Audio

The Women of the Avant-Garde (part 2)

November 24, 2009

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(THEME MUSIC PLAYS)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
Welcome to another UbuWeb Poetry Foundation podcast, All Avant-Garde All The Time. I'm your host, Kenneth Goldsmith. And today we pick up on the second of our two-part feature, The Women of UbuWeb. It's a well-known fact that the historic avant-garde of the 20th century, which UbuWeb features, was heavily male. And it's true that very few women are represented on UbuWeb, say, in the first half of the 20th century. But once we hit the '60s, things explode. And the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, this decade, is absolutely packed. Probably more women are featured during those decades than are men. So we'd like to highlight some of the great works that are featured during those decades here on the second part of The Women of UbuWeb podcast.

(JET AIR SOUNDS)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
Listen, what do you hear? Is it jet air? It is! This is a piece by Alison Knowles, the Fluxus artist, and it is a documentation of a live performance where almost nothing sound-oriented happens. It's called a 'Nivea Cream Piece For Oscar (Emmett) Williams' from 1962. And let me describe what's happening here because you're not going to hear anything. First, a performer comes on stage with a bottle of hand cream labeled Nivea Cream, and he pours the cream into his or her hands, depending on if it's a male or female. And then another performer enters, and they do the same thing. And then they join together in front of the microphone, and they massage their hands very quietly. They leave in the reverse order that they entered, and that piece is finished. This piece premiered in 1962 at a Fluxus festival. Alison Knowles was one of the few women working in the Fluxus movement, and she did these great pieces. And the idea about Fluxus was that everyday actions, the activity of putting hand cream on your hand, if framed and recorded properly, could become a sound work or could become an artwork. It was the ultimate breakdown between life and art.

(AUDIO PLAYS)

LOUISE LAWLER:

(MAKES BIRDCALL SOUNDS) Artschwager. (MAKES BIRDCALL SOUNDS) Artschwager. (MAKES BIRDCALL SOUNDS)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
We've heard this before. But to put it into this context of 'The Women of UbuWeb' changes the meaning. This is Louise Lawler, a piece from 1972 called 'Birdcalls'.


LOUISE LAWLER:

Cucchi (MAKING BIRDCALL SOUNDS) Cucchi. (MAKES BIRDCALL SOUNDS) Cucchi. Cucchi. (MAKING BIRDCALL SOUNDS)


KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

It's very interesting because she says that in the early '70s she would walk home late at night, and the city wasn't safe the way it is today. And Louise Lawler said that one way to feel safe was to pretend that you're crazy or at least to be really loud. And so coming home from bars at night, her and her women friends would start making these strange noises that became birdcalls of the names of male artists.


LOUISE LAWLER:

Gilbert and George, George and Gilbert. (MAKING BIRDCALL SOUNDS) Gilbert and George, George and Gilbert. (MAKING BIRDCALL SOUNDS)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

They were just screeching and squawking on their way home to sound as crazy as they could. This developed into a series of birdcalls on artists' names.

LOUISE LAWLER:

(MAKING BIRDCALL SOUNDS) Dan Graham. Dan Graham. Dan Graham. Dan Graham. Dan Graham. Dan Graham. Dan Graham. Dan Graham. Dan Graham.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

Originally, there were 28 contemporary male artists when she did this piece, from Vito Acconci to Lawrence Weiner, all the Minimalists. But later, she redid the piece in the early '80s as the art world was returning to a sort of male-driven art world. She added a bunch of neo expressionist painters, including Julian Schnabel, Anselm Kiefer and Francesco Clemente.

LOUISE LAWLER:

(MAKING BIRD CALL SOUNDS) Schnabel. Schnabel.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

It's an ever-changing work in progress. 'Birdcalls' by Louise Lawler.


LOUISE LAWLER:

(MAKING BIRD CALL SOUNDS) Jenney. Jenney. Jenney, Jenney, Jenney.

