|
|
|
 |
|
|
WD_174/ 2005
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Drawings 2 | | Medium: | oilstick on paper | | Size (inches): | 25 x 19.9 | | Size (mm): | 640 x 510 | | Catalog #: | WD_0174 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
"Broken Music" by MILAN KNIZAK (Label: AMPERSAND, Catalog #: AMPERE 012CD).
"From 1963 to 1964 I used to play records either too slowly or too fast and thus change the quality of the music. In 1965 I started to destroy records: scratch them, punch holes in them, break them. By playing them (which destroyed the needle and often the record player, too) an entirely new music was created -- Unexpected, nerve-racking, and aggressive. Compositions lasted a second or for an infinitely long time (like when the needle got stuck in a deep groove and played the same phrase over and over again). Soon I developed this system even further. I began sticking tape on top of records, painting over them, burning them, cutting them up and gluing parts of different records back together again to achieve the widest possible variety of sounds. Later I began to work in the same way with scores. I erased some of the notes, signatures, and whole bars. I added notes and signatures, changed the tempo and order of the bars, played the compositions backwards, turned the lines upside down, pasted different parts of different scores together, and so on."
-Milan Knizak/ www.forcedexposure.com/labels/ampersand.html
Knizak, Milan (1940 ~).
A highly controversial figure in the Czech Republic, Milan Knizak is mostly known in America for his membership in Fluxus in the 1960s-1970s. A performance artist, Knizak is an art renegade who was banned by the Communist regime and kept in the fringes because of his political activism and art terrorism. After the Velvet Revolution, he was given the presidency of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Although not really a musician or composer, he deserves a place in music history; he pioneered cut-and-paste techniques with lathe records later picked up by avant-garde turntablists like Christian Marclay and Martin Tétreault. Knizak grew up in Marienbad (now Mariánské Lázné). After being thrown out of various Prague universities and art schools, he came to New York and associated himself with Fluxus, a group of postmodern conceptual artists (Yoko Ono was the best-known member). Knizak's performance art pieces usually involved very down-to-earth human activities turned into absurd gestures (like adults playing childish games in the middle of the street). His search for the ultimate desacralization of art took a new turn in the mid-'60s when he began to paint, break, scratch, and alter LPs in every possible way (including cutting them and pasting unrelated pieces together). These works stand as both art pieces and playable scores. He extended the concept to printed scores -- erasing notes, changing bar sequences, pasting unrelated passages together, etc. Recordings of his mutilated records were released by the label Multiphla in 1979 (reissued on CD by Ampersand). Back in Europe in the late '70s, Knizak continued to create and lecture, even though he was persona non grata in Czechoslovakia and kept making enemies with his agit-prop antics and flammable politic statements. A friend of Vaclav Havel, he became one of the many members of the artistic community to take part in the first government of the liberated Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. As president of the Academy of Fine Arts, he was the source of many scandals, buying his own works with the institution's money and self-curating major exhibitions of his works. He later became director of the National Gallery in Prague.
-www.samtidskunst.dk/3sted/emneviewer.php?tabel=kunstnere&id=287
By 1963, Czechoslovakian artist Milan Knizak had realized direct manipulation of records, but not quite as Moholy-Nagy had intended. Knizak created his Destroyed Music series by altering popular records: scratching, burning, cutting, gluing and applying adhesive tape to them. Some scratches created endless loops, with the stylis remaining stuck in one damaged groove. Other objects were reassembled from broken pieces of several different records. Knizak considers this work to be musical composition. They were intended to be played.
The idea of damaging records was manifested in a number of other works at this time, and continues today. New York artist Christian Marclay employs some of these same techniques to create his altered discs, but with more specific intention in terms of the resulting sound. In his performances, Marclay spins up to eight altered records simultaneously on individual turntables. He composes with several piles of records that he prepares and sorts in advance, thus knowing from what pile to select a disc for a desired effect at any time during the performance. The individual records are notated with stickers that identify specific passages and are sometimes applied to create loops. He drops the needle on to the record after the first of two stickers and when it hits the second it jumps back to the first and repeats. Sometimes the records are played at non-standard speeds. Into other records, he drills additional centre holes (off-axis), creating a wobbly effect. His Record Without a Cover is a recording of one of these performances. The studio performance is pressed onto one side of the disc. On the other, embossed lettering instructs the owner not to store the record in a protective sleeve. The scratches that result from handling enhance the quality of the sound and make each copy unique.
-From "Cut and Paste: Collage and the Art of Sound" By Kevin Concannon/ www.localmotives.com/hoved/tema/nr_2/cut.html
| | | send price request |
|
|
|
|
|
Gallery opening
500 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1820 (Between 42nd and 43rd)
...
|
|
more
|
|
