HOME

 

Rolling Stones Gets Me No Satisfaction

 

Kevin Logan

 

 

 

Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction....

 

In Greek mythology King Sisyphus was made to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill. Before he could reach the top however, the massive stone would always roll back down, forcing him to begin again.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (1)

The Sisyphean task is both performative and performance-like. Performative in that it 'does-something-in-the-world' (2), and performance-like in that it is an action available as spectacle or audition. What is the sound of one rock ('n') rolling?

Repetition refers to the action of producing something over again. Repetition, although not a necessity of my practice, is however a re-occurring theme. Recording, re-staging, re-mediating and re-presenting a performed act. Whether this be mechanical (the end being connected to the beginning) or procedural (through re-enactment), it is nonetheless a re-petition, an appeal again for consideration – to heed-the-deed, again and again.

 

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition is relocation. It is an event with substance and form. A particular form of repetition is to give a text or a work another locale. What does 'the same' mean in a new environment?

 

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition, as a strategy, is not the multiplication of the same, or the orthodox fidelity to an event, but the marking of difference. A re-occurring theme of my practice is repetition.

 

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition is subjectivity. Subjectivity is the constant re-iteration through embodied performance. According to Judith Butler, performativity is an on- going and never-ending process grounded in the "compulsion to repeat" (3).

 

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition promises a climax but continually disappoints. In an environment where the linear striving towards a goal obfuscates the re-current nature of a boom-slum-boom socio-political system, the refusal to culminate, the wallowing in process rather than product gratification, tends to irritate, chafe and inflame.

 

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition when seen/heard as a non-productive supplement engages with the absurd, and as such with the possibility of comedic intervention as an oppositional gesture. Doing, saying, hearing something over-and-over again is a mainstay of comedy, "I heard that! Pardon?" (4)

 

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition ensures that each utterance is a new utterance, coloured, if only a teeny-weeny, teensy-weensy, itsy-bitsy, little-bitty amount, by 'now-ness.' Subjecting the humdrum to a cyclical procedure aesthetizes the most low-key and subtle of deeds. And, in a foldback double-gesture, repetition makes quotidian of the most fantastical. Just as a belch, recorded and looped, becomes a rhythmic beat, causing heads to bob, hands to clap, fingers to snap and feet to tap. So too, the most miraculous Siren song heard time-after- time, becomes banal.

 

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition dovetails with 'everydayness', re-routing the routine. The everyday is that which has become exceedingly familiar and unexceptional as a result of repeated exposure. The 'infra-ordinary' is just that because it's constant regurgitation rebuffs significance. (5) A re-occurring theme of my practice is repetition.

 

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition, when used as an actual methodology or conceptual trope generates new forms. It is a constraint that channels, condensing into a critique of 'everydayness', going hand-in-hand with a disregard for the monumental and momentous. An endless tautology that is limited by time, whilst continuously re-enacted in time. A re-occurring theme of my practice is repetition.

 

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition is an auto-appropriator. Continuously cross-examining itself as it does and re-does, whether in actuality or via a technological re-staging. Central to my practice is the opposition of the particular and the general, what becomes of the singular when it is re-articulated? These 'infra-deeds' strive to develop a grammar of everyday practices as an exploration of the sonic.

 

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition's rotator motion, acts dialectically, both like a centrifugal governor reducing changes and maintaining control; and as a loop gain, adding instability, disturbance and noise. It is elliptic, providing wobble to the positive/negative feedback of the self-regulating system that is reflexive praxis. And, a re-occurring theme of my practice is repetition.

 

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition and 'everydayness' collude not as a strategy, but as a tactic of resistance, an anti- or infra-disciplinary practice, evading the satisfaction of the beginning-middle-end, the commodification of outcome, the notable, the atypical, the re-markable.(6) The quoting of the quotidian might exasperate, but "[o]ne must imagine Sisyphus happy". (7)

 

There was an old man named Michael Finnegan,
He kicked up an awful din-egan,
Because they said he could not sing-egan,
Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again. (8)

 

 

 


 

NOTES

[1] ^ From Worstward Ho by Samuel Beckett. Written in 1983.

[2] ^ "...[P]erformative works enact and make evident, rather than represent or express." (Neumark, N., Gibson, R. & Van Leeuwen, T., 2010. Voice: vocal aesthetics in digital arts and media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

[3] ^ Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. (p.145).

[4] ^ Catchphrase of a character in the TV comedy 'I Didn't Know You Care' set in a working class household in a Yorkshire mining village. BBC (1975-79).

(5) ^ The infra-ordinary is a term coined by George Perec.

(6) ^ I refer here to Michel De Certeau's distinction between tactics and strategies, in which he states that, "[t]he place of a tactic belongs to the other...because it does not have a place, a tactic depends on time...It must constantly manipulate events in order to turn them into 'opportunities'.

(7) ^ Last line in the essay 'The Myth of Sisyphus', by Albert Camus, 1942.

(8) ^ Traditional repetitive children's song, origin unknown.

 

 

This article was originally written for the interdisciplinary conference 'Generative Constraints' that took place in November 2013 at the Centre for Creative Collaboration, London.

 

 

Kevin's cross-disciplinary practice spans over two decades, comprising installation, digital media and sound composition/design. He has exhibited and performed internationally, has had sound works on compilation CDs, audio-visual works screened in festivals worldwide and has had theoretical and experimental works published. He is currently a PhD student with the *CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice) research centre at LCC, University of the Arts London, where his research explores the sonic through gesture, mediation and performance. He is also a founder member of the collective thickear formed in 2011.

 

 

 

HOME

 

FYLKINGEN'S NET JOURNAL

where no other claim is indicated.