tracks:
1. Drifters ( 1996 ) 32:24
written, produced, and directed by Lou Mallozzi
conversationalists: M.W. Burns, Iris Moore, Bill Close, Claire Broadfoot, Mark Booth, Lawrence Steger, John Kurtich, Shanna Linn, Terri Kapsalis, John Corbett, Steve Williams, Lisa Kucharski, Amber Creger, Tod Szewczyk, and Eric Lumbard
on eavesdropping: Calvin Forbes
vocalise: Jaap Blonk
sixty-four babbling tongues: Lou Mallozzi
actors: Laura Dame and Doug Beebe
location recordings by Lou Mallozzi and Dawn V. Mallozzi
studio recordings produced and directed by Lou Mallozzi,
engineering assistance by Elizabeth Salvia, at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago
digital editing and final production engineered with indefatigable patience by Paul Geluso at Harvestworks/Studio PASS, New York
special thanks to Carl Miller and Lynn Book
This project was made possible in part by an artist- in-residence grant from Harvestworks
2. Dizzy, not numb ( 1995 ) 23:34
written, produced, and directed by Lou Mallozzi
narrators: Katy Roderick, Mark Booth, Paula Froehle, Kevin Henry
conversation: Terri Kapsalis, John Corbett, Dawn Mallozzi
archaeological improvisation: Shanna Linn
telephony: Lillian Lennox, Gregory Whitehead
eighty violins: Terri Kapsalis, Dan Scanlan
bodies in motion: Goat Island Performance Group (Karen Christopher, Matthew Goulish, Lin Hixson, Greg McCain, Tim McCain)
last words: Meenakshi Dash, Bill Talsma
vocalizations: Lou Mallozzi
recorded and mixed by Lou Mallozzi at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago
3. Building from Scratch ( 1990 ) 15:10
written, produced, and directed by Lou Mallozzi
girl: Lily Bruder
woman: Jill Daly
man: Lou Mallozzi
mess-soprano: Valic Marsh
baritone: William Diana
electronics: Lou Mallozzi
recorded and mixed by Lou Mallozzi at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago
interview: John Corbett, April 1997
photography: by Dawn V. Mallozzi and Lou Mallozzi
design: by Kali Nikitas @ graphic design for love (+$)
This project is partially supported by a grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Illinois Arts Council Access Program.
label:
Eighth Day Music (EDM 80013)
3120 West Sherwin Ave.
Chicago, IL 60645
www.eighthdaymusic.com
---
(ambient chatter, coffee house rumble.)
YOU CHOSE REVERSE CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER FOR THE PIECES ON THE CD.
WHAT DREW YOU TO DO THAT?
I didn't want it to have a sense of chronological progression. When you experience a work, then reflect back on an earlier work, that's maybe more interesting. That at least moves from some sense of a present back, rather than trying to reconstruct myself historically. The idea was to present the latest piece first. And I feel closest to the newest piece.
PROXIMITY.
That's all. I wasn't sure which pieces I would use, which I would find myself most attached to and which would make conceptual sense, but I went back and listened to "Building From Scratch"...
(clinking dishes; clearing plates. "Can I have some regular coffee?" "Sure. I just charged you for a single cap', because it looked so small..." "Great.")
...so, "Building From Scratch" was the first radio piece I ever did, and of course I was concerned with whether or not I wanted to include it. But then I thought that piece belonged there because it formed a kind of reference for a listener who didn't know anything about my work. The texts for "Drifters" were other people's stories. The text for "Dizzy, not numb" was a combination of my texts with other people's interpretations of those texts, a mixture. And the third piece, "Building From Scratch," is all stuff that I wrote. So in its reverse way, this represents an approach to language that's shifting. I found in listening to the earliest piece that I wasn't disowning that approach of creating a purely fictional text, that it wasn't like I'd "progressed" somehow past that idea into this idea of only using other people's stories, but that this might be some way to deal with text at different levels of fiction-making.
THAT S ABOUT THE SEQUENCE AND ARRANGEMENT. THINKING ABOUT THIS WORK IN RELATION TO OTHER TENDENCIES IN AUDIO ART AND RADIO ART: LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE ARE GREAT JUMPING-OFF POINTS FOR MUCH AUDIO WORK THAT ISN'T MUSIC: WITHIN THAT FIELD OF AUDIO-LANGUAGE WORK. THERE S A STRONG DIVIDE BETWEEN WORK THAT CONCERNS ITSELF WITH MEANING AND WORK THAT CONCERNS ITSELF WITH LANGUAGE-AS-MATERIAL. I FIND YOUR PIECES FALL RIGHT FALL RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE, THOUGH PERHAPS WITH A MAGNETISM TOWARDS THE SEMANTIC/MEANING END OF THE SPECTRUM.
