CODYARTS

Midwestern Mythologies

work by
Steve Nelson-Raney

SEEING THINGS

Hard to get excited about art objects these days. Feeling as though they've become remnants, embodying (in the final hours) what art once was. So maybe now: (Marina Abramovic) '...art of the 21st century. No object between the artist and observer. Just transmission of energy.' Good. That moving toward anti-thingness (but with questions like: how does one prepare one's self to conduct a transmission of energy). A direction really where music has always been (the 'objects' of music (scores/recordings) being terribly pale in light(ning) of a hot live performance. And improvised music (where no score exists and recordings are questionable documents of what took place, where there are few distractions from the impetus/spirit of the art (the transmission of energy)) being always the most exciting of me, as it's absolutely centered in the moment of creation and occurs only once, with never the opportunity for duplication. Once an improvisation has ended, the sounds are gone. Lost in eternity and filed into memory of those who witnessed the performance. (Eric Dolphy: 'When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again.')

All of this believed and practiced, yet my desire to make (improvise) what sounds/feels like an object. An entity having strength and unity like a piece of concrete or a steel beam. A sculpture made from sound. A thing referring, as much as possible, only to itself, avoiding any construction based on symbolism, parody or metaphor. Rather, coming from examination of a language shaped from a lifelong practice, changing as the life changes. Always referencing, in both literal and ambiguous ways, the totality of that life. And my feeling like a maker of sculpture more than a musician, as little precedent for thinking about music in these terms. A special closeness too for the work of Richard Long and Gordon Matta-Clark, as what happens with their sculpture is really the same as with my music: a form is used to examine a component of one's vocabulary in a particular space, a work is make and then allowed to vanish (both Long's pieces of arranged stones and walked lines and Matta-Clark's cut buildings disappear into the site after completion). Satisfaction then with the work being made and perceived, then vanishing. No clutter for curio shelves. Leave only memory as record.

The materials of the language which I use are pitches of sound. And they're seen (as a clairvoyant). Heard as well, but intervals/relationships of pitch impossible to ignore as the dancing shifting like star constellations before my eye's brain. (All probably from days at the piano where pictures of the notes and the very keyboard's shape were burned into memory's vision.) From that material: units: pitch cells. Seeing these groups, examining them with rapid articulation; pitch union in this manner yielding another entity entirely, a hybrid, the new sum of the parts: the objects. Sound masses. Things which move as an organism. Expanding and with contraction. Worked until cell's maturity suggests closure, then on, seeing new constellations to examine. Things seen/studied, then left. Making objects in this way. So, musician continues in the world as nomad: make sound, then move on. Travel light. Leaving objects in the air. Art existing in this way. Art objects which are sound.

July 1989