(AUDIO ENDS)

(AUDIO PLAYS)

SHELLEY HIRSCH:
OK, folks, did I make my point? Did you listen? Did you hear? Did you perceive? Do you know what I'm trying to say? Wasn't that something, folks? The way that the words joined together in that strange stream of unconsciousness.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

This is work by the downtown New York performer named Shelley Hirsch. Born in 1952, she arrived in Lower Manhattan and quickly became a staple on the improvisational music scene performing with people like Elliot Sharp, and John Zorn, Ikue Mori, among others.

SHELLEY HIRSCH:
(SINGING)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

What happened was her improvisation work developed a very theatrical bent, she began developing complex narratives and the thing about Shelley is that she's got this vast range, both technically and emotionally. So they develop into these enormous narratives of storytelling, things that have to do with her life growing up in Brooklyn. She stages performances, she does installations, radio plays all over the world of these kind of incredible array of characters.

SHELLEY HIRSCH:
(SINGING LONG, HIGH NOTES)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

What we're listening to here is from a video piece called Hank Linhart, an untitled excerpt from the soundtrack of that video that appeared on the Tellus compilation from 1987 entitled 'Video arts music'.

SHELLEY HIRSCH:
(SINGING LONG NOTES)

(AUDIO ENDS)

(AUDIO PLAYS)

(SQUEEZING AND SPURTING NOISES)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

From 1995, a piece by the visual artist Lauren Lesko. It's entitled 'Thirst' and it is the sound of her vagina.

(SQUEEZING AND SPURTING NOISES)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

She did a performance where she inserted a contact mic in her vagina and made a seven or eight-minute recording of it and then looped it into a 21-minute piece.

(SQUEEZING AND SPURTING NOISES)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

In her visual work, Lauren Lesko often used the body as a site for artworks. And that, of course, extended to some sound works. There's a great tradition of women using sound and a great tradition of the body as being a sound source for artworks. Works of sound art, works of sound poetry, like Henri Chopin, who swallowed microphones, Christof Migone, who actually does recordings cracking his knuckles or people passing gas. This is in that tradition.

(SQUEEZING AND SPURTING NOISES)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

Lesko, through this piece has become a rather legendary figure. Nobody knows where she is. She's vanished from the art world. I've tried to contact her many times to find out more about this piece, but she cannot be reached. Rumor has it she's off in India.

(SQUEEZING AND SPURTING NOISES)

(AUDIO ENDS)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

The next cut we're going to hear is a piece by the Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad. Born 1935, died tragically when she was 32 in a car accident in 1967.

(AUDIO PLAYS)

(GENTLE MUSIC PLAYS)

FORUGH FARROKHZAD:
(SPEAKING ALTERNATE LANGUAGE)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

An extremely small number of Iranian women have achieved anything in Iran outside of the home without dependence upon a relationship or male patronage. And she might be among the best-known, perhaps the most famous woman in the history of Persian literature. She was born in Tehran into a middle-class family and went through a failed marriage, had a kid and decided to pursue the poet's life as an independent woman in Iran in the mid-'50s. She wrote these wildly unconventional poems against the culture in Iran. She wrote about the plight of women in Iran. And she wrote a lot of poems about her own situation as a wife and a mother, no longer able to live that sort of conventional life. She, of course, attracted a lot of attention and a lot of disapproval, finally moving to Europe, where she was able to work a little bit more freely.

FORUGH FARROKHZAD:
(SPEAKING ALTERNATE LANGUAGE)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

The piece we're listening to now is called 'Clockwork Doll'. It's a meditation on feminism in this male-dominated Iranian culture. And this comes to us as a collaboration with 'Bidoun' magazine, which is a magazine that focuses on Middle Eastern art. In it, she portrays a woman as a doll, who can do nothing but sit there and stare out the window. As the narrative of the poem moves, the doll begins to move, and she begins to pull back the curtains, and she actually begins to free herself and feel love and become a sexualized object. There are several selections from Farrokhzad on UbuWeb, all of them beautiful and worth listening to. Her films are also featured on UbuWeb at UbuWeb Films.

