leonardo reviews

editor-in-chief Michael Punt associate editors Hannah Drayson, Dene Grigar, Jane Hutchinson A full selection of reviews is published monthly on the Leonardo website: www.leonardo.info/reviews.

b o o k s have just about been explored. Or or teleological hermeneutic, this have they? book describes material and cultural The Poetics of Noise from The theoretical apparatus that frames that parse the flowing matrix Dada to Punk surrounds and interpenetrates the of sound.” Good chess players can by John Melillo. Bloomsbury Academic, poetics of sound and noise gets a easily remember the position of every New York, NY, U.S.A., 2021. 208 pp. Trade. thorough workout here, as the com- piece on the board because they ISBN: 978-1501359910. ings and goings of noise and sound are “chunking,” seeing a few simple Reviewed by Brian Reffin Smith. figures, from a background of sound structures where a novice might only and noise, are disentangled. It can see the individual bits, and doubtless https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02080 be difficult going. It is also, para- there are those to whom the above It’s hard to imagine what your fully doxically, quite visceral. The point quote makes immediate, obvious paid-up Dadaist would be doing to hold onto is the constant flux sense. For me it was something to today, noise-wise. Anyone with a between acoustic figure and ground leave in suspension in hopes of later computer or iPad and a MIDI key- and the contradictory differentia- expansion and elucidation. board can access and change the tions between noise and sound: on Actually, if you do understand, parameters of millions of playable the one hand is to show how such- you are rewarded: This is a very noises, melodic or not, from finger- and-such is different from its noisy interesting book. And I now see that nails on a contrabass to underwater background, or must change lan- the above quote means the author trumpets, from Bartók pizzicato guage, poetry or sound just to escape is not concerned with, for example, to a burnt piano, from German from a hell of noise; on the other, is bird or sound per se but rather in swear words with variable attack to show that it’s all just/not just noise the conditions of our perception and decay to an orchestra of railway anyway. station sounds, both ambient and Are these forms important on provoked, playable in major, minor a day-to-day basis, though? Does Reviews Panel: Kathryn Adams, Cristina and more exotic scales. I suppose a poetics of sounds need to refer Albu, Jan Baetens, John Barber, Catalin Brylla, Rita Cachao, Iain Campbell, they would be doing something else. to their origins? Is hearing a rapid Judith A. Cetti, Chris Cobb, Giovanna L. Words, phrases or syllables can be tap-tap-tap the same as hearing a Costantini, Edith Doove, Hannah Drayson, whispered, screamed or sung . . . woodpecker, and is the rat-a-tat-tat Phil Dyke, Ernest Edmonds, Phil Ellis, Persian melodies mixed with Hol- of the machine gun the actual, over- Anthony Enns, Jennifer Ferng, Bronac lywood choirs and monks singing whelming fear of the bullet? Many Ferran, Enzo Ferrara, Charles Forceville, Gabriela Galati, George Gessert, Allan backwards in virtual reverberation would still ask, “What is a sound, Graubard, Dene Grigar, Daisy Gudmunsen, setups ranging from outer space to what is noise?” For those not of the Craig Harris, Jane Hutchinson, Amy Abbey Road Number 1 Studio or North American university depart- Ione, Boris Jardine, Assimina Kaniari, an anechoic chamber . . . poetry is ment of English cognoscenti, an Jacqui Knight, Mike Leggett, Ellen K. written on substrates of any and all equally difficult question is “What is, Levy, Will Luers, Robert Maddox-Harle, Roger Malina, Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, philosophies and atrocities, but this or are, ‘the poetics’ in this case?” But Stephanie Moran, Mike Mosher, Sana is hardly revolutionary now. The while there are books whose opacity Murrani, Frieder Nake, Maureen Nappi, cultural and theoretical distinctions and/or nonsense is egregious, this Ryan Nolan, Jack Ox, Jussi Parikka, between noise and music are well reviewer finds that there are many Stephen Partridge, Ellen Pearlman, and truly demolished. I’ve stayed in more that simply make you do more Robert Pepperell, Ana Peraica, Beate Peter, Stephen Petersen, Andrew Prior, the so-called dead-room of Berlin’s homework than usual—which is Michael Punt, Aparna Sharma, George Technische Universität, and it’s true then rewarded. The Poetics of Noise Shortess, Brian Reffin Smith, Laurence what they say: There’s lots of noise from Dada to Punk is one such book, Smith, Eugenia Stamboliev, James Sweeting, coming from inside you. From although it contains sentences such Gregory Tague, Flutur Troshani, Ian Verstegen, Anna Walker, Cecilia Wong, kitchen implements to the gut, from as “Rather than defining and defend- Ahyoung Yoo, Jonathan Zilberg Mars to intracellular variations in ing a particular vibrational ontology, plants, the sources of sound or noise phenomenological objectification,

462 LEONARDO, Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 462–475, 2021 ©2021 ISAST

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 and theorizing about such stuff, and chronologically ordered chapters beyond that to incorporate or find range from First World War poetry such theory in the works themselves. to sound art and noise music via jazz The philosopher Roger Scruton and sound engineering. Melillo sees argued that the nature of sounds is them as being haunted by two dif- fully determined by how a normal ferent “noise regimes” that emerged hearer hears them, but from Dada to in the twentieth century: Russolo’s punk and most points in between, modernist insistence on including creative people have said “bollocks” noise as revolutionary sound, yet to to that and slammed sound, noise, be tamed somehow to enable this, the perceived, the perceiver and all and Cage’s lack of control, letting the surrounding theory into one sounds be themselves. The author often-useful, sometimes-glorious disagrees with Michel Serres’s appar- gestalt. The “poetics” here is about the ent view that making something of alleged self-framing of poetry thrust- noise is an impossibility because ing itself into the theory and practice it then leaves the noise behind, of sound studies. “I read poetry . . . becoming that other than noise. He not through but as sound theory and suggests rather that musicians and noise theory,” writes John Melillo in poets “render noise as an artifact his introduction. Again, we hope that of listening.” In other words, again, the differences and identities between all the components of the system mittee of North American lit-theory sound theory and noise theory will become . . . not exactly interchange- academics and, having done so, could be elucidated, and what he means by able but part of each other. I get the enjoy himself. “noise and noise music,” as well as feeling that he’d be quite happy if all The first discusses the way the his use of many other rather-poetic the categories didn’t exist, though noise of the battlefields was used, juxtapositions. they have to be named, spotted and even by its dreamed-of absence, And this does sound reasonable: questioned in order to be heard along rather than portrayed or “communi- “Close listeners to noise—ranging different dimensions, from a meta- cated.” Shell-shocked shards of allit- from the barest sense perception to level, whence they become one. The eration, harsh consonants, the legs of the most technologically advanced chapters portray artists’ work with iambic pentameter intact but a foot mediation—attend neither to ‘sound and against the above-noise regimes, missing. Noise figured on a back- itself’ nor to ‘noise itself’ but rather to roughly split between the first and ground of noise. “In the gap between the culturally encoded relationships second three chapters. communication and experience, only between the transmission and recep- Some glimpses: soldiers sur- an affective, even automatic response tion of sound.” At least if you append rounded by unbearable noise uttering can emerge.” Words are not for com- “or something like that.” The power of repetitions of prayers, poems or rote munication. Where the Italian Futur- poetic experiment is, writes Melillo, phrases as a “homeopathic” antidote ists heard expansion, the First World “to connect listening and making in to it. And actual poetry’s form fall- War poets heard collapse, and reso- ways that discover the limits of those ing apart. Then, jazz and modernist nated with it. relationships—and the motivations poetry explore the randomness of From bodies in the trenches to our and powers within them.” It’s not, for such selection, pushing the increas- bodies . . . and the “rationality,” espe- me, a given that that is what we do, ingly nebulous boundaries to incor- cially in language, that the noisists but rather that it’s clearly interesting porate nonsense, abstraction and wanted to break down or erase in the and probably useful to consider it. “noise.” Still later, noise is everywhere Zurich of Lenin and Joyce. Ratio- Isn’t theorizing about listening and in the arts, “dedifferentiated.” The nal language was itself mere noise, making, looking and making, central book as a whole celebrates this refusal or “nothing.” “Everyone dances to to, certainly important for, much of to differentiate, and it is in that refusal [their] own personal boomboom,” our creativity? that its riches lie. For this reviewer, it wrote Tristan Zara in the 1918 Dada What I like about this book is isn’t just that we question old bound- Manifesto. In the chapter “Dada its apparent refusal to distinguish aries between noise and sound, but Bruitism and the Body,” the author between sound/noise located (by that such questioning itself becomes describes how rhythm and perfor- someone or something) inside and the art, the music, the poetry. Cf., of mance emphasized the body and outside boundaries that are at best course, conceptual art. the event over permanent, rational fuzzy and variable. Framework, The chapters are less dense than the text, mouth over thought in a very contents and theory become (poeti- introduction and are a sudden release eclectic context. In Emmy Hen- cally and practically) almost inter- from theory per se. It’s almost as if the nings’s wonderfully thin and “shrill” changeable. As Captain Beefheart author felt, unnecessarily, that he had (sic: as it was described, of course) said, “It’s all one radiator.” The six to justify the book to a stern com- anti–female-singer ­performances, or

