Artistic interzones

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Inspired by Nomos's much-appreciated posting of K-punk's great Londonunderlondon audiomentary, and this quote:

"londonunderlondon, ruff-mixed as it is, needs to be seen as a work in progress. Naturally, it isn’t anything like equal to its inspirations – which number anything from Glenn Gould’s The Idea of North, Chris Marker, Eno, David Toop – but what became clear to us as we produced it was how little punk will there is. The cyberpunk infrastructure is already there. Something like Cool Edit – an excellent programme btw – reduces sound composition to the core cyberpunk function of cut and paste. Yet the main use to which is put is to produce ‘music’ (or, worse, insufferable ‘sound art’) – what about all those interzones between music, fiction, drama, documentary, a DJ set? What is lacking is the will to explore such terrains."

I think Londonunderlondon does what it sets out to achieve - marking a small piece of new artistic territory, an interzone.

So, what's the (anti-)canon of interzones?

(First idea that comes to my mind are Keiller's "London" and the Robinson films, and La Jetee, which kind of hang together with Londonunderlondon. House of Leaves I always thought did something I hadn't quite seen before, though definitely taking from Borges/Cortazar/Bolaño etc. Musically Gottsching's E2-E4, mainly cos I was listening to it yesterday. Chris Morris's Blue Jam. I'm sure I'll think of quite a few more when I'm more awake, but perhaps by definition these things aren't easy to bring to mind)
 
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CrowleyHead

Well-known member
It's so difficult to think of it based around the notion that things will be out of the canon. I mean, Wiley was not quite yet in the canon when that experiment occurred, and now he's so inherently canonized.

Of course I'm out of that English mentality so a lot of those artistic references would be lost to significance for me as far as 'interzonic', and for ones beholden to my own experiences I wouldn't know too many.
 

bruno

est malade
am i right in thinking that the anti-canon would be something like going to lhasa a the time tibet the place was closed to the outside world? there is no interzone, you either reach lhasa or are driven out before arrival. whatever the means or tricks used to advance, there is a starting point outside, a trajectory, an impasse where tibetans notice you are trespassing and a resolution where a) you are kicked out or b) you force your way in. the means and forms are secondary. what matters is reaching lhasa, all the rest is footnote and anecdote.

in contrast, the text above implies something will be different or better by somehow avoiding becoming identifiable and finished. that a rough draft mix of music, fiction, documentary dj-set and whatever where we can no longer discern each element is preferable to one final canonical form. in the context of the 19th century, the interzone would be in the different means and details of the journey as goal rather than the destination. a small anecdote would take on a significance eclipsing reaching a conclusion. travel would be something completely haphazard with no goal, or without memory of the final goal. the problem is that by losing sight of the objective this could also get you killed or make you forget why you are crossing the mountain, and ultimately bore the reader, which would defeat the purpose of voyage altogether.
 
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