Having visited my first Literature Festival, in Norway, I’ve been thinking more about value and the different ways in which it accrues in the art and poetry worlds. One thing that struck me was the importance of delivery in poetry. Regardless of content- which I mostly couldn’t understand- it was clear that intonation, timing and projection were desirable attributes, meaning that some performances were riveting even in a foreign language. For example Paal Bjelke Andersen, rapid-firing a list of nouns taken from New Year’s speeches of Scandinavian prime ministers; and Christian Bök where the delivery was inseparable from the content, at least when reading sound poems (including one by Kurt Schwitters). His performance was exciting, funny and verging on terrifying, and as a viewer I appreciated the effort made to convey the tonal discrepancies and variations in volume and intonation.
Perhaps it’s the question of the importance of the ‘good performance’ that differs in the art and moving-image context, where there is something almost suspect about it, suggesting too much of a desire to please, or to be ‘professional’, or to entertain the audience. While I can’t find any quotes to corroborate the idea, Peter Gidal immediately came to mind; he would probably claim that it’s not the avant-garde filmmakers’ job to entertain and if the viewer wants entertainment, they have Hollywood.
I’m sure some would accuse ‘video art’ as a genre of adhering to the boring = ‘good’, engaging = ‘bad’ formula. This situation was parodied as far back as 1971 by John Baldessari with his video “I will not make any more boring art”, a self-deprecatingly knowing proposition which humorously and intentionally undermines its title. Perhaps its also associated with the idea of performance as fulfilling some sort of neo-liberal agenda- we perform well, we are flexible and adaptable, we are good for the economy. Artists like to resist this idea- or maybe that’s just me.
Another thing is the hoary old question of originality which plagues poetry, it would seem, even more so than it does art. I leafed through Marjorie Perloff’s Unoriginal Genius while at the festival, and read a chapter on poet Kenneth Goldsmith, which points out that the poetry world is still catching up with aesthetic concepts- such as appropriation, cut and paste, plagiarism- formulated in the visual arts decades ago. These aesthetic concepts are championed by a new breed of conceptual poets, like Bok, Caroline Bergvall, who re-use found language, championing what Goldsmith calls ‘uncreative writing’.
Crucially he also name-checks Conceptual Art, and Sol Le Witt, in both the title of his manifesto- Paragraphs on Conceptual Writing- and in its final statement: “the idea is a machine that makes the text”. As with Le Witt’s paragraphs, ‘execution is a perfunctory affair’; and according to him, the reader need not even bother with the actual task of reading a book such as Traffic (2007), which is billed a straight transcription of traffic reports from one of New York’s ‘jam cams’.
Its definitely boring, an attribute normally anathema to poets that Goldsmith gleefully embraces, proclaiming himself the most boring writer working today. Boring, and by his own admission, completely unoriginal. So why is his work valued in a poetry community which is still attached, not just to ‘the word, but My Word’ (as he puts it)?
Perloff argues that on closely reading his work, the ‘straight’ transcription turns out to be a little bent- either through Oulipo-like constraints or by time elisions which help create a vaguely coherent narrative. Does this show that his so-called ‘uncreativity’ nevertheless exhibits some ingeniousness, thereby making him a genius, albeit one who uses/ processes unoriginal texts, as opposed to creating ones? Or maybe what is valued is the decision to undertake a writing project like that in the first place; the sheer mind-numbing boredom, and effort, involved in its execution, which echoes durational performance art strategies.
Or maybe in a nod to Warhol, whom Goldsmith greatly admires, its ingeniousness is precisely in savouring, instead of ignoring or complaining about, the excruciatingly mundane- but unavoidable- aspects of city living. By paying it some attention, traffic and its concomitant ‘unloved’, valueless language is transformed into something worth caring about.
Kenneth Goldsmith reads poetry at White House Poetry Night
