Thoughts?
I wrote this for a class. It's supposed to be for people who don't study the stuff we're studying (New Media, Memory & The Archive) and will be linked to The Record exhibit at the Nasher at some point. Any opinions on it would be appreciated~
Vinyl Ghosts
Hands reach down and place a record player inside a hole in the ground. The hands grab a shovel and start piling on the dirt, filling the hole but leaving the speakers exposed. The shovel pats the dirt firmly into place and ever so often, the record skips. These brief pauses are less remarkable than the fact that the record, despite being buried, keeps on playing. This is the beginning of Taiyo Kimura’s Haunted By You, a video installation at the Nasher Museum’s exhibit, The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl. Vinyl may be dead as a commercial form but music, and in particular the mass music industry that the relatively inexpensive plastic discs helped to create, continues to thrive. Records, along with other analog media like cassette tapes, have been rendered obsolete by the advent of digital technologies, but they have not disappeared completely. And vinyl records in particular continue to have a powerful pull on the imagination.
The term record can apply to vinyl discs but it has a broader meaning - any kind of media from written documents to videos to webpages is a record of something. Records preserve an experience that has passed so that we can recollect it through reference in the future. All of them contain an illusory power, the fiction that we can retrieve the past as it was, bring it back to life, and that we can do this indefinitely, that what we record can live forever. Any object of nostalgia has this same power. But unlike the world of advertising, where the fantasy of eternal and accurate recollection is promoted as an actuality in order to increase sales, contemporary art provides a space to play with these notions, acknowledging the fantasy, but not denying its power.
Take for example Ode to Affirmative Action by Carrie Mae Weems, a work that features a fictional singer, Dee Dee, on the cover of an album next to a gold record. This work tries to revive the presence of black artists in the recording world who have been forgotten or rendered invisible by the recording industry. Even though the record is fictional, it contains within it the power to remind us of what has been left out of recorded history. This is a reminder that our historical record, while seemingly a factual and faithful reproduction of what happened in the past, often obscures or erases some aspects or perspectives of the time it records. In this work, art and memory combine in a way that shows how fantasy can give us access to experiences that might otherwise be concealed. The title printed at the bottom of the album, If You Should Lose Me, reinforces this idea by not only pointing at the potential for loss but also offering a suggestion that the album contains some insight on what to do if the loss should occur.
The notion of a loss that contains within it the potential of revealing something not otherwise available is present in Haunted by You, as well. Despite being buried in the ground like a corpse, the record player still speaks to us through the music. What we hear is the speech of the dead, the voices of ghosts. The title evokes this with the word haunted. And I think it is important to consider what ghosts (and records) enable us to see.
We are not haunted by that which has no relevance anymore. Ghosts only linger on Earth if they have some unfulfilled wish or desire. They are often thought of as being located in sites where traumatic events occurred. They are spirits that have not been laid to rest yet. If they had nothing to remember, they would cease to exist. Thinking of this from the other direction, if we had no reason to remember them, they would cease to exist. All memories provide us with something, if only sentimental value. And relevance changes according to the perspective of the viewer or listener. This relevance can be conveyed to others through the creation of a new document, detailing one’s perspective. For example, my ideas on Ode to Affirmative Action were largely informed by the commentary posted on the wall next to the piece. This perspective dominated my interpretation of the work, blotting out any unmediated engagement I might have had with it, but also creating a personal interest and emotional response that I might not otherwise have felt.
So what is the relevance of a piece like to Ode to Affirmative Action? I believe that our national memory of popular music and the place that race, gender, and other categories of identity have been assigned in the material forms of media that we could potentially select to create archives to memorialize our history through music are at stake. If we should lose the physical or digital artifacts that point to these markers of identity and the impact that they have had on music and history, then the possibility exists that they might drop out of recorded history. Our relationship and engagement with recorded history helps to structure our identity as a society and can have wide-ranging effects on personal and community constructions of self, as well as impact the decisions of policy-makers on local and national levels. If all of those engaged in the music-making industry from artists to producers are remembered as white, this feeds into the idea espoused by some people that America is a white nation and that people who are not white have a secondary status in the society. A similar problem could occur with gender, class, age and other categories of identity where power is invested in one group over another.