FORUGH FARROKHZAD:
(SPEAKING ALTERNATE LANGUAGE)

(AUDIO ENDS)

(AUDIO PLAYS)

PAULINE OLIVEROS:

(PLAYS ACCORDION)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

The music of Pauline Oliveros, the godmother of new music. Pauline was born in Houston, Texas, in 1932, and she's 78 years old now. She was nearly 50 years old before her first record was finally released in 1981, after having been a very active electronic music composer.

PAULINE OLIVEROS:

(PLAYS ACCORDION)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s. She taught music at Mills College, UCLA, UCSD, and now, of course, runs the great deep listening and sonic awareness retreats. What we're listening to now is called 'Pathways to Grandmothers,' parts one and two, and it's Pauline on a very typical and beautiful solo accordion. It runs about an hour and 20 minutes long, and it was broadcast on KPFK and an artists' radio show called Close Radio, broadcast in 1978. Pauline's stature as an artist, as an inspiration to both men and women, cannot be overstated. She is truly a hero and is well-represented on UbuWeb, both in sound and in film.

PAULINE OLIVEROS:

(PLAYS ACCORDION)

(AUDIO ENDS)

(AUDIO PLAYS)

YOKO ONO:

Song For John. (SINGS) On a windy day, let's go on flying. There may be no trees to rest on.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

And what would 'The Women of UbuWeb' be without Yoko Ono, whose face adorns every single page of UbuWeb Sound. She's a hero to us and a hero to so many.

YOKO ONO:

(SINGS) That's enough for me.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

And this is a great piece. It's called 'Let's Go On Flying,' recorded in 1968, November, in a hospital, Queen Charlotte's maternity hospital, in fact, in London. At the time, Yoko was five months pregnant and was rushed to the hospital for emergency blood transfusions. And sadly, she ended up miscarrying the baby a few days later, but during the stay, John Lennon brought a tape recorder, and they began doing a number of improvised sound pieces and poetry pieces, recorded much of what would be the LPs 'Unfinished Music' and 'Life with the Lions'.

YOKO ONO:

(SINGS) Wrinkled souls piled up like grapefruits.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

And this comes as a flexi disc as part of 'Aspen 7,' the British issue released in summer of 1970.

(AUDIO ENDS)

(AUDIO PLAYS)

KRISTIN OPPENHEIM:

(SINGS) Hey Joe, where you goin' with that gun in your hand? Hey Joe, (WHISPERS) I said, (SINGS) where you goin' with that gun in your hand?

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

From a beautiful selection of audio works recorded between 1994 and 1997, we're listening to the visual artist Kristin Oppenheim.

KRISTIN OPPENHEIM:

(SINGS) Hey, hey Joe.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

And for that brief window of time, she did these beautiful sound installations. So this is called 'Hey Joe' from 1996. Of course, taking the riff from the Jimi Hendrix song repeated over and over again.

KRISTIN OPPENHEIM:

(SINGS) Hey Joe, (WHISPERS) I said, (SINGS) where you goin' with that gun in your hand?

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

Other tracks that are available on UbuWeb include bits of the Beach Boys, bits of Tammy Wynette and bits of Blues songs that are just repeated this way, over and over.

KRISTIN OPPENHEIM:

(WHISPERS) I said.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

For her gallery installations during this period, Oppenheim would empty the gallery completely of anything other than speakers buried in the wall, with her voice repeating these pop song phrases over and over again.

KRISTIN OPPENHEIM:

(SINGS) Hey Joe, (WHISPERS) I said, (SINGS) where you goin' with that gun in your hand? Hey, hey Joe. Hey, hey Joe. (WHISPERS) I said.

(AUDIO ENDS)

(AUDIO PLAYS)

SPEAKER 1:
Thank you very, very, much.

SPEAKER 2:

Thank you very, very much.

SPEAKER 3:
Thank you very, very, much.

SPEAKER 1:
I'm a very fortunate man.

SPEAKER 2:
I'm a very fortunate man.

SPEAKER 3:
I'm a very fortunate man.

SPEAKER 1:
God has given me a lot.

SPEAKER 2:
God has given me a lot.

