Pop
Music & The Visual Arts:
Like
A Cat Fucking A Dog
Abstract for panel contribution at PLAY IT LOUD, Adelaide
Artists Week, 2008
"I
will be discussing the undying mania in contemporary
art to 'bring something into the gallery'. Music is but
one example of this, and it connects to the post-pomo
demise wherein the 'anything goes' inevitably bred a
'nothing stays' state of affairs. Lots of 'pop music'
- from its imposing iconography to its abject sonica
- has thus been dragged into the gallery. However over
many years I've never encountered a perceptive comment
on music (let alone sound) uttered by a visual arts professional.
(I'm also of the view that a well-read person is incapable
of reading a film, but that's another story.)
From
a broader cultural perspective, however, music is a particularly
powerful energiser of scopic/ocular/literary/cerebral
practices - in both contemporary and historical manifestations.
I will mention this with some examples, making note
that Pop Music - being a form of folk that has been progressively
mechanised, industrialised and simulated - is entirely
based on critiquing itself and doesn't require artists
to dabble in its dense meta-clouds of signification.
(The same could be said for 'artists working with cinema',
but that too is another story.)
Ultimately
there's a difference between salacious inapproriateness
and plain ignorance. And only a dumb cat would try to
fuck a dog."