Leonardo Reviews 463

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 in the essence, not the description, and especially Charles Olson are categories and definitions, their fluid of a tram car’s sounds and in the adduced. Noise is not outside but in and often contradictory “acouste- simultaneous uttering and roaring us and everywhere, dedifferentiated. mologies.” But the possibility of con- of poems by three or more people, In “Projective Versification, Sound tradiction and dramatic reversals of noise and the body producing it ren- Recording and Technologizing the what is in(side) and what is out(side) der normal language, poetry, art and Body,” Melillo writes of the inter- are the point, I think. Before, every- music part of the noisy whole, which twining of two different mid-century one “knew” what noise was and Dada exposed and, in “othering” it, poetic projects: rock ’n’ roll and wasn’t. Now we see that it’s far less made it again all one noisy, rumbling experimental verse. Both defamil- clear, and far richer, than that. radiator. iarize the emergence of poetry into Finally, the author locates the Then come the linking voyages of time and space, as audio recordings preceding questions and examples the syllable “da” from poetry toward that could become just part of the in a series of artists’ sound experi- song and then back to poetry with acoustic field, by emphasizing the ments. The sound traces disappear, The Waste Land. Dada became a disruptive capacity of vocal distor- the power of the utterance is “dis- brand. But it already was one: a Swiss tions and tape or record artifacts. possessed” and the sound of that hair tonic. “Da” is of course a very The noise gets important again as dispossession—noise—produces a rich sound with a host of meanings a resistance to “domestication.” new aesthetic and conceptual force. and connotations, perhaps para- Less responsible subjectivity; more “Listening to and writing noise doxically pointing up its ubiquity as an enveloping force. A musical or uncovers not just forms of violence, a parasitical nothingness or an index poetic space was not occupied by exclusion, and loss but also other of it. It must also have had different the usual stuff, but the screams and ways of articulating collectivity and resonances with those familiar or not whines of guitars, the distortions of other ways of knowing our environ- with the Slavic word for “yes.” Melillo voice, made their own space. The ments, languages and lives.” uses the 1922 hit “That Da-Da Strain” whole book can seem (and why There are over 300 references and written by Mamie Medina and Edgar not) a celebration of the power of a pretty good index (though one Dowell as a bridge from “nonsense noise-as-resistance to make its own might search it in vain for certain song” to a Black breakaway from the conditions and frameworks, not least British phenomena such as the sound confinements of white language. It’s for criticism. “The desire for noise,” poet Bob Cobbing or the notorious not blues either, though in its own writes the author, “is a desire to await Portsmouth Sinfonia, whose players, words the “writing of a freaky brain something other than what we are.” including your reviewer, succeeded in . . . cures all kinds of blues you got,” The penultimate chapter begins releasing the noisy unexpected from perhaps because it’s a celebration of with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine much-loved classics), and as dense as joyful noisemaking. There’s not a sad Music, an hour of guitar feedback the book is, it’s a provocative inspi- word in it. Insanity, craziness, lunacy that Reed called “ ‘real’ rock about ration to consider and reconsider and a reeling brain are seen as quite ‘real’ things.” Here again you get one what a holistic approach to noise and positive. Mamie Smith’s seminal of Melillo’s frequent use of antith- “noise” might be. recording is easily found online. esis verging on oxymoron that can, The book is by no means a philoso- There follows a consideration of however, often be unpacked. The phy of sound, noise or sound/noise, T.S. Eliot’s “DA,” the voice of drum record produces “a figure of noises but rather an exegesis and hermeneu- or thunder, though he was no fan of as a resistance to—and confirmation tics of sound-making work (which Dada. Melillo doesn’t let “da” get away of” a demand for negative or positive is what Melillo considers poetry to from its disruptive business, however, reaction. He means that the “reality” be) and the important noise(s) thus and he sheds new light on Eliot’s is unstable, provisional, I suppose revealed. It also contains a dose usage. uncollapsed. You can have your of exegesis’s opposite, eisegesis, a These first three chapters serve noise-cake and reject it too. Over- drawing-in rather than out, of deeply as a basis for the second half of the egging is optional. Noise in New subjective, if zeitgeisty, opinion from book, the later or postmodern con- York in the 1960s and ’70s—the birth certain areas of academia. That is not text. Cage’s silence or embracing of punk, at least there—produced “a meant as derogatory; it’s just really of all sound rather than Russolo’s new valuation of noise as a chaotic, interesting. This reviewer will think Futurist “Art of Noises.” But both are fragile and temporary utopia.” The differently now of some of the sounds in contrast to noise becoming every- Fugs, Fuck You magazine and Patti he and others make. The rest is/not where, generated from everything Smith appear. The chapter ends with noise. anyway. The poets and musicians the Language School poet Robert the author now considers employ, Grenier’s refusal: “I HATE SPEECH.” he asserts, the use of noise as con- From the First World War poets to taining its own resistance to noise, punk and beyond, the various ideas to itself. Sinatra, McLuhan, Elvis of noise create and remake their own