I never can leave the notion of meaning behind. There's a mythology about language, about the voice, that there's a non-semantic voice, in terms of evolution. A human, meaningless voice that we have to somehow return to and listen to. And while that may even be historically true, it's of absolutely no interest to me. What is more interesting to me is what happens when semantics and utterance unite or collide. That's why I do not tend towards a musicalizing (loud cappuccino steam sound masks words) when I deal with language, in fact I feel a lot of use of language in what we traditionally would call music has been in avoidance of the semantic complexity. And not only semantic, but representational complexities of language. Language becomes subjugated to musical kinds of concerns, and other things about the language are lost. Or they're only approachable as musical material. My work tends toward meaning, but on the other hand I find that work in that sphere often ends up sounding like radio theater, something where the notion of meaning is: MAKING SURE IT'S INTACT, YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT EVERY MINUTE OF THE DAY in a very traditional naturalistic theatrical sense. And that, by itself, as a working philosophy, isn't enough. I find that to be a narrow tradition of subjugating language to very severe predeterminations about what constitutes "literature." Which tends to leave utterance behind, or uses utterance in an unconscious, but highly manipulated way. The voice of the actor, that's what I'm talking about. It's very interesting to me that people invested in "breaking ground" in this work very often default back to the radio voice, to make sure the idea is conveyed "properly."
THE IRONY THERE IS THAT THE RADIO VOICE THAT YOU RE TALKING ABOUT IS NOT A NEUTRAL BEING, BUT IS A HIGHLY CHARGED POLITICAL CONSTRUCT. MOST USUALLY THE VOICE-OF-AUTHORITY. AND WORK THAT LAPSES BACK INTO THAT VOICE TENDS ALSO TO USE EXOTIC-OTHER VOICES IN A SUBORDINATE WAY.
The single voice that we have in the novel...
(unexplained tape break)
...whether it's first person, third person, narrated, it doesn't matter. The point is that it has an overriding voice. The singularity of that voiceã everything hangs off of that. That's a very viable form; I'm interested in that, also. But if I wanted to do that I'd write a novel, I guess. I feel like I'm dealing with an acoustic world, and that world gains some kind of excitement and substance precisely when that singularity falls away. It means at times establishing that singularity so that there's something to fall away from. That's one of the things that I tried to do in "Dizzy, not numb." I wrote the texts and wanted to use them, but I realized that they were too singular and too precious and that what would make them interesting to me would be to subject them to something out of my control, to dismember them or make them slip, to gain other kinds of associative meanings from other people. That's when it started to be interesting as an audio work, because focusing on the poetic object, I would prefer to find another substance. I want to make things slip away from their moorings rather than anchor them. The single voice...
THE CONTROLLING VOICE.
I'm controlling the whole thing anyway. That is done within a framework or spirit of some kind of sympathy when someone's voice is being used. In other words, I don't just use it as a found object. Because appropriation, that whole question is a thing that happens in these pieces. "Building From Scratch" has these things that sound like they might be appropriated, but they're not. They're constructed. Like the music, the operatic duet, it's constructed to sound like it's from someplace, which it's not. It's fictional. I won't say I composed it, I invented it. I don't think of it as a serious composition, it's ridiculous. (laughs) What I like about appropriation is that sense that it comes from someplace, and what doesn't particularly interest me is the notion that it necessarily has to have come from someplace.
SO ITS THE PRODUCTION OF AUTHENTICITY, THE SENSE THAT THIS WAS TAKEN FROM SOMEPLACE. DECONTEXTUALIZED AND RECONTEXTUALIZED. AS AN ACTIVE PRODUCTION. RATHER THAN AS SOMETHING
Right, it refracts a set of possible origins. That's more interesting
to me than: "Oh, that's Johnny Carson." Who cares, after
a while? I think those refractions--"Is that Webern? It doesn't
really sound like Webern, but it has the sense of early 2Oth century
Germany..."--it returns to a
question rather than a very definite quotation.
DO YOU SEE THESE PIECES AS COLLABORATIVE?
I think of collaboration as: I am sharing the ultimate artistic decision with other people. I've been in that situation, continue to be in that situation, and like it. But I don't think of these pieces as collaborative. I'm not so much collaborating with other people, because I don't think of it as that even. I have the ultimate control, and I have no problem with that. But I think of these pieces as responsive. I bring other people into the situation because they literally have other voices. I'm interested in those voices not only as material to manipulate but as something to respond to, something that modifies my decision-making process. That's different from having a script, bringing in an actor to read it. Not knowing quite what they're going to do, that comes out of working with improvising musicians, which doesn't show up in these pieces but has been a part of my work in the past. The idea of giving people a frame or field in which to work, that's part of what's going on here.
COLLABORATION IS USUALLY CAST AS UTOPIAN, BUT ANYONE WHO S HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO COLLABORATE KNOWS THAT DESPITE THE PRETENSE OF SHARED RESPONSIBILITY THERE ARE ALWAYS MICROPOLITICS INVOLVED. JUST AS ANY DIALOGUE IS INVOLVED IN CERTAIN KINDS OF PUSHING AND PULLING AND DIRECTING AND CONCEDING...
(tape side ends, interrupts conversation.)
...THE SAME WAY THAT YOU CAN GO INTO A PIECE WITH A GAME PLAN THAT YOU THEN ASK PEOPLE FOR FEEDBACK ON. YOU MAKE YOURSELF VULNERABLE TO A RESPONSE.
