C(ulture)D-R

eldritch Priest & Marc Couroux

©2005

The Òthousand points of lightÓ syndrome: how to explain to a mature composer the nature of creative process, and to defend the notion of a praxis which exists independently of the punctual fruits which are thrust out to the world? Because the compositional world in Canada (and elsewhere) is predicated on these punctual fruits, which are devoid of context and occur in unconnected regions of activity, process itself has been relegated to a forgotten substratum of consciousness. It isnÕt mentioned, it doesnÕt matter. What counts are the individual commissions (for financial reasons, of course) and the often bad performances, and the resultant idiocies of newspaper critique to evaluate an Òartistic lifeÓ in this country.

Think of what happens to a composer who is continuously being offered, as only source of external affirmation, a series of pseudo-biographical, programmatic descriptions of his work thrust back at him. Then add to that the conflicts between financial stability and creative experimentation – work becomes quickly reoriented around commission deadlines and reports. It becomes distorted in an ever-expanding hall of mirrors, increasing the composerÕs alienation from his own individual practice. Not only does the world view the composer as a producer of individual masterpieces into which must be poured under pressure a distorted compaction of his process, works which must speak of themselves, but the composer himself comes to view his own process as one which negates process itself.

This is why CDR culture, one of obsessive documentation of a process, can be of service. Heretofore, only the pop world has exploited this loophole in the system of mass-production – one which is not dependent on any deus ex machina to come into being, one which is essentially experimental, and speaks only of its own current status in the bigger picture of a process, and one which can be produced quickly and distributed easily. An accretion of dozens of CDRs can speak more eloquently of the possibilities inherent in the creative process, one which is impossibly complex and cannot be described by isolated compactions, but by endless bisections, divergencies, untotalizable, forever in transition, bifurcating at a momentÕs notice. This Òturning on a dimeÓ quality is revolutionary. Not only does it change the listenerÕs perception of a band or an artist – expanding it into the outer regions of possibility – but it transforms as a result the acceptable frame in which artists have been brainwashed into believing as unassailable reality, or worse an a priori which the composer is no longer even conscious of.

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The CDR culture is a disposition that favours both the trivial and significant. Its medium straddles the poles of the ephemeral and the preserved. First, we are able to ÒcaptureÓ the various instantiations of the creative process (be it a recording of a live performance (representation), or the engineered mixing and dubbing directly within the recording medium (immanence)). We ÒpreserveÓ the trace of the practice. Secondly, the ease of reproduction, and the duplicable nature of the medium releases the forces of the practice into zones of (im)possibility and intimacy. The importance or gravity of a practice is judged not through its political-power negotiations (ie.: performance by ÒestablishedÓ ensembles, artists), but rather by its ability to engage the interest of the practitioner, to deepen and enrich the possible practices of her art. She produces (CDRs) as a byproduct of her creative curiosity. These (because ÒworkÓ is always plural) ÒcapturedÓ residues dilate her efforts by constellating creative nodules to form a practicable relief that expands the horizon of her generative potential, allowing her the purview of trivial but, necessary, pursuits.

The CDR, as a node, is the expression of a morphological, convoluted development. But as a segment within the evolutionary line of the praxis (by this I mean what ÒworksÓ and what ÒinterestsÓ, not what is ÒbestÓ or politically motivated), it is the content of a flight. The accumulation of these nodes is a map.

The diverse becomings of the CDR culture promote the reticulation of multifarious histories (growths) within the site of a single practitioner. Unlike the surface growths of Òpunctual fruitsÓ, whose nutritive conduit is often supplied by financial and political concerns, mediated by hierarchical regimes that relegate creative experimentation to a tributary status, the mode of Òthe ephemerataÓ is subterranean. Its growths are determined by subjacent and delitescent connections. It is nourished by forming off-shoots, by breaking off and starting up again, by connecting any point to any other point, enriching previous shoots and generating new ones. Nor is there a necessity for resemblance or coherence. This practice encourages the proliferation and development of disparate rules and multiple imperatives – even the absence or failure of such. The poly-vocal dimension of the CD-R culture supplements the activity of a singular practitioner by bringing her activity into proximity with other histories, creative practices, and processes. Others may draw on the map as well.

Memory serves the function of a pivot. The ephemerata is not a concretizing practice. It is not an alternative mode of monumentality. The monumental is not of the subterranean for the monumental settles on the foundation of a hierarchical assembly of accolades and hypostatizing tropes (string quartet, piano concerto, operaÉ) that deny the very possibility of an alternative practices. The pivot in the ephemerata is a lineament, a lineament with infinite sides, whereby one deploys multiple and countervailing creative strategies to generate impossible connections, to detach and reattach filaments, to contract and dilate the flow of difference, to remember and to forget. The pivot is poly-directional and diversified. It is therefore insignificant. The names one assumes in the ephemerata are not based on the monumental but on the diversified. We acquire sobriquets rather that honorifics. The process is impersonal and the ephemerata is a zone of anti-memory. We are drawing a map of mobile lands. Again, lineament - lineament with ten thousand edges and a ten thousand levels.

Amongst the constellated effects is the perspectival. Each passage diffracts its rendered forces throughout a zone of possibility. This zone extends directions of movement, solicits an invitation of advance, and opens a multiplicity of reliefs by which contexts unfold contexts, connections make connections, and becomings begets becomings. The ephemerata effects the irrelevance of the simple relation of exclusion, a mode of relationship requiring the absence of its opposite or contrary. The artist is able to pursue and create both worlds of accomplishment and regions of failure without the sacrifice of process. Indeed, she speaks with many voices, in different tones with different timbres, at various speeds and slownesses, all of which illuminate, obscure, amplify, diminish the possible, and enrich the actual. Speaking musically, it may be said that with each utterance – the node, that which Òspeaks only for itself in the bigger picture of processÓ – we increase the ÒvibrancyÓ of our practice. Each project, a pivot whereby all the lines and fibres interfere and resonate with one another, disseminates its singular affects into the flow of difference. A swarm. A halo of affect that induces a local-global movement that limns a countenance and a moniker. It transforms the creative impulse of conception, perception, and reception into a style, a style that is untotalizable, arhythmic and impossible.

A thunder of applause can never assemble anything but a mild and hollow form of the monumental. An artistic personage is a fiction, yes. However, the masterpiece (poorly and singularily performed) is incapable of anything but a caricaturization of the artist. The structures that support the all-at-once masterwork strangle the life of an artist by prohibiting failure, which means excluding experimentation. They require that all history, all lines of nourishing force (including such ÒnegativeÓ forces as inability, depression, anxiety) recede from view in order that the punctual fruits can be deemed ÒripeÓ and ready for immediate and complete consumption. The culture of wonder (in the sense of Òto wonder aboutÓ), however, embraces the imperative of curiosity and with it is bound to the processual and unknowable in art. Imagine appreciating a heart torn from the body. The body too is separated from all water and food. Imagine now the body isolated from others. Then consider a person cut off from love. How interesting is the heart alone? How much more interesting and provocative is the heart that circulates blood, mobilizes the vital nutrients, and the heart that can be broken. To witness a single beat of this organ is nothing. To attend to the rhythmic pulse and the depth of life it provokes (breath, shit, sex, love, hate) is marvellous.