Spring 2014 FILLIP Issue No. 19 $15.00 €10.00 List of Illustrations F/B. Tony Urquhart, Opening Box, 21. Installation view from Young London, Black, 1968. Acrylic and wood. 50 × 20/20 Gallery, London, Ontario. Pictured: 28 × 25.5 cm. Installation detail from Bernice Vincent (left), Sheila Curnoe Heart of London, National Gallery of (standing), and Greg Curnoe (rear). Col- Canada, Ottawa, 1969. lection Don Vincent Photographic Ar- chives. Courtesy of Western University, 4. Steve Jobs at Tavern on the Green, London, Canada. New York, at the announcement of Microsoft’s Excel software program, 22. Film still from The Hart of London, May 1985. The software, introduced 1970. Directed by Jack Chambers. by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, was, at the time, endorsed by Jobs. 28/35. 100 Notes—100 Thoughts, Photo by Andy Freeberg. Courtesy of dOCUMENTA(13) notebooks (Hatje Getty Images. Cantz, 2011–12). Courtesy of Leftloft. 6. John Cage (left) with his friend and 41–51. Nicholas Gottlund, Non-Photo collaborator David Tudor, 1956—four Blue, 2013. Photograms. years prior to the premiere performance of 4′33″ by Tudor at Maverick Concert 84/88. Video stills from Lene Berg, Hall, Woodstock, New York. Courtesy of Stalin by Picasso or Portrait of Woman the New York Public Library. with Moustache, 2008. 14. Murray Favro, Clunk, 1967. Oil on 93–103. Sumi Ink Club, More Ideas and masonite. 117 × 216 cm. Installation Expressions, 2010. Sumi Ink on paper. detail from Heart of London, National Produced covllaboratively at Eugene Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1969. Choo, Vancouver, Canada. Fillip: Issue No. 19 Address Publisher: Jeff Khonsary 305 Cambie Street Editor: Kristina Lee Podesva Vancouver, BC Associate Editors: Antonia Hirsch, Canada V6B 2N4 Kate Steinmann, Amy Zion Founding Editor: Jordan Strom Copyeditor: Jaclyn Arndt Subscriptions Vancouver Office: Victoria Lum Design: The Future Canada and US: $30/year Pre-press: Colour & Books International: €30/year Interns: Liza Eurich, Dirk Wright Institutions: $50/year Printed in Belgium by Die Keure Edition: 1,500 Distribution Paper: 100 gsm Munken Print White, 80 gsm Colorado Grey, 90 gsm Hello Fillip is available at bookshops world- Gloss, 80 gsm Coloraction Savana wide and is distributed by Motto Distri- bution. Direct orders may be placed by Spring 2014 contacting [email protected]. ISBN: 978-1-927354-19-3 ISSN: 1715-3212 All content © 2014 the authors, artists, and editors. Unauthorized reproduction Board of Directors is strictly prohibited. All images are re- produced courtesy of the artist unless Jeff Derksen, Peter Gazendam, otherwise specified. Jonathan Middleton, Melanie O’Brian, Jordan Strom, Cheyanne Turions The views expressed in Fillip are not necessarily those of the editors or the publisher. Letters may be sent to the Advisory Board editors at [email protected]. Patrik Andersson, Sabine Bitter, Fillip gratefully acknowledges the Zoe Crosher, Maria Fusco, Silvia support of the Andy Warhol Foundation Kolbowski, Ken Lum, Larry Rinder, for the Visual Arts, the City of Vancou- Kitty Scott, Matthew Stadler, John ver, the Canada Council for the Arts, Welchman, William Wood and the British Columbia Arts Council. Contents In This Issue 4. Byron Peters and Jacob Wick Scripting Misperformance, Misperforming Scripts 14. Christopher Régimbal Institutions of Regionalism: Artist Collectivism in London, Ontario 28. Bettina Funcke with Andrew Stefan Weiner Intimate Cacophonies: An Exchange Regarding 100 Notes—100 Thoughts 41. Nicholas Gottlund Portfolio: Non-Photo Blue 77. Zarouhie Abdalian with Aaron Harbour and Jackie Im Having Been Held Under the Sway 84. Lene Berg with Jacob Wren Contradictions and Paradoxes 93. Sumi Ink Club Portfolio: More Ideas and Expressions 107. Matteo Pasquinelli The Labour of Abstraction: Seven Transitional Theses on Marxism and Accelerationism End Matter 116. Notes 121. Further Illustrations Byron Peters and Jacob Wick Where have we heard this general sentiment before? One might think of the function of the Scripting Misperformance, carnival in sovereign societies as a sort of release valve for a repressed populace, with the aim Misperforming Scripts repressive apparatus.4 More recently, sanctioned mass actions serve as a counterbalance to decen- tralized power in disciplinary societies. In “Post- Deleuze describes this phenomenon in terms of industrial production: “the factory constituted in- dividuals as a single body to the double advantage - of the boss who surveyed each element within the mass and the unions who mobilized a mass resis- tance.”5 implicated when control requires the amassing of fragmented socialities. Describing a more contemporary harnessing of the unexpected, Deleuze continues: “the corpora- 1 tion