Page 25 - Studio International - November 1974

BECKETT & OTHERS & ART: A SYSTEM

PETER GIDAL

What expresses itself in language, we cannot going to a film in order to find out what to work is the work, and the feeling [2] of the
express by means of a language. What can be think about girls dying of leukemia, mixed experience of dealing with the work comes
shown, cannot be said. Ludwig Wittgenstein, marriages in Ford Mustangs, heartbreak of the precisely from the inherent persistence in that
Tractatus. 'The unity (the coincidence, identity, junkie, existential doubts of the local cop. (nearly total) aspect of its creation.
resultant force) of opposites is conditional, Norman Mailer can fulfil those dreary tasks. The 'The distinctive thing about musical processes i!
temporary, transitory, and relative. For art of the novel has as little to do with it as does that they determine all the note to note
objective dialectics, the absolute is also to be the art of the cinema. details and the over-all form simultaneously.
found in the relative.' Lenin, 'On Dialectics', What is expressible is a process of dealing Think of a round or infinite canon. (I do not
in 'Materialism & Empirio-Criticism'. with what is materially there. A film, a mean the process of composition but rather
1. drawing, a sculpture, a novel, a piece of music, pieces of music that are literally processes.) I
To begin this very brief and insufficient can divulge its own process of having been am interested in perceptible processes. I want to
discussion, one must firmly establish the basis, made, it can record its own attempt at being be able to hear the process happening
which is the theory of a non-interpretive art, an made, thus recording an attempt at throughout the sounding music. Resemblances
art in which content is less than primary, where consciousness per se. Consciousness must not to such Gradual Process Music: Pulling back
the real content is the form; form become be understood as deflecting onto a mythical or a swing, releasing it, and observing it gradually
content (form as operation not composition and mythologized subject; it must in no way imply coming to rest. Turning over an hour glass and
form as distinguishable from style. I do not transcendence or transcendent subjectivity; it is watching the sand slowly run through to the
refer to formalism). This is being attempted in a not meant here as opposed to real relations, bottom'. [3] (Steve Reich, 1968).
whole range of radical art; early Kafka and early i.e. consciousness as knowledge as opposed to One must add: failure is inherent in an art of
Robbe-Grillet and much Becket (in writing); material relations as knowledge. One can see it, attempting.
some Paul Klee and the best works of Andy in schematic form, as a T form, the horizontal 'I had in front of me someone who was never
Warhol (painting); Giacometti and Jasper Johns being the work upon which functions operate,
(drawing and sculpture, both); early Warhol, the vertical being the 'consciousness' i.e. the wrong, but who always lost. He always pushed
into impossible areas, without a way out. He
early Malcolm LeGrice, Michael Snow (film), line to the recipient as his/her necessary mode of
early Terry Riley, some Steve Reich, (music). [1] inculcated dialectic operation. always says "I'm never satisfied". He always
says, "I will never succeed" '. [4] (Jean Genet:
To interpret meaning is a mainly nineteenth- Also, an attempt at consciousness is not an
Alberto Giacometti).
century notion carried over by the reactionary attempted transcendence or mystery but what
'Yet I speak of an art turning from the field of
artists and critics who are still products of a can be called an attempt at grasping the
in disgust ..... weary of
the possible
culture and manipulators of an audience which difference with an a, in J. Derrida's formulation:
pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a
relies on a hierarchical value system and a 'We shall designate by the term difference the
little bit better the same old thing, of going a
psychological orientation in which art must movement by which language or any code,
little further along a dreary road
have a message. This is a priori one which can any system of reference in general, becomes
Preferring the expression that there is nothing
neatly be given over to the reader/viewer. The "historically" constituted as a fabric of
to express, nothing with which to express, no
message is one then which either reinforces the differences ... Let us begin again. Differance
power to express, no desire to express, together
acculturated beliefs of the individual, or else is what makes the movement of signification
with the obligation to express
makes a specific seeming 'change' which will possible only if each element that is said to be
function as a specific positive factor in the "present", appearing on the stage of presence, is To be an artist is to fail'. [5] (Samuel Beckett,
individual's general self-esteem. ('That related to something other than itself but Three Dialogues).
Rembrandt really changed me'. 'That film retains the mark of a past element and already 2.
expanded my mind!') Such would seem not lets itself be hollowed out by the mark of its One element of an art which relegates traditiona
worthy of any notice were it not the relation to a future element. This trace relates content to less than second place, is the
predominant and powerful mode of art in our no less to what is called the future than to what concern with the creation not representation of
manipulatory and extremely condescending is called the past, and it constitutes what is an object. Thus the complete piece of work
culture, and a strict reinforcement as well of called the present by this very relation to what (drawing, sculpture, film, painting, book, score)
crypto-fascistic political systems which thrive it is not, to what it absolutely is not; that is, has its own more or less graspable, more or less
on such cultural habits (and reproduce them). not even to a past or future considered as a 'complete' form (a posteriori, of course, as the
To begin with, radical art, an art of radical modified present (Difference, in 'Speech and total form is generated by its creation). 'There
form, deals with the manipulation of materials Phenomena' by Jacques Derrida, Northwestern is no a priori order of things'. (Wittgenstein,
made Conscious, and with the inexpressible, the University Press, 1973). The way in which one Tractatus) [6]. 'Form is the concretion of
unsayable, i.e. not with content, as it is is made to deal with something is more content'. (Samuel Beckett, Proust). When in
understood as distinguishable and primary, important than what one deals with. How it is Warhol's soupcan-silkscreens the thingness of
positing a transparent technique. The subject is what it is is what it is. the thing confronts the viewer, rather than an
the material, not an idealized viewer's Art-makers have often intuited this, that is implicit or explicit content, we are dealing with
consciousness. The latter sometimes may be why a work by an artist, resembles another by experience (and feeling) [2] that establishes a
the object. Morality, politics, religion, same. 'Interpretation is a radical strategy for confrontation and a dialectic 'between'
psychology, each have their own sphere. To feel conserving an old text; it is the revenge of the ourselves and it. Steve Reich on his piece
that working with words must necessitate the intellect upon art.' (Susan Sontag, 'Against Drumming: 'That area of every gradual,
reader's identification with certain interpretations Interpretation'; I've used this old quote before, completely controlled musical process where
(or archetypes) is as dangerous and reactionary as it is precise). The process of attempting the one hears the details of the sound moving out

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