May 14 - 24, 2008

Fischli and Weiss The Way Things Go

Jeremy Millar

2007, hardcover

Part of Afterall's One Work series

18 cards

Fischli and Weiss are amazing. Joel and Amanda told me all about them this past summer after they say an exhibition of their work in Europe. Then MoCAD had their work Questions in the brilliant Words Fail Me exhibition. Their Manifesto is also a great addition to any wall and life. This spring Joel and Amanda saw Fischli and Weiss's The Way Things Go again at the Hirshorn and picked up the DVD version of it (available on Netflix even now). This book focuses on The Way Things Go exploring why and how is fascinates in a way that expands this work in exciting directions. The book starts from observation and experience of the work in museum and people's reactions, a rich terrain upon which to build while never reducing the work's "purposeless purposiveness".

Some brief notes from my cards and reading:

-Opens with a Wittgenstein quote

-Der Lauf der Dinge (The Ways Things Go)

2- clapping

-"Even in our ignorance...it was clear that we had watched something great."

3- "...It was a little frightening, being moved like this..."

4- "what makes it popular also makes it good"

-Laurence Sterne, Tristam Shandy, 1759

-connection to Fischli and Weiss's 1984 Equilibres

8- "Our traditional means of formal analysis seems unable to deal with works, such as those, that are less concerned with external appearance than with 'internal' conceptual coherence."

9- gravity

10- procede- Raymond Roussel

-Roussel, near-neighbor of the Prousts

11- Duchamp- Roussel- The Large Glass

-Robbe-Grillet

-Foucault

12- "As with Fischli and Weiss, a rigorous play is fundamental to Roussel's practice."

-Parmi Les Noirs, 1935- identical phrases- single letter- different meanings

15- Kierkegaard "Boredom is the root of all evil."

17- change

20- anticipation

-"Everywhere things are transformed into actions, nouns become verbs."

21- illustrations by Wiliam Heath Robinson

-Frederick Winslow Taylor

23- Esperanto

24- Futurists

27- "...it seems to be both an anticipation of the birth of time and memory of its end. But where does that place us?"

28- Archytas of Tarentum- 4th c. BCE- treatise on place

29- Focillon- "'a work of art treats space according to its own needs, defines space and even creates such space as may be necessary to it.'"

32- Henri Bergson- Creative Evolution

-the concrete solution

33- Bergson, time

34- waiting- humor

- Creative Evolution- influence on Marcel Proust

36- interventions

37-38- epic and anti-epic

55- "It becomes a part of time not apart from it."

-Bruno Schulz- "Our creators will not be heroes of romances in many volumes. Their roles will be short, concise; their characters- without a background. Sometimes, for one gestures, for one word along, we shall make the effort to bring them to life."

57- Bakhtin- laughter and the epic

59- the Incongruity Tradition

-1981 film, The Least Resistance, rat and bear costumes

60- 1979 sausage series

61- At the Carpet Shop- gherkins

66- Peter Fischli, "Operating on two planes at once is part of our practice."

-Koestler- impersonator

67- Baudrillard, The System of Objects, 1968

-machines and perfection

70- The Way Things Go- "...objects do no more than they need to, no more than they are able."

-simple object, technology

-familiar and unexpected

-Bergson, Le Rire, 1900

71- automatism and life

73- "Balance is most beautiful just before it collapses."

75- rigidity

-hesitate

76- pause

-timing, comedy

77-78- Kant- "laughter as 'an affection arising from the strained expectation being suddenly reduced to nothing.'"

80- "purposeless purposiveness"

81- seeing how it was made

82- "of the smile rather than the laugh"

-"smile of wonder"

83- "This smile is not ours alone, but sits with quiet benevolence on the faces of the artists too... Just as one can hear the smile in the voice of someone talking over the phone, so one can see it in Fischli and Weiss's artworks."

-"one can produce wonder only if one succeeds"

-place of wonder in their practice

84- St. Augustine

107- Fragen (Questions), relationship to Daston and Park Questiones naturals of Adelard of Bath

87- David Weiss, "There is a reason why the Pyramids are famous. When you go there, no matter how many photographs you've seen of them before, you realize that the Pyramids are unique and that you don't understand them..."