constantly presents the brashest rivalry as a healthy form of emulation, an excellent motivation The recuperation of rebellious traits within the force.”6 We see this shift from “mobilization” to logic of late capitalism is neither unconventional “motivation” as a progressive reduction of the un- nor new. That Apple should celebrate “the trouble- makers,” those who would ostensibly undermine now distributed apparatuses.7 For any system of corporations such as itself, is of course no surprise: control, the unexpected presents a threat; as these in a crude Sun Tzu-esque logic, any system seek- systems have matured, the containment of this ing to perpetuate itself might continually encourage threat has moved from public spectacle to private its own destruction. As Jean-François Lyotard has incentive. The security of a distributed system written, such a regulatory, normative entity “can of control depends on the willing participation of and must encourage such movement to the extent it its subjects: Apple’s “rebels” are well suited to a combats its own entropy; the novelty of an unex- 8 sense of possibility whereby pected ‘move’...can supply the system with that the production of possibility itself is co-produced increased performativity it forever demands and between sanctioned virtual and material spaces. consumes.”2 The trend of harnessing the renegade More broadly, Sven Lütticken has written of spirit toward a space for creativity and controlled subversion runs deep in cultures of innovation and century onwards, of abstract thought into “opera- entrepreneurship.3 But the sanctioning of random tional concepts,”9 concrete units of exchange that and disjunct behaviour possesses something outside gain currency through the programmatic repro- the mere romanticization of the individual creative 10 Un- act that fuels the ideology of creative capitalism. tethered from objecthood, the operational concept In this scenario, we also see the encouragement - of rebellion, the “crazy enough,” within systems ferent bearers of transcendental corporate ideas.”11 of control that allow such systems to reduce the Here operational concepts become the basic units possibility of unexpected action, thereby ensuring of exchange in late capitalism as abstracted lan- their ultimate survival. In the logic of resilience, the guage and material, serving primarily to reproduce unexpected is scripted into the structure of hege- themselves. In the form of brand names, currency, monic control: expect the unexpected. or even—as Lütticken argues—certain forms 5 of art, these units operate much like a graphic interface of a computer program (as in brand- Chance-based operations appear as a compo- obfuscate the machinations of the program itself, sitional strategy in the Western art canon roughly including any data “input” by the programmer or coterminous with the advent of control society, “interactive” user. Lütticken’s theorization of the operational end of World War II.15 Principal in this canon is description of “protocol.” The operational concept chance operations, most often the , in scor- is an abstract set of instructions (be they technical, ing his compositions. Chance-based operations— utilizing the , phone numbers, star atlases, transcendental corporate vista of late capitalism; etc.—have appeared in innumerous performance the protocol, meanwhile, is an abstract set of in- works since the advent of serial compositional structions that standardizes and negotiates chaotic techniques in the early twentieth century.16 In behaviour, human and otherwise, into the hierar- these “scripted misperformances,” a composi- chical structures that form the top-down skyline tional strategy located outside of the person of the of this vista.12- composer/artist source is brought in to disrupt or mous with possibility”;13 for Lütticken, the opera- tional concept is “our horizon.”14 The operational composition, at their most humble, or society, at concept and protocol are not synonymous, but are their most brash. We will argue here that these deeply imbricated in one another: the former as scripted misperformances, which package chaotic the unit of exchange in control societies, the latter or unpredictable action within known or predict- as the unit of management. able forms, occur parallel with, rather than counter At the core of both operational concept and to, distributed systems of control in late-capitalist protocol are circuits and language, human or society. Emblematic in Cage’s oeuvre is his silent In this article, we will be referring to this medium composition. In this composition, performed as a “script,” a term that both alludes to the pre- scriptive nature of such language and also travels performer is asked to or be silent, for three easily between aesthetics