464 Leonardo Reviews

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Time of the Magicians: to come about two decades later. The Benjamin’s ingenious pivot to culture Wittgenstein, Benjamin, sequence, however clichéd, is worth and its driver, mass market consum- Cassirer, Heidegger and mentioning. For this reader at least, it erism—each defining perspectives the Decade that Reinvented certainly plays a part with the current for study—it is something to consider Philosophy book, which tracks four philosophers how it worked out. The rejoinder is by Wolfram Eilenberger; translated by facing three questions, the relevance this: What can still inspire us to fully, Shaun Whiteside. Penguin Press, New of which sustains through it all: What clearly and carefully analyze what we York, NY, U.S.A., 2020. 432 pp. Paper. can I know, how can I best use that face and how we live in the coming ISBN: 978-0525559665. knowledge and how can I live? third decade of the 21st century? In Reviewed by Allan Graubard. The grand yet practical sweep of the epilogue, Eilenberger leaves us these questions keeps our author with one final quote in this regard, https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02081 focused on his task, in a style infused and a subdued chuckle (considering Contemporary philosophy comes in by the discoveries made or proposed who said it): “Philosophy, what else?” so many categories and types that before he ends the book in 1929 as the even listing them can be dizzying. New York stock market crashes. His Les troubles du récit: pour Race, gender, cultural, environmental, eight chapters, thematically titled and une nouvelle approche des historical, discipline, even style and chronologically arranged, sharpen the processus narratifs humor are in the mix. Diversity and pace: prologue, leaps, languages, cul- by Jean-Marie Schaeffer. Thierry specialization ever lead, fueled by the ture, you, freedom arcades, and time Marchaisse, Paris, France, 2020. 198 pp. tensions we explicate and the pas- (with an attending epilogue). Brief Paper. ISBN: 978-2362802393. sions that compel us. Is this a halcyon internal vignettes refract the quar- Reviewed by Jan Baetens. tet—Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer period? A darker sign of fragmenta- https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02082 tion whose consequences we have and Heidegger—and the evolution of only begun to chart? Some part of their thinking. Jean-Marie Schaeffer is a key figure of both or cloth of another suit we have Attentiveness to person and rela- modern French philosophy, mainly yet to wear? Time will tell. tionships, from work to friendship, working in the field of visual and Now turn back the epochal clock marriage and amatory; the character verbal aesthetics, with major publi- to just about a century ago. It’s 1919; of the time, place and culture in cations on the aesthetic experience a savage First World War has just which the quartet wrote or taught; and fundamental categories of art ended with some 40 million or more the struggles they endured to find an such as genre and fiction. His work, dead. We know the story well enough. audience receptive to their views and however, remains little known in the A short-sighted peace gains the vic- how they dealt with the audience they English-speaking world. As far as tors their spoils, punishes the losers, gained; and the arc of their rebellion I know, only three of his books are redraws several continental maps against received Kantian paradigms available in English today: Art of the while reinforcing colonialism and inform the writing, which, with only Modern Age: Philosophy of Art From sets the stage for a bloodier conflict several lapses—perhaps by way of Kant to Heidegger, Why Fiction? and the translation—is deft enough to Beyond Speculation: Art and Aesthet- admire. Equally so is a through- ics without Myths. The reasons for line that casts a critical eye on the this (relative) neglect are not easy to influence of the university research understand, given the exceptional institution—rooted in strict disciplin- quality of Schaeffer’s production. ary parameters and domesticated by Perhaps he does not match the bank- bourgeois manners—on philosophy. able idea of the “public intellectual” Of the quartet, only one, Benjamin, (Schaeffer is more “just” an intel- will fail to gain a professorial chair, lectual than a thinker-cum-political despite his best efforts, and will make activist). Perhaps his highly erudite his living as he can as an independent work is too nuanced (he has strong critic and commentator in periodicals opinions on a lot of questions, but and books. he always voices his ideas in nonpo- With Wittgenstein’s decisive focus lemical ways—never a good tactic to on language and its ambiguities; get street credibility). Or perhaps he Cassirer’s auspicious embrace of simply prefers to address the bigger structured symbolic forms, including picture rather than to get involved in and other than language; Heidegger’s mediatized polemics. Nevertheless, insistence that Dasein and death mark one can only hope that more English us, the existential predicament we translations will follow. His most face individually and collectively; and recent book, Les troubles du récit (in

Leonardo Reviews 465

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 English: story troubles with “troubles” the narrative corpus under scrutiny. in plural, perhaps to avoid too direct Rather than exclusively study com- an allusion to Judith Butler?) might plete and full-fledged stories, be they be a good candidate, given its size “well made”—that is, conventional (close to 200 pages), its scope (with (with a neat beginning, middle and a focus on the study of narrative, the end)—or more experimental, Schaef- book tackles a wide range of impor- fer insists on the necessity of also tant issues that concern the broader including “protonarrative” mecha- field of art and humanities), its clear nisms and productions, that is, the and didactic way of writing (like all temporal and narrative organizations great thinkers, Schaeffer knows the of all kinds of thoughts (memories, importance of clarity of style and dreams, hallucinations, projections, argumentation) and last but not least plans, etc.) that do not normally its emphasis of the ongoing dialogue materialize as complete stories but between continental and Anglo that can be considered an anthro- thinking and philosophy and research pological universal. We are making (the literature of this book is mainly stories all the time, and these stories U.S.-based, challengingly combined make us what we are, as a species as with classics such as Hume). well as an individual and as a group, physiological dimension of making The “new approach” of narra- even if in most cases that permanent and receiving stories). Departing from tive that Schaeffer defends in Story narrative activity does not material- the fundamental observation that the Troubles (and let’s pretend for a ize in what our literary and artistic cognitive study of narrative shifts our moment that this could be the title of traditions define as stories. In other attention from the works themselves the English version) is based on two words, what Schaeffer proposes is to to the mental processes involved in major theses. First, there is the idea examine the (literary and artistic) the production as well as the recep- that the study of narrative can only “center” of story production and tion of narrative (and in this case: benefit from the input and insights of story reception from the perspective protonarrative) facts, he then tackles cognitive studies. This is not the same of the “margins” or periphery of this in separate chapters five major ques- as pleading for a “cognitive turn,” protonarrative material, generally tions: the definition of protonarrativ- for such thinking in paradigm shifts discarded by traditional aesthetics but ity, the description of various types (one per season, if the rhythm con- actively studied in cognitive studies. of “failed” narratives, the question of tinues) is quite contrary to Schaeffer’s In a brief but absolutely crucial aside visual (wordless) stories, the blurring sharp yet fundamentally open way of (p. 14), Schaeffer reminds us that this of boundaries between fact and fic- thinking. Cognitive studies are able was already the fundamental stance tion, and the links between narrative to solve certain problems that other of the acme of contemporary narra- (in particular) and imagination (in ways of studying narrative continue tive studies, namely Gérard Genette’s general). to struggle with (questions such as Narrative Discourse (1972, English All these chapters are of great what to think of the divide between translation 1979), which already interest. Schaeffer constantly gives a fact and fiction or the differences elaborated a new method for read- very clear presentation of the research and similarities between verbal and ing (literary) stories by studying the questions that structure the field; he visual stories), but other methods quasi-teratological work of Marcel also provides a good overview of the and approaches (for instance philol- Proust, Remembrance of Things Past. state of the art while discussing the ogy, stylistics, rhetoric and history) After a short but informative dis- answers and, above all, the meth- remain no less valuable and impor- cussion of the state of art in “classic” odological aspects of the cognitive tant for the study of narrative. More- [1]—that is, noncognitive—narratol- approach of these problems. Method- over, Schaeffer is far from blind to the ogy and an equally brief and illumi- ologically speaking, elements such as limitations of cognitive research, such nating overview of the major branches empirical evidence and repeatability as, for instance, its difficulty in pro- and tendencies within cognitive of experimental settings, which are ducing the same hard evidence in the studies, Schaeffer explains why he of course vital to the “hard” cognitive field of “story production” as in that will limit his work to a specific type of sciences, are framed in totally differ- of “story reception.” cognitive study, namely the “psycho- ent ways in classic literary studies, Second, there is the thesis that it cognitive” approach that studies the where many scholars reading narra- is time to enlarge the definition of way in which our mind processes tives within a cognitive framework what a story is, in order to include a narrative information (he thus continue to rely on highly subjective wider range of narrative structures leaves aside other forms of cognitive intuitions. What makes Schaeffer’s and mechanisms that the traditional research such as reflection on how thinking and method so stimulating hegemony of literary writing (and art humans develop their narrative com- and helpful is that he never com- in general) tends to keep away from petences or the study of the neuro- pletely opposes the cognitive and the

