Smarter than you

Recorded music and the recorded performance in objects of contemporary art, and an aside about the roles of documentation in performative practices

When I started this project it was from one point: I am not a musician. It was an easy assumption at the time; I hadn’t been playing seriously for a couple of years with only occasional moments where I would pick up the violin. I played the piano for fun, but here I was in Glasgow without one. I wanted to play the violin again but I was not going to be a musician.

Its gotten more complicated since then. Of course I’ve complained in the past about artists taking up music or other forms without believing themselves musicians, and without considering that part of their work in itself, alone. So I was committed to doing a good job of it, of performing with an idea of rigour, if a twisted one. I didn’t want to make something bad, because it would reduce the project to a joke.

So I had to practice, and it’s easy to become a musician by accident when you do that too much. I was poor, so I started busking too. But I’m still trying to keep these things somewhat separate.

Why am I not a musician?

Music is boring. There is so much. And, worse than art, everyone thinks they like it. Many people actually do not. But although they don’t know art but they know what they don’t like. There are a few places in music where that is also true—that is where I want to be.

This is a long one →

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• 1 year ago
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• art
• music
• Pastoral Fantasies