This takes us back to the power of art to bring the memory of particular groups that might be left out of the historical record into a national narrative. The memories that are relevant to a particular group but are not contained within historical records disseminated through institutions like schools, libraries, or museums can re-emerge through the fantasy space of art in order to remind us of that which has been obscured, hidden or seemingly forgotten. These are the ghosts that haunt archives, always retaining that potential to disrupt what certain people or groups might try to present as a self-contained and fixed story.
What I find particularly interesting about these two pieces is that they only give us access to some parts of the total material, sonic, and visual aspects of the record. Ode to Affirmative Action presents us with visual and textual information, but we are separated from the vinyl disc and cover by a glass case and we have no way of accessing the music at all. The sound values are left up to the imagination, giving the viewer a space for coming up with their own answer as to what should be done if we should lose the black artists that are being referred to. Perhaps this could also be referring to the loss of the music, the viewer is left to wonder about what to do if we should lose access to the sounds that are contained in records while still retaining some knowledge that they at one point existed.
In that first segment of Haunted by You, we at first have access to the image of the disc on the record player, but eventually this visual representation is covered by the dirt and all we are left with is the sound. Since it is a video installation, we do not have access to the material form of the record on any level. The ephemeral nature of media is underscored here. Eventually, all of these physical manifestations that are meant to carry sound will degrade. Even if we attempt to preserve them by transferring them to whatever the latest format is, they are liable to get lost in the increasing vastness of our recorded archive.
There will always be that latent potential for the music to resurface and haunt us once again, as long as these songs exist in some format, whether physical or in human memory. Perhaps more significantly, whether we lose any particular song, music will continue to exist. But what do we stand to lose if particular songs degrade into oblivion or the context of their creation becomes unavailable to us? Ode to Affirmative Action provides one answer to this, but I would argue that this account of the glossing over of the black artists’ place in history is only relevant (and therefore only haunts us) because racism continues to exist as a fact of American life. What gives the music or the fantasy of it that meaning is its relationship to issues that face us in the present moment. This relationship might be related to our historical or remembered sense of self and identity and fears or hopes about the future. But even if the facts, the sounds or the material media are lost, as long as memory persists, art and fantasy will still give us access to these relevant modes of remembering.
Vinyl Ghosts
Hands reach down and place a record player inside a hole in the ground. The hands grab a shovel and start piling on the dirt, filling the hole but leaving the speakers exposed. The shovel pats the dirt firmly into place and ever so often, the record skips. These brief pauses are less remarkable than the fact that the record, despite being buried, keeps on playing. This is the beginning of Taiyo Kimura’s Haunted By You, a video installation at the Nasher Museum’s exhibit, The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl. Vinyl may be dead as a commercial form but music, and in particular the mass music industry that the relatively inexpensive plastic discs helped to create, continues to thrive. Records, along with other analog media like cassette tapes, have been rendered obsolete by the advent of digital technologies, but they have not disappeared completely. And vinyl records in particular continue to have a powerful pull on the imagination.
The term record can apply to vinyl discs but it has a broader meaning - any kind of media from written documents to videos to webpages is a record of something. Records preserve an experience that has passed so that we can recollect it through reference in the future. All of them contain an illusory power, the fiction that we can retrieve the past as it was, bring it back to life, and that we can do this indefinitely, that what we record can live forever. Any object of nostalgia has this same power. But unlike the world of advertising, where the fantasy of eternal and accurate recollection is promoted as an actuality in order to increase sales, contemporary art provides a space to play with these notions, acknowledging the fantasy, but not denying its power.
Take for example Ode to Affirmative Action by Carrie Mae Weems, a work that features a fictional singer, Dee Dee, on the cover of an album next to a gold record. This work tries to revive the presence of black artists in the recording world who have been forgotten or rendered invisible by the recording industry. Even though the record is fictional, it contains within it the power to remind us of what has been left out of recorded history. This is a reminder that our historical record, while seemingly a factual and faithful reproduction of what happened in the past, often obscures or erases some aspects or perspectives of the time it records. In this work, art and memory combine in a way that shows how fantasy can give us access to experiences that might otherwise be concealed. The title printed at the bottom of the album, If You Should Lose Me, reinforces this idea by not only pointing at the potential for loss but also offering a suggestion that the album contains some insight on what to do if the loss should occur.