466 Leonardo Reviews

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 noncognitive approaches. Cognitive fully designed book asks to be held, photolithography became essential to research highlights flaws, illusions savored and digested. Its handheld traversing the worlds of culture and and mistakes in classic narratology, scale enables it to occupy the cusp commerce. At first, watercolors were but this is not one-way traffic. Non- between a carefully crafted artist’s used to render heirlooms; then color- cognitive ways of studying stories book and a factual archive of botani- ing was applied by hand to grayscale also foreground problems in cogni- cal illustration. In his introduction, plates. Chromolithography proved tive studies (for instance, the partial historian Daniel Kevles relays some the best way to reproduce the appear- neglect of production, the simplifica- of the social and cultural history of ance of volume and coloration found tion of the corpus under scrutiny or the production, documentation and in fruit paintings. The same process the putting between brackets of many reception of heirloom fruits in the was critical to reproduce multiples contextual aspects that are essential United States that led to the creation of patented technological inven- to the actual “life” of stories). Yet the of a Division of Pomology in the tions. Lithographic techniques were overall conclusion of this book can Department of Agriculture via the applied to depictions of the organic only be that cognitive studies make recruitment of art. Kevles relays how long before patents for living organ- an indispensable contribution to our chromolithography proved critical to isms existed and specified intellectual understanding of narrative and that the production of colored plates that property protection in living things. it is high time to make room for it in could compete in a national market. As described at length in other pub- a broader view of story production In the recounting, the book and its lications by Kevles, this development and reception, which in itself—and contents become works of connois- happened during the emerging age of this might be the key lesson of the seurship, practicality, identity and biotechnology when the U.S. Supreme work—deserves a central position imagination. Court ruled, in the case of Diamond in our ways of defining and doing In essence, this book is a bound- v. Chakrabarty, that “whether an humanities. ary object. As described by Geof- innovation is alive or not is irrelevant frey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, to its patentability” [2]. Notes boundary objects inhabit multiple Historian William Rankin recounts 1 I put “classic” in quotes in order to distin- communities of practice, enabling that, toward the end of the 1860s, the guish the opposition “classic versus cog- them “to travel across borders and requirements for color drawings and nitive” from the opposition “classic (or maintain some sort of constant iden- models in the patent system changed structuralist) versus postclassic (or post- structuralist)” as it is currently commonly tity” [1]. The book encapsulates a host to black and white ink drawings. established in literary studies. It goes of themes and philosophies involving The Patent Act Amendment of 1861 without saying that, in Schaeffer’s view, the merger of early industrializa- called for multiple copies of each the postclassic or poststructuralist view, tion and the art of growing fruit. patent—something unavailable until which he does not discuss in this book, are in most cases still part of what he defines The communities traversed include photolithography. By 1870, the pat- as classic—that is, noncognitive. Feminist, worlds of art and commerce. Kevles ent office had to provide copies to queer, postcolonial, etc. readings of stories articulates how depiction of the fruits libraries, along with the public, that are examples of “postclassic” narratology, which have but little connection to cog- enacts a journey from the unique and inexpensive photolithography made nitive research (although it is of course local to the standardized and mass possible. The highly prized asset of perfectly possible to envision a cognitive distributed that references a lineage each species of fruit was its flavor, approach to feminist, queer, postcolonial, of patent protections en route. As he which could not be captured by any etc. stories). describes the voyage, we, the readers, reproduction. Nevertheless, chromo- realize that authorship and identifica- lithography situated apples and other Heirloom Fruits of America: tion became keys to the success of fruit as treasures within the cultural Selections from the USDA the pomological enterprise (pomum context and as commodities within Pomological Watercolor is Latin for fruit). To succeed, the a socioeconomic framework built Collection images of heirloom fruits must from patented inventions. Claims of No author; introduction by Daniel J. function as recognizable names and propriety were essential to their com- Kevles. Heyday, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A., claim unique identities. Such intel- mercial viability. 2020. 128 pp., illus. Trade. ISBN: 978- lectual property protection was to be Applicants for fruit patents had 1597145060. found chiefly in the utility patent, the to submit colored drawings of their Reviewed by Ellen K. Levy, New York, definition of which dates to the 1793 products. The ensuing reproduc- NY, U.S.A. Email: [email protected]. patent law. Without such protection, tions enabled by lithography mark there was considerably less incentive a pivotal change from a horticulture https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02083 to perfect and document the fruits, that depended on senses of tactility Heirloom Fruits of America announces which were subject to appropriation. and smell to one reliant on the copy. its topic, the perfection of a variety of Chromolithography is a technique You can think of the relationship fruits, through immediate aesthetic for making multicolored prints that exists between fine artworks appeal. Like its subject, this small, that use lithographic stones; it was (the original watercolors) and patent delicately colored and thought- developed in 1837. Both chromo- and drawings as a kind of seesaw that, at