SPEAKER 3:
God has given me a lot.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:

This is called 'Common Prayer' by the sound artist Jane Philbrick, recorded between 2000 and 2001.

SPEAKER 1:
The reason I'm such a fortunate man…

SPEAKER 2:
The reason I'm such a fortunate man…

SPEAKER 3:
The reason I'm such a fortunate man…

SPEAKER 1:

..is that I have people that love me.

SPEAKER 2:

..is that I have people that love me.

SPEAKER 3:

..is that I have people that love me.

SPEAKER 1:

And they care for me.

SPEAKER 3:

..and I love them.

SPEAKER 1:

..and I love them.

SPEAKER 3:

And they care for me.

SPEAKER 1:

And they care for me.

SPEAKER 3:

And I care for them.

SPEAKER 1:

And I care for them.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
You're not going to believe where the text from this came from. In fact, it's from the first 30 seconds of Rudolph Giuliani's Senate campaign withdrawal speech from the 2000 Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton, where he withdrew because of prostate cancer. And you're not going to believe who it was spoken by. It was spoken by 12 clergymen.

SPEAKERS 1, 2 and 3: (CROSSTALK)

Thank you very much. I'm a very fortunate man. God has given me a lot.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
Using the sort of religious overtones, exploiting the religious overtones of the entire right-wing tenure of Rudolph Giuliani to voice his ultimate failure for the Senate campaign, Philbrick has made this beautifully compelling piece that sounds like a prayer, that sounds like a chant, and is really nothing more than an embarrassing admittal of failure on the part of Rudolph Giuliani.

MULTIPLE SPEAKERS: (CROSSTALK)

The reason I'm such a fortunate man is that I have people that love me, and I love them, and they care for me, and I care for them.

(AUDIO ENDS)

(AUDIO PLAYS)

(ORCHESTRA PLAYS 'EMOTIONAL ORCHESTRA' BY MARINA ROSENFELD)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
This is the music of the New York composer Marina Rosenfeld, a piece that she did at the Tate Modern in London from 2005 entitled the 'Emotional Orchestra,' and was part of a women's sound festival entitled Her Noise.

(ORCHESTRA PLAYS 'EMOTIONAL ORCHESTRA' BY MARINA ROSENFELD)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
Marina is an artist who creates and directs and participates in a variety of experimental orchestras, often using untrained musicians, mostly women, to practice and highlight social interaction inherent to music making. For example, in 1994, she did a great piece called 'The Sheer Frost Orchestra,' where 17 women used nail polish bottles to play electric guitars like slide guitarists, recalling early punk bands like The Slits. For this piece, it was a group of female participants that bowed a variety of string instruments. And Rosenfeld directed the orchestra with huge pieces of graphical notation and animation on screens.

(ORCHESTRA PLAYS 'EMOTIONAL ORCHESTRA' BY MARINA ROSENFELD)

(AUDIO ENDS)

(AUDIO PLAYS)

GERTRUDE STEIN:
Extracts from 'The Making of Americans'. Repeating then is in everyone. In everyone, their being and their feeling and their way of realizing everything and everyone comes out of them in repeating. More and more then everyone comes to be clear to someone. Slowly, everyone in continuous repeating, to their minutest variation, comes to be clearer to someone.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
Recorded in the winter of 1934, 1935, here in New York, we're listening to Gertrude Stein with an excerpt from her great book, 'The Making of Americans' that was written between the years of 1903 and 1911.

GERTRUDE STEIN:
More and more, then, it is wonderful in living the subtle variations coming clear into ordered recognition.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
The book begins as a portrait of a family and a very intense portrait of family. As the book progresses on, it goes to include friends and relatives of that family. And as it moves on, it begins to grow and grow and grow, when it becomes, as Gertrude Stein said, it becomes a portrait of everyone living in the world during that period.

GERTRUDE STEIN:
Very many are remembering this thing, are remembering the family living can go on existing.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
Gertrude Stein famously has gone on record saying once she realized she was capable of documenting every single person on earth in this book, she knew it was time to stop.

