenar and Michał Libera.
CABINET D'AMATEUR
--- Georges Perec says: “An artist imposed on himself a principle not to make faithful copies of the models; he seemed to gain malicious pleasure by introducing subtle changes with each copy. One by one, characters and objects would disappear, be displaced or replaced with others”
COSTES, JEAN-LOUIS
--- adapted and performed de Sade's Justine for the closing of a music programme “Birth of noise out of the spirit of XVIII century music” accompanying the exhibition “Lady with a doggy and an ape” in Królikarnia.
DICHTERLIEBE
--- Song cycle by Robert Schumann (music) and Heinrich Heine (lyrics). Reinhold Friedl says: “The songs of Schumann and Schubert can be looked at as the first pop music ever made”. People loved it.
DZIADY
--- Maciej Byliniak says: “In »Dziady« Mickiewicz was aiming at an opera. Located in a province of no opera tradition, he could not write it »properly« but only in a way he imagined it. Intention of such a twisted trajectory can only be fulfilled by equally unusual performance: mis-opera or opera-misunderstanding, something resembling the opera but only by accident”
ERGO PHIZMIZ
--- designed and performed his “Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon” by Robert Ashley with couple of friends: Alessandro Bosetti, Maciej Cieślak, DJ Lenar, Lula and Julia Ziętek as part of Playback Play 2011 in Warsaw.
FERRARI, LUC
--- According to a rumor, while opening Ferrari's funeral, Jacquelin Caux said: “His music was like sitting with your ass naked in the morning grass”.
FIELD RECORDING OF A FIELD RECORDING
--- Rinus van Alebeek says: “It is a very respectful and innovating way of using old recordings. The Bachs and Beethovens can be reproduced through their scores. A conductor's work is always an interpretation. So why not use the recorded work as a kind of score and make an interpretation of it using the recorder”.
HYPERACUSIS
--- Loss of hearing causing oversensitivity to high and low registers. Simply put: immersing in what we call noise. Beethoven says: “My ears sing and buzz constantly, day and night". And also: “Often I can scarcely hear someone speaking softly, the tones yes, but not the words. However, as soon as anyone shouts it becomes intolerable”.
HERZOG, WERNER
--- His movie “Land of Silence and Darkness” is a portrait of Fini Straubinger who says: “People think deafness means silence. It is not so. We constantly hear sounds. Quiet ringing, buzzing, roaring and eventually clicking. The worst comes when the humming starts in your head”.
INTERPRETATION
--- John Tilbury says: “The onus is on the performer to show the composer some of the implications and consequences of what he has written, even if from time to time it may make him (the composer of course) look ridiculous. What he writes and what you read ad two different things”
LUDWIG VAN (a score)
--- A phantasy on Beethoven's listening? The beautiful score of Mauricio Kagel is a montage of close ups of german composer's scores pasted on objects in his reconstructed office. This is his music graphically collaged into noise. But was not the graph, the score and the seeing his ways of listening to his own music as he could not hear it with his ears? If it was so, Kagel's composition must be what Beethoven actually heard through his hyperacusis. Noise of notes of noise of notes of noise of notes of …
KUNSTKAMMER
--- Lester K. Nowak says: “Each artwork is a reflection of another. Most or virtually all of the paintings become truly meaningful only be reference to the predecessors recreated in them; completely or fragmentally; ciphered in varied hints or recreated in the new ones. From this perspective one should pay a special attention to the type of painting which is usually called collectors cabinet (Kunstkammer). It was born in the end of XVI century in Antwerpen to be reproduced by different European Schools until roughly mid-XIX century. Competing with an idea of a museum – and of course an idea of a painting as use value – its fundamental principle was to root an act of painting in its power of reflection – a painter would draw his strength from other artists' works"
MARQUISE DE SADE, DONATIEN ALPHONES FRANÇOIS
--- French writer. Disease: skin.
MICKIEWICZ, ADAM
--- Polish writer. Disease: cholera.
NOISE
--- The handwriting. Michel Serres says: “To write badly is to plunge the graphic message this noise which interferes with reading which transforms the reader into an epigraphist”. Heinrich Deisl adds: “The maximum compression of information within a certain framework of time and space”.
OPERA
--- Many people say. Robert Ashley: “Not stories as such, but were more likely to be an assembly or collage of characters that seemed to belong together and that being brought together gave the characters some meaning”. And on top of it: “There is always fascination with landscape. When the piecing together of imagery becomes so intense that one is aware of its rhythms, in effect the action of perceiving mind, opera, or the communication of those rhythmic forms, arises naturally”. Cornelius Cardew: “Many people working”.
POP
--- Apparently, the only thing you never forget when you go out for a pack of cigarettes. They turn you into hyperacusis sufferer who cannot runaway from the noises of the songs. But musicologically speaking: what else is pop but a “maximum compression of information in a certain framework of time and space”? A good pop song is a space and time filled out completely - nothing more nor less required; any element taken away or added kills everything. Pop is the economy of music. Like Anti-Structures of Boulez.
POPULISTA
--- A CD festival, an opera, kunstkammer.
PROCESS
--- Robert Ashley says: “Do things that have a message. Music has to be about something. If you go along with that, then we hardly need to talk about the processes. They seem to take care of themselves, for better or worse”
SONG
--- David Thomas says: “A song must have 3 things. You got 3 things you got a song”
SCHUMANN, ROBERT
--- German composer. Disease: neurastenia, hearing A5 pitch in his left ear constantly.
SCHÜTZ, BERNHARD & FRIEDL, REINHOLD
--- played Robert Schumann “Dichterliebe” in zeitkratzer studio on the 13th of June 2010. The material was recorded, mixed and mastered by Ralf Meinz.
THEFT
--- In criminal law, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent. They say.