Leonardo Reviews 467

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 including avocados and mangoes, pretive complexities of representa- are depicted besides apples. A more tion. Other iconographic approaches recent depiction is the Lodi apple of are suggested as well. As witnessed 1937 by James Marion Shell. At times, in many painted biblical narratives of branches and leaves are portrayed. In lost innocence, the image of the apple general, conventions of positioning may tempt us with fond memories and shading were retained through- of simpler times. We recall settlers out. in the United States following well- Art historian George Kubler’s established routines of planting and Shape of Time asks why certain trying to improve conditions of soil, methods and images become popu- water and sun. lar and persist, a question implicitly Archives are defined by what raised by Heirloom Fruits of America. they do not do as much as by their Conventions may be arbitrary, but appearances. Different government they leave many possible alternatives agencies have different goals. The unanswered. For historian William heirlooms that were rendered even Rankin, the way patent drawings during critical economic periods oscillate between abstraction and greatly diverge from the Farm Secu- naturalism is closely tied to the dual rity Administration photographs that legal status of patents as both disclos- defined the Great Depression visu- ing and protecting an idea. Rankin ally and offered an interpretation of times, inverts relationships between points out that ambiguity gives pat- poverty. These heirloom fruits offer culture and commerce. For example, entholders a legal advantage when no easily accessible interpretive role inventions when outmoded are more acting against an alleged infringer: to explore economic circumstances, readily accepted as art. Chromoli- They want their patent to have the although their documentation was thography served as the fulcrum of widest applicability and thus want certainly incentivized by fierce mar- the relationship between fields of to depict their invention as vaguely ket competition. But could heirloom art and economics. It was as widely as possible [4]. By contrast, Kevles archives even have implied stressful employed to depict inventions of suc- points out the need for depictions of times? Absolutely—they could have culent fruit as to multiply innovative the heirloom fruits to be highly spe- suggested conditions of economic images of perfected machines. Such cific since protection was to be found difficulty through depictions of pitted juxtaposition occurs in other histori- in identification. skin, rotted pulp and insect-bored cal contexts as well. For example, art Conventions adhere to the render- interiors. But that was never the historian Carla Yanni has described ing of any fruit or machine at any intention. These pomological images how, during the nineteenth century, given time, particularly when the also eschew the poetic atmospher- new understandings of nature called images are part of an archive. I have ics of, for example, exquisite late- for British architects to propose erect- seen such adopted conventions (how- nineteenth-century cyanotypes by ing a single architectural structure to ever strange) as gorillas holding canes Anna Atkins. The power of the apples serve as a museum for both natural in successive plates in eighteenth- and fruits depicted in this book lies in history and patent inventions [3]. century natural history books. In their directness and literalness. They Many plates in the book date addition, conventions of inverse and their spokesman, Daniel Kevles, before 1900; the depictions constitute perspective and cross-hatching were speak to the aims of the producers to a subselection of plates by Kevles and used often to depict machinery in avoid confusion through developing the Heyday staff. Several date from Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclo- a clear system of visual classifica- the 1880s, almost 100 years after the pédie. These conventions call for tion. The primary idea was to turn patent law of 1793. A few images in interpretation. I recall that contempo- the fruits into marketable products, the book are from the 1930s. Kevles rary artist Jeffrey Schiff rendered 3D after which they could be reproduced claims his basis for selection was wood objects based on illustrations virtually identically by grafts or cut- primarily aesthetic rather than infor- from the Encyclopédie, humorously tings. The colored illustrations were mational. Among the early plates scoring them with cross-hatching a means of advertising the fruits and in Heirloom Fruits of America is the to simulate the parallel lines in the securing their intellectual property. Winter Paradise apple (1905), by artist drawings. Kevles, too, has grappled But they nevertheless achieve far Ellen Isham Schutt. It relies on the with various iconological approaches more. convention of depicting a whole apple to the portrayal of heirlooms; he The heirlooms provide a stunning above one bisected revealing its seeds. singles out in the book’s acknowl- framework for Kevles to discuss the That convention is used repetitively edgments art historian Christopher relationship between industry and with minor variations. Other fruit, Wood, well known for perusing inter- nature, the desire to establish insti-

468 Leonardo Reviews

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 tutions as aesthetic resources for a raise questions about a more sustain- not only for philosophers but also for public and an ongoing argument for able future. By now another evolution environmentalists and those across the necessity of developing “retreats has taken place—from bites to bits animal studies fields. Oele touches on from materialism.” and back again to seeds. Knowledge biological, medical and evolutionary Kevles includes some wonderful (in the form of stored seeds at Sval- elements throughout her prolonged narratives in his introduction, includ- bard and other places) may prove to philosophical analysis. The writing ing the history of Luther Burbank, have survival value in the Anthro- is clear and poetic, so along with the the famed Santa Rosa, California, pocene. Such products as heirloom thoughtful meditations it’s the kind fruit breeder who took inspiration fruits gain additional significance, as of book that sharpens, as it has for from Charles Darwin’s Variations of Michael Pollan puts it, in “communi- me, a mental and visceral awakening Animals and Plants under Domestica- cating a simple set of values that can to the material world. My review can tion. Burbank found it to be a source guide Americans toward sun-based give only a glimpse of the academic of information on the ideas and prac- foods and away from eating oil” [5]. sophistication of this book, and I tices of plant and animal breeders. Kevles is very well positioned to hope not to oversimplify some of the Kevles then recounts the fascinating discuss these different threads. philosophically layered textures. The tale of how Burbank discovered and material factors of life, organic and perfected a new and superior variety Notes inorganic, are “always emerging” (p. of potato that became known as the 1 Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, 2) in an ontogenesis via materiality Idaho Russet. Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its created through affective states that The fruits in this book are com- Consequences (Cambridge, MA, and Lon- recall the past and look to the future. posites of different species and of the don: MIT Press, 1999) p. 16. Oele’s example is human skin, but she natural and artificial. The nature/ 2 Daniel J. Kevles, “Ananda Chakrabarty also includes soil. In this regard Oele culture distinction has often entailed Wins a Patent,” HSPS: Historical Studies does not see earth as a home ground in the Physical and Biological Sciences 25, legal consequences, most notably No. 1, 111–136 (1994). as might Heidegger. Rather, dirt cells and recently with respect to biotech- are rife with teeming, felt interfaces nology; aspects of patent law are 3 Carla Yanni, “Divine Display or Secular of living organisms and nonliving Science: Defining Nature at the Natural premised on legally constructing a History Museum in London,” Journal of particles, large and small, here and divide between them. In this regard, the Society of Architectural Historians 33, now, there and past. This means that it is important to remember that No. 3, 276–298 (1996). pathos-induced affectivity from forms only inventions (e.g. culture) can be 4 William Rankin, “Bureaucracy at a of material life is a participatory patented and not discoveries (e.g. Glance: Visual Evidence and US Patents, exchange process and not simply a nature). Patent law is a place where 1790–2005,” paper delivered at Contexts of static effect, says Oele. Beyond merely Invention, Case Western Reserve Univer- political, economic, legal and scien- sity, 2006. taking in affects there is a release tific interests meet and highlight how of thought, emotion and, perhaps, arbitrary it can be to make distinc- 5 Michael Pollan, “Farmer in Chief,” New action. There is literal and figurative York Times Food Issue (9 October 2008). tions between nature and culture. The movement in life that includes matter great interest in this book is to see its and mind, affective and, often, eco- intersection with art. E-Co-Affectivity: Exploring logical states of being. To distinguish The book implicitly presents a Pathos at Life’s Material herself from Heidegger, Oele is more choice—it is a reminder that Ameri- Interfaces concerned with communal becoming cans have greatly valued time spent by Marjolein Oele. SUNY Press, Albany, (p. 6) and not just individual being- working with their hands and work- NY, U.S.A., 2020. 268 pp. Trade. ISBN: in-the-world. The ethics implied ing for themselves. Kevles’s essay is a 978-1438478616. in this stance should be apparent: vivid framework for understanding Reviewed by Gregory Tague. responsibly permitting all life-forms how art’s iconography can render Email: [email protected]. the opportunity of existence in their visible relationships to its production respective communities and inclusive https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02084 and reception, raising unique mate- pathos with ecological contexts of the rial and theoretical issues relevant to In her absorbing book E-Co-­ nonhuman. The so-called examined the current time. The apple is cen- Affectivity, philosopher Marjolein life should include a consideration of trally positioned as both cultural art Oele explores how humans, plants, many carbon-based life-forms and icon and technologically improved animals and the soil can relate as a even other inorganic elements. In commodity. The downside is that coaffective community. For anyone addition to the ethical, clearly there economic gain is often a driver of interested in seeing how interdis- are political dimensions to ecologi- efficiency. Technological innovation ciplinary studies can be applied, I cally shared affectivity through, for tends to diminish the diversity of highly recommend this philosophi- instance, animal rights, biodiversity cultivars. The images of fruits look to cally creative and intellectually chal- conservation and climate change. America’s agrarian past but implicitly lenging book, which could be valuable In Chapter 1, Oele talks about