-Heidegger

89- the sublime

-"wondrous"

91

92

March 12, 2008

Highway 61 Revisited

Mark Polizzotti

2007, paperback

6 cards and notes on back cover

Highway 61 Revisited is the type of 33 1/3 book that I love. It gets into the album, the history, the musician, the cover and more while shedding new light on Bob Dylan. Polizzotti's book about Andre Breton has been on my bookshelf for a long time since I picked it up years ago. After this book I look forward to reading his take on Breton. Polizzotti writes about Dylan as "the thinking person's rock star," and also quotes Joan Baez, "Some people are just no interested. But if you're interested, he goes way, way deep." I'm interested. Polizzotti also keys into the simple but profound workings of Dylan and songs with statements like "Every great song has one moment that stands out above the rest..."

Highlights from the cards

p. 5- opening line about gaze

"The outer photo is as much performance as the music inside"

-glowering rock stars

p. 6 "...he knows the music is good, the best he's ever made, but he doesn't expect you to recognize it and he's gearing up for a fight."

-baby stroller

p. 7- Sergei Eisenstein

"Music that still has the rare quality, after all this time, of making us hear what we want to hear."

p. 8- this record being "too good"

p. 9 "The album is a road map into new territory..."

-"As the thinking person's rock star..."

-"...it pushes one to confront is again and again..."

-Joan Baez, "Some people are just no interested. But if you're interested, he goes way, way deep."

p. 10 "...the supposed turn toward electric music was really a return"

-Dylan, "...I played all the folk songs with a rock 'n' roll attitude..."

p. 12 Dylan, "'Protest' is not my word." ... "amusement-park word"

-"...There are many sides to us, and I wanted to follow them all."

p. 13 "poetical" approach

"he not busy being born and then reborn, is busy dying"

p. 14 Harry Smith

-Greil Marcus

p. 16- Suze

Dylan to Nora Ephron in 1965, "Folk music is the only music where it isn't simple."

-vegetables and death

p. 17 and 18- painters including Red Grooms

p. 19- singing when he writes

-Al Kooper's organ playing

p. 20- Kant and Mallarme

p. 21- Freud

p. 23- Midwestern

p. 24 BD "I left where I'm from because there's nothing there."

p. 25 Bessie Smith

-flipping the record

p. 31- Greil Marcus misses...

-boredom and the writing of "Like a Rolling Stone"

-D.A. Pennebaker

p. 32- "rhythm thing on paper"

-interviews as theatrical performances

-ghost writing "Like a Rolling Stone"

p. 33 "Also rare for a chart-topping hit, the lyrics focused not on love but its opposite."

p. 35- discussion of who Miss Lonely is (makes a good case its not Edie Sedgewick who I was thinking it was)

p. 37- ultimately...

-any of the phonies

p. 38 "It's up to you to figure out who's who"

-language used in Like a Rolling Stone

p. 39- French Symbolists

-Rimbaud, "I is someone else"

p. 41- Tarantula

-"the sun is still yellow. some people would say it's chicken" from Tombstone Blues

p. 43- writing songs

p. 52- Al Kooper's organ story

p. 53- the result...

p. 55- promo copies

p. 62- did sound check at Newport

p. 63 "sellout jacket"

p. 65- "...the sound of the street..."

p. 70 Woody Guthrie

p. 71 "Woody made each word count. He painted with words."

p. 75- names famous and obscure

p. 85- magpie's nests

p. 89 his voice

p. 90 (voice) "...it exists on its own terms..."

p. 92 "Love Minus Zero"

p. 93 Chelsea Hotel

p. 94 "If he was really serious about her, she had to be unknown..."

p. 110 "...the man Dylan's listeners swore to themselves they'd never become, and with whom most eventually all grew all too familiar."

-Jones vs. Smith for rhyming

-songs on the album- "those addressed to someone...and those...that flash by like glimpses through a car's window as it speeds across this frantic carnival of a nation."

p.111 "Once we have walked into this room, it is not certain we will ever find our way out.

-"Thin Man" song he often performs live

-rhyme scheme

-"Every great song has a moment that stands out above the rest..."

p. 117 BD "My songs are just me talking to myself."

p. 128- Rimbaud's "My Bohemian Life"

p. 129 warning "stepping off the road can leave you very lost"

p. 130- Kooper playing a Hohner Pianet

130-131- Tom Thumb

p. 134- postcards, cultural memory

p. 135- circuses and carnivals and carny life

p. 144