The notion of a loss that contains within it the potential of revealing something not otherwise available is present in Haunted by You, as well. Despite being buried in the ground like a corpse, the record player still speaks to us through the music. What we hear is the speech of the dead, the voices of ghosts. The title evokes this with the word haunted. And I think it is important to consider what ghosts (and records) enable us to see.
We are not haunted by that which has no relevance anymore. Ghosts only linger on Earth if they have some unfulfilled wish or desire. They are often thought of as being located in sites where traumatic events occurred. They are spirits that have not been laid to rest yet. If they had nothing to remember, they would cease to exist. Thinking of this from the other direction, if we had no reason to remember them, they would cease to exist. All memories provide us with something, if only sentimental value. And relevance changes according to the perspective of the viewer or listener. This relevance can be conveyed to others through the creation of a new document, detailing one’s perspective. For example, my ideas on Ode to Affirmative Action were largely informed by the commentary posted on the wall next to the piece. This perspective dominated my interpretation of the work, blotting out any unmediated engagement I might have had with it, but also creating a personal interest and emotional response that I might not otherwise have felt.
So what is the relevance of a piece like to Ode to Affirmative Action? I believe that our national memory of popular music and the place that race, gender, and other categories of identity have been assigned in the material forms of media that we could potentially select to create archives to memorialize our history through music are at stake. If we should lose the physical or digital artifacts that point to these markers of identity and the impact that they have had on music and history, then the possibility exists that they might drop out of recorded history. Our relationship and engagement with recorded history helps to structure our identity as a society and can have wide-ranging effects on personal and community constructions of self, as well as impact the decisions of policy-makers on local and national levels. If all of those engaged in the music-making industry from artists to producers are remembered as white, this feeds into the idea espoused by some people that America is a white nation and that people who are not white have a secondary status in the society. A similar problem could occur with gender, class, age and other categories of identity where power is invested in one group over another.
This takes us back to the power of art to bring the memory of particular groups that might be left out of the historical record into a national narrative. The memories that are relevant to a particular group but are not contained within historical records disseminated through institutions like schools, libraries, or museums can re-emerge through the fantasy space of art in order to remind us of that which has been obscured, hidden or seemingly forgotten. These are the ghosts that haunt archives, always retaining that potential to disrupt what certain people or groups might try to present as a self-contained and fixed story.
What I find particularly interesting about these two pieces is that they only give us access to some parts of the total material, sonic, and visual aspects of the record. Ode to Affirmative Action presents us with visual and textual information, but we are separated from the vinyl disc and cover by a glass case and we have no way of accessing the music at all. The sound values are left up to the imagination, giving the viewer a space for coming up with their own answer as to what should be done if we should lose the black artists that are being referred to. Perhaps this could also be referring to the loss of the music, the viewer is left to wonder about what to do if we should lose access to the sounds that are contained in records while still retaining some knowledge that they at one point existed.
In that first segment of Haunted by You, we at first have access to the image of the disc on the record player, but eventually this visual representation is covered by the dirt and all we are left with is the sound. Since it is a video installation, we do not have access to the material form of the record on any level. The ephemeral nature of media is underscored here. Eventually, all of these physical manifestations that are meant to carry sound will degrade. Even if we attempt to preserve them by transferring them to whatever the latest format is, they are liable to get lost in the increasing vastness of our recorded archive.
There will always be that latent potential for the music to resurface and haunt us once again, as long as these songs exist in some format, whether physical or in human memory. Perhaps more significantly, whether we lose any particular song, music will continue to exist. But what do we stand to lose if particular songs degrade into oblivion or the context of their creation becomes unavailable to us? Ode to Affirmative Action provides one answer to this, but I would argue that this account of the glossing over of the black artists’ place in history is only relevant (and therefore only haunts us) because racism continues to exist as a fact of American life. What gives the music or the fantasy of it that meaning is its relationship to issues that face us in the present moment. This relationship might be related to our historical or remembered sense of self and identity and fears or hopes about the future. But even if the facts, the sounds or the material media are lost, as long as memory persists, art and fantasy will still give us access to these relevant modes of remembering.