Leonardo Reviews 469

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 the “constant ontogenesis” of plants perception and internal, emergent since they are all around us in earth’s sensation. This means that aisthēsis is biomass and yet figuratively invisible neither in the subject nor the world to our sight and literally invisible in but “indebted to both” (p. 59) in an their complex root systems (p. 18). exchange, with touch (of tongue, Seemingly passive, plants are quite beak, paw or skin) as the primary adaptively active, communicating sense experience evident across bod- with their different parts and with ies in the animal world. Body in the other plants. They are rooted, but world is a fluid transaction of sensa- not; they are still, but not; they are tion, movement, being and becoming. situated, but not; they are becoming There are different types of feathers in the world. There’s no strict divi- on any one bird, some as fine as hair, sion, however, of passivity/activity for others made of keratin; some feath- plants but what Oele refers to as the ers are for sensation whereas others middle voice, a nondivisive alterna- help contour flight. Some feathers are tive among the localities of roots and highly sensitive and connect to other leaves. There is no true center in a feathers and the bird’s flesh, mediat- plant, but that’s meant positively by ing bodily experience. Some types virtue of its flexible transitivity in of feathers are an “extension” of the an environment of relations. Plants bird’s skin into tactile physical space. ing afterbirth placentas for abnormali- speak through photosynthesis, light Oele’s point, apparent in the example ties. This is where the philosopher and water absorption, and interac- of the bird/feathers, is that touch is has unequivocal hands-on experience tions where they feed themselves in not localized, and so aisthēsis is not with her subject. The placenta, in affective processes of unity and not simply “direct contact” (p. 66) but effect, energizes growth of mothering the hard duality of subject/object. affectively creative between space/ and of child. In this part of her book, Plants have no stomachs and feed in place and animal/other. Oele goes Oele relies on a subverted reading of a distributive method, as if there are on to discuss how damage to feath- Plato more than Aristotle, summon- multiple selves spread across deep ers, from environmental stress or ing the notion of placenta as polis, soil, topsoil and air in a coordinated trauma, could be mediated by some binding others, especially youth, in and cooperative system of continual, birds as a dynamic ability to control healthful community. Contrary to unmitigated growth regenerating their “affective space” (p. 72). Further- Plato’s static, wise guardians, Oele various parts. From this admixture more, social birds preen the feathers places faith in the wisdom of the we see that plants can epigenetically of others, broadening their affective dynamic flesh. The placenta generates transmit as heritable material a sense area by keeping those in the commu- existence over Plato’s forms. Oele sug- of the bounty, or not, of their place nity healthy and clean. If birds keep gests that neither placenta nor embryo in communities. Likewise, plants are another individual tick free, that’s early on should be given primacy known to graft naturally. Are plants good for the group, what Aristotle over the other. Referencing Plato, the enabled with a memory in response would call, Oele says, synaisthanesthai placenta becomes a “pregnant city” to environmental stress? Oele’s point or the affective behavior of “sensing- (p. 91), with the difference of sharing is that plants occupy a middle space together” (p. 76). material existence by creating place or mid-voice between life and death Oele questions, in Chapter 3, pre- (p. 93) and not simply provoking the where they are ever growing without vailing language that pictures the copying of ideas. Indeed, the placenta temporal fixity while testing spatial placenta as unimportant afterbirth or is a shared home space for baby and limits. Plants exemplify an eco-­ as something ancillary to the fetus- mother, affecting them both in physi- affective response to their environs. mother interaction. The placenta, in ological, immunological, psychologi- In Chapter 2, Oele spends time fact, generates mother-child affectiv- cal and other biochemical ways, what talking about birds, specifically the ity. Oele argues that the placenta is Oele calls “auto-affection” (p. 100) for tactility of their feathers. Concern- not necessarily a static boundary but the mother. Though focused on the ing Aristotle’s aisthēsis (loosely, a permeable borderline and place human, clearly this idea applies, in my sense perception), she’s more partial for the creation of selves: mother estimation, to all mammals. to Heidegger; the emphasis is not and child. Just as she spoke of the Building from mid-voiced plants, just passive perceiving but active middle voice of plants, here the active bird feather sensation and placental eco-psychology about one’s chang- placenta represents the metaphor of affectivity, in Chapter 4 Oele exam- ing place or becoming in a world. in-between self and other, past and ines the affective interface of human The external environment affects future. This chapter reflects Oele’s skin, which is not merely “surface” us and other “animals” in a syner- medical training and how in her early but the “mooring of our existence” gistic process of external, physical career she was charged with inspect- or the site of the “inside’s exterior”

470 Leonardo Reviews

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 (p. 108). We are not prisoners of our and places, to truly get beyond any digital culture. Virtually all aspects skins; rather, skin extends to others Cartesian mastery over nature and of the making, publishing, market- and other places, emerging outward embrace, as constituents, the self- ing, distributing and (increasingly) from within. Skin is a necessary point regulating system of Gaia. Oele does reading of comics have now become of contact with another, from birth not advocate, necessarily, individual digital, while more and more new onward. While there are skin layers, action or witnessing but a coaffective forms of comics can be called digital- they don’t separate but participate network, evidenced in life’s connec- born (and not just “transferred to a with each other, creating the plastic tion from birth to death in the soil digital format”), yet not always in the boundary (knowingly and feelingly (p. 142). The new philosophical shift forms predicted in the 1990s, when working with the brain) from the should turn to a participatory shar- e-comics started to emerge. inside out. Skin is “open to the world” ing with the earth. Is this politically At the same time, however, there (p. 117) through touch, though from possible? Oele, as in other chapters, also exists a strong resistance to an affective perspective that relation- continues her reliance on, reference digitalization in comics, mainly ship is not without risk, Oele inti- to, and yet distance from Aristotle, due to two reasons. First, there is mates. Skin is part of one’s historical among others like Heidegger and the very conservative approach of identity with all its telltale markings, more contemporary philosophers digitalization in the traditional com- some of which are natural, acquired including Donna J. Haraway. Unlike ics industry that merely considers through age, or are manifestations of Haraway in When Species Meet, for digitization a useful instrument of injury or cultural infiltration. Oele Oele e-co-affectivity is neither imme- cost-efficiency and maximization contemplates the epidermal from diate nor local but persistent and of profit, hence missing all creative many angles. Skin is a horizon: Ever global. In her final deliberation, Oele opportunities offered by the new changing, it’s a link to the past but in meditates via Plato on the porous digital environment and confusing its friability routinely points to our spaces of air, water or gases in soil. its consumers with online copies of ultimate decrepitude and demise if These spots are not isolated but medi- originals in paper that simply don’t we should live to advanced age. Skin ators connected to and with other work on screen (newer e-comics have is part of a cultural and political organic organisms and inorganic discovered that the best solution was climate where touch and sensitivity materials across a living threshold to avoid complex layouts and to go are emotionally charged (e.g. fear and without barriers. In the soil there is for a kind of slide show presentation shame, she says), whether in a cul- incessant movement and becoming. one can scroll through). Second is the tural movement or through effects of We are rooted in and dependent upon exceptional attachment of the graphic climate change. Skin colors, tones and the soil, so Oele suggests we need to novel movement, which caters to a surfaces speak, in some ways, and are create a new eco-affective alliance different (allegedly more sophisti- perceived prejudicially in other ways. with it for the sake of earth’s sustain- cated but definitely wealthier) audi- This stilted perception is true even able future. Overall, Marjolein Oele’s ence, to the magic of ink and paper, in the case of cultures in which the E-Co-Affectivity is a potent reminder that is, the touch and feel and smell of skin is almost completely concealed of life’s fragility despite survival works in print. In the graphic novel, beneath a veil. While skin covers and mechanisms and the need for inter- classic publishing formats are not protects, it’s also a source of vulner- active sustenance of physical, psy- only preserved and cared for, but they ability and affective differences. We chological and emotional sensibility also remain commercially successful. see skin as smooth and beautiful, but across species and organic life forms. In quite a few cases, the graphic novel it can also be rough and diseased. even comes close to the coffee table Skin responds to physical and emo- Peanuts minus Schulz: book circuit and, just like comics, has tional stimuli; it reacts and adapts. Distributed Labor as a now entered the gallery and museum Skin, while plastic, can resist cultural, Compositional Practice/ circuit, where they may soon compete economic or ideological change. Skin Le travail distribué comme with all-time classics such as vintage can flourish and suffer, but it’s shared pratique organisationnelle Superman and Tintin material. across humanity and is, as Oele sug- by Ilan Manouach. JBE/Jean Boîte Whatever one thinks of these gests, the ultimate connective tissue. éditions, Uncreative Writings series, changes, none of them radically In Chapter 5, Oele is concerned Paris, France, 2021. Bilingual edition: changes the old-fashioned pillars of with pulling together the previous English/French. 700 pp. Paper. comics as art, such as—among oth- chapters on affectivity to question ISBN: 978-2365680301. ers—the creative genius of the indi- how humans can create a community Reviewed by Jan Baetens. vidual artist, the commercial value of of affect with other inorganic and original and copyrighted material, or https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02085 organic life forms—what she calls the autonomy of the artistic sphere e-co-affectivity. Humans now more Like any other field of cultural pro- in regard to the publishing industry. than ever need to heed and attend duction, comics is a medium that has Yet these are exactly the elements to the feelings of other creatures been dramatically transformed by that have been shattered by the digi-

Leonardo Reviews 471

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 real stuff, and others strangely deviant (but it is impossible to know whether the distance from the original should be explained by a lack of skill or, on the contrary, by a cunning parody). Yet after having read the nearly 1,000 strips in the beautifully printed book, our vision of Schulz’s work is no lon- ger the same: This is not Peanuts as it is shaped by the hand of its maker; it is Peanuts as it becomes in the hands of its readers, who actually do with the Schulz comics what the merchan- dising has done in a different and definitely less interesting way. Peanuts minus Schulz, therefore, not only tal revolution, with its emphasis on forms of economic organization blur- discloses what actually happens in the mechanical copying and distribution, ring the boundaries between labor world of microwork, if not the world anonymous subcontracted labor and play, thus abolishing all kinds of “out there”—a strange mix of plagia- by new masses of cottage industry distances in time and space. “Playbor” rism and originality, all produced in workers or the ubiquity of techni- represents postindustrial alienation: huge quantities and in almost no time cal operations such as web-scraping, Everybody must work all the time (it took four months of a residency to tagging, archiving, crowdsourcing or and in every place, yet without ever collect and edit the submissions); it reviewing, which have proved vital seeing the result of their labor—and, also contains a powerful criticism of to the business but are rarely seen of course, without receiving serious what Schulz himself and the company as a substantial part of the creative payment, as the work is seen as “fun,” or estate behind his work have always dimension of the cultural or creative even by some workers, at least in cer- categorically denied: namely, the industries [1]. tain circumstances (self-exploitation progressive incorporation of a work Peanuts minus Schulz is a book is looming large in the work-as-fun of art (Peanuts, the comics) in an published in the Uncreative Writ- economy). economic supra-structure (Peanuts, ings series, a collection of conceptual A conceptual comic, Peanuts the merchandising) that eventually creative works—that is, works rely- minus Schulz is a project based on the has taken over power. In the Schulz ing on a strong programmatic claim practice of the online labor market. universe the comic work has been within a global framework of remix MTurk or Amazon Mechanical Turk downgraded to a tiny detail of the and appropriation. Like the other vol- is the best-known example of such larger merchandising empire, and umes in the series, it explores the new an online service: Mainly precarious this shift is clearly a creative disaster: directions of book art, not after but in participants from all over the world It kills all the kinds of freedom and light of and thanks to the digital turn. accept to perform small, outsourced innovation the “illegal” or unauthor- The author, comics artist and theore- tasks for a minimal payment (not a ized copies and variations showcase tician Ilan Manouach (1980), is one salary or an hourly wage but a per- on almost every page. of the most innovative and politically task payment) at home and with no These objectives and outcomes are committed authors in this sphere of further management control. Man- light-years away from what is generally postdigital comics. A practice-based ouach’s book is the result of a specific discussed in the context of digital com- researcher, Manouach questions the commission for an unauthorized ics. It is the tremendous merit of Ilan fundamental issues of originality, remake of Schulz’s Peanuts on such Manoauch to help focus on the real innovation, ownership, participatory an online platform. Peanuts minus stakes of the digital turn in comics (and culture, or skilling and deskilling, Schulz is the edited result of this com- art in general), which are not tech- from an artistic as well as economic mission (the initial list of relatively nological but cultural, that is, artistic, perspective (actually, these dimen- vague and open instructions is given social, economic and political [3]. sions can never be distinguished in near the end of the book, on page his work). In the new type of “con- 663): a 700-page horizontal publica- Notes ceptual comics” or “CoCos” that he tion with “new” Peanuts strips, freely 1 For some details on these “nonartistic” has launched [2], he both creates and copied, transformed or (re)invented operations of the work of art, see my re- gathers comics that thematize these by micro-workers from all over the view of Franck Leibovici: https://www.leo nardo.info/review/2020/12/des-opera issues in the era of “playbor”—the global village. The materials submit- tions-decriture-qui-ne-disent-pas-leur portmanteau word conflates “play” ted are amazing, to say the least, some -nom. and “labor” and refers to the new of them looking more real than the

472 Leonardo Reviews

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 2 See his website: https://www.ilanman technology were seen by many as exhibition at Street Level Photoworks ouach.com. the engine of progress, a driving Glasgow in 2009, he rather modestly 3 This review is featured in Episode 1 of force for industrial innovation and disavows his importance: “It was Leonardo’s podcast Between Art and Sci- economic prosperity. The terms more like a cultural wave which many ence: www.leonardo.info/podcast. cyberart and cybernetics were forged people were surfing” [2]. However, in response to this background and Hoppy was instrumental in estab- London’s Arts Labs and the culminated in the influential exhibi- lishing the concurrent publication 60s Avant-Garde tion Cybernetic Serendipity, curated International Times, the International by David Curtis. John Libbey Publishing, by Jasia Reichardt at the Institute of Free School, the UFO Club, the links Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, IN, Contemporary Arts, London, in 1968, with the Beatles and with the Rolling U.S.A., 2020. 212 pp., illus. Paper; eBook/ which then toured across the United Stones (and their consequent patron- PDF. ISBN: 978-0861967483; ISBN: 978- States. Many Art Lab members were age), the intellectual underpinnings 0861969791; ISBN: 978-086196807. involved, and many were influenced (including early media research via Reviewed by Stephen Partridge. by the show, which helped to develop the Institute for Research in Art & their new aspirations for art, science Technology) and, crucially, cultural https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02086 and technology. and social experiments in video tech- David Curtis’s account of the Arts Curtis (re)contacted and cites nology aimed at emancipating the Labs at Drury Lane (1967–1969) many of the now-legendary person- television medium. and Robert Street (1969–1971) is a alities at the heart of the movement. The arts labs became the model timely contribution to understanding Jim Haynes, the founder of the Drury for other labs springing up across the art and culture—and especially Lane Art Lab, famously said, “My Britain and Europe and led to the the so-called underground—of the artistic policy was to try to never say National Arts Lab Conference mid-1960s to the early 1970s. It is a no.” This eventually led to its clo- in January 1969—a gathering of somewhat troubled history; the often sure when all staff, including Curtis, about 150 Arts Lab groups includ- antiestablishment stance drew the ire walked out in protest at Haynes’s lack ing David Bowie’s Beckenham Arts of the press and establishment figures of consultation over programming. Lab and Alan Moore’s (Watchmen) and impacted upon any long-term Before his recent death (January Northampton Arts Lab. The next sustainability of both art labs. In his 2021), Haynes gave his blessing to the generation would develop these and book on Channel Four, One in Four, book. new initiatives into artist-run exhi- Michael Kustow commented: “Some- Despite the arguments, sometime bition spaces and studios, many of times it helps if there is a rival scape- chaos, lack of finance and venue which still exist today. goat for this apparently unassuageable issues, the list of events, screenings, Curtis is naturally most detailed need to attack the new. For the ICA, filmmakers and artists involved, over the film screening programs, the Drury Lane Arts Lab drew the participating or otherwise, is truly which he organized at both Drury fire” [1]. impressive, and includes anonymous Lane and the breakaway Robert The term “seminal” is much over- interventions from John and Yoko, Street Arts Lab, but also offers a used (and too obviously gendered J.G. Ballard’s “Crashed Cars” exhibi- comprehensive, mostly chronologi- for contemporary tastes), but it can- tion, Carolee Schneemann, Andy cal account of the variety of activities not be avoided when reading this Warhol, Jeff Keen, Ian Breakwell, between gallery, performance space, book about the 1960s activities of a John Hilliard and Mike Leggett, Valie film space and cafe space. Robert London-based movement or, more Export, John Latham, Takis, Peter accurately, series of initiatives in Weibel, Jeff Nuttall, David Medalla, the avant-garde and counterculture. Graham Stevens, David Bowie, Ste- It is very much a personal history, ven Berkoff, The Exploding Galaxy, as Curtis is at pains to inform the Ken Turner, Mark Boyle, Mike Figgis, reader, but is likely, nevertheless, Carla Liss and Kurt Kren. Curtis’s to become a touchstone for future partner, the artist and printmaker scholarship in this area, having been Biddy Peppin, is central to the artistic rather neglected by other authors and programming and organization of the research over the years. arts labs and, one suspects, the back- At the 1963 Labour party confer- ground research for the book. ence, Prime Minister Harold Wilson Another key figure who crops up had set out Labour’s plan for science, again and again is the photographer, promising a Britain “forged in the journalist, researcher, political activ- white heat of this revolution” with ist and underground figure John “no place for restrictive practices “Hoppy” Hopkins. In an interview or outdated methods.” Science and coinciding with his retrospective

Leonardo Reviews 473

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Street also mixed in production with Muscle Shoals or San Francisco, or collection include dates and loca- the establishment of the London the avant-garde jazz, soul and punk tion. As noted by Tobi Haslett in his Filmmakers Co-op. evolving along the East Coast in the introduction, “Th is little annota- Lavish illustrations feature photos, 1970s and 1980s—will remember tion slits the poem open; the world posters and drawings, although are the music as documented through comes trickling in” (p. 13). Indeed. sometimes reproduced a little too reviews and essays, both critical and And animates and informs each small to discern details. Some 50 laudatory, backstories and expository poem with the history, questions, years on, the historical relevance of explorations in publications seeking answers, eclipsed dreams and hopes these groundbreaking initiatives and to report on something about which on the horizon carried and/or pur- developments continues to resonate many readers could only speculate, sued by each person included in in both contemporary art and our the pulse of evolving cultural move- the poetic context. So, another lens digitally driven world. ments and their accompanying music through which to read (experience) soundtracks. these poems is their insight into life NoTes Nothing But the Music: Documen- backstage, between and beyond the 1 Michael Kustow, One in Four (London: taries from Nightclubs, Dance Halls performance time/event, aligned Chatto & Windus, 1987) p. 6. & a Tailor’s Shop in Dakar by Th u- with what is happening beyond the 2 Street Level Photoworks, “Talking Lib- lani Davis fi lls this gap. In her latest concert halls, the jazz clubs, the living erties: “John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins in dis- poetry collection Davis provides rooms and other sacred spaces where cussion with John Cavanagh,” Glasgow, 7 October 2009: www.youtube.com synesthetic, documentary insight, a people seek to meld life with music, /watch?v=FzvwlqSuGpk (accessed 19 sonic-social history full of anecdotal to make sense of struggle and love, January 2021). and impressionistic responses to to bend the arc of long experience embodied experience of the music between past and future to the pres- NoThiNg BuT The music: and its creators and followers in the ent moment. DocumeNTaries from places and times of its creation and Th ulani Davis is well (best) posi- NighTcluBs, DaNce halls & sharing. tioned to document and preserve this a Tailor’s shoP iN Dakar Davis goes aggressively for the arc. She is an interdisciplinary artist