Starting off to make works where the idea is in your head, a more traditional composerly way of working: "Building From Scratch" is that kind of work. I knew the entire structure of that piece before I went into the studio to do it. I understood everything about how it would work, the order of events, et cetera. As I've gone on and made other pieces m I've moved in a direction away from prescribing everything about the piece before I go into the studio, and more towards becoming involved with the material itself. By the time I get to "Dizzy, not numb," the involvement is not only with the material itself and structure, but the material is about this interaction, about letting some of the control go and bringing my own abilities to bear on the wild card of what other people would bring to it. I began doing truly collaborative pieces at this time, and I think that influenced the work here. It helped get away from the idea of generating language, but suggested that in fact language only really takes place in intercourse. People cannot learn language, for instance, without interacting with someone else. I find this a development of interactivity, and when I go into putting the pieces together I'm more willing to let the material show me the paths of how to put it together And I get to know the material really well, too. I'm less and less concerned with a very strict structure and executing that structure in the studio.
SO MAYBE YOU'RE MORE INVOLVED IN A COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIP NOT WITH THE PEOPLE, BUT WITH THE MATERIAL. YOU COME IN WITH AN AGENDA, BUT AT THE SAME TIME YOU'RE SENSITIVE TO THE AGENDA OF THE MATERIAL, RATHER THAN THE OTHER INDIVIDUALS. WHAT THOSE PEOPLE DO IS ONLY MARGINALLY INVOLVED WITH THEIR OWN WILL. IT S VERY STRONGLY STEERED BY YOU. HOW YOU USE THAT MATERIAL ONCE YOU HAVE IT IS THE PRODUCT OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOU AND THE MATERIAL ITSELF. COLLABORATING WITH AN INERT THING.
If the last part of "Drifters" has a subject, it's just what you described there. Once the story has left the mouth of the speaker, that story is being told and retold by an actor. And I'm intercutting stories to highlight the symbiosis and ambiguity that take place in the relationships between the original story, the individual as storyteller, and the retelling of the story through the performed The original tellers are performing, in a way, because I've asked them to tell me a story about a specific theme, which they then perform for me. I've recorded it, made a document which becomes the object of this whole other performance with this other performed A replication, so to speak, of the original performance.
THE COMPLEXITIES OF DRAMATIC REENACTMENT. IT REMINDS ME OF THE DISTINCTION YOU DREW BETWEEN MEANING AND REPRESENTATION IN LANGUAGE - THE SENSE OF RECORDING AS A WAY OF REPRESENTING NOT JUST AN EVENT OR DESCRIBED OBJECT. BUT THE REPRESENTATION OF THE BODY OF THE SPEAKER.
The subject is the body via language. "Dizzy, not numb" what's present when you listen to the piece is the sound of these activities, the sound of this language, the sound of work, and what's absent is anybody producing that...stuff. There's a subject matter at a semantic level that refers back to the body, so it uses signification to keep tapping at different aspects of physicality and absence. On the other hand, it uses acoustic strategies (blast of cappuccino steam) to highlight the very idea of physicality, the notion of the presence of a body. But the body's not there, because by the nature of recording it's gone. At the same time, the work is also about memory, about recording and memory. "Building From Scratch," for instance, is about a male voice trying to get a female voice to remember something, but to remember his version of it.
[sings] YES, I REMEMBER IT WELL . . . [laughter] SO YOU MOVE BACKWARDS THROUGH THESE PIECES, MAYBE AS AN EXPLORATION OF THE MEMORY OF THE PIECES .
It becomes that for me.
IF THESE PIECES ARE INTERRELATED IN THE CLOSE WAY THAT YOU ARE INDICATING THEN EACH OF THEM IS ABOUT REMEMBERING AND WORKING OFF OF THE REVERBERATION OF THE ONE BEFORE IT .
I think that's definitely true. Also, we differentiated meaning from utterance, but there are different modes of utterance. That's something else that carries through them: the mode of verbalization is not fixed, it's unstable. (Afro-pop begins playing on cafe stereo.) In most audio work the language mode tends to be stable. But I try to make language occupy multiple positions and strategies. So in the same piece there might be ten different recognizable modes of verbalizationã singing, acting, casual conversation, telephone...
GRUNTS, GROANS, MOANS.
Exactly. And then there's my way of dealing with those different modes: leaving them intact, cutting them up, manipulating them. The beginning of "Drifters" is almost an exercise in that: stories, fragments of the stories, then a text that I speak that's from other parts of the stories, then Jaap Blonk's vocalization of phonemes that I extracted from my text of the original stories. There's no a priori stability to the language. There's a polyphony, but not just a polyphony of voices. A polyphony of modes. No authority of one mode, and yet the material itself isn't trivialized. It doesn't erase itself or dismiss itself.
IT'S NOT ABOUT FLATTENING THINGS OUT . MAKING ALL MODES EQUIVALENT, BUT ABOUT CONSTANTLY SHIFTING THE HIERARCHY.
That's exactly right.
--John Corbett
April, 1997
Référence: http://www.portaudio.com/edm/radio_ln.html