GERTRUDE STEIN:
Any family living, going on, existing is going on. And everyone can come to be a dead one. And they are then not anymore living in that family living, and that family is not then existing, if they are not then anymore having come to be living. Any family living is existing. If there are some more being living when very many have come to be dead ones.

(AUDIO ENDS)

(AUDIO PLAYS)

KAREN FINLEY:

No, Herr Schmidt, I will not shit in your mouth, even if I do get to know you. I just want to smell the gas pass from your ass.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
Recorded in 1986 for a compilation called 'The Uproar Tapes,' which is available on UbuWeb, this, of course, is Karen Finley, in the midst of the Culture Wars.

KAREN FINLEY:

And then he took that tool and he put it up the wrong alley and took it out all brown and steamy and shiny. Ooh, it was all brown. Ooh, ooh. Taking it inside of me and he put it in the right hole. Oh, you call that passion? You call that romance? You don't know what it's like for a woman to get cystitis.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
Karen Finley emerges. She took all the controversy surrounding it and came up with these incredibly stunning drop-dead audio works.

KAREN FINLEY:

That right tunnel of love. And I mean, I'm a 300-pound hussy.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
In this piece, she assumes the terrifying character of a male sodomist.

KAREN FINLEY:

Not like some anorexic ostrich like you, baby. Ooh, bulimia mama. Bulimia mama. Get your terms right. I don't care what you call it. It's damn unnatural of you, up-chucking all over the house in your stiletto heels.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
Unlike anything that we've heard in these two podcasts, it's hair-raising stuff, and it's from the great 'Uproar Tapes,' as I said. This documents the East Village scene in the mid '80s, includes Karen Finley, Eric Bogosian, Ann Magnuson and Richard Price, as well.

(AUDIO ENDS)

(AUDIO PLAYS)

PEOPLE LIKE US (VICKI BENNETT):

Let's see if the boys remember 'She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain'.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
From the year 2000, this is the British artist People Like Us, also known as Vicki Bennett, from a deconstruction of old cowboy records called A Fistful of Knuckles. The track is entitled 'She'll Be'.

(MUSIC PLAYS)

PEOPLE LIKE US:

(SINGING) She'll be comin' when she comes. When she comes. She'll be coming when she comes. When she comes. She'll be comin', she'll be comin', she'll be comin' when she comes. When she comes.

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
Vicki is taking the entire male-dominated genre of cowboy music and cowboy mythos and turning it completely on its head.

PEOPLE LIKE US:

(SINGING) She'll be playing on her squeeze box, she'll be squeezin' on her lovin', she'll be comin' on her squeeze box when she comes.

(MUSIC STOPS)

SPEAKER:
Well, you pretty ladies sure dance as good as you sing!

(MUSIC RESUMES)

PEOPLE LIKE US:

(SINGING) She'll be comin' when she comes. She'll be comin' when she comes. She'll be comin', she'll be comin', she'll be comin' when she comes. When she comes. Ooh ooh. Ooh ooh.

(AUDIO ENDS)

(THEME MUSIC PLAYS)

KENNETH GOLDSMITH:
And that concludes the second part of 'The Women of UbuWeb'. All of these women and many, many more can be found at ubu.com. This is Avant-Garde All The Time, produced by the Poetry Foundation. I'm Kenneth Goldsmith, and we'll see you next time.

Sound clips from Gertrude Stein, Yoko Ono, Louise Lawler, Shelley Hirsch, Lauren Lesko, Forugh Farrokhzad, Pauline Oliveros, and many more.

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  2. Tuesday, September 7, 2010

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  3. Friday, July 23, 2010

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  5. Tuesday, March 23, 2010

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  6. Monday, October 19, 2009

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  7. Wednesday, August 19, 2009

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  8. Wednesday, July 22, 2009

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  9. Tuesday, April 28, 2009

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  10. Tuesday, January 6, 2009

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  11. Tuesday, October 21, 2008

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  12. Friday, August 1, 2008

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  14. Monday, February 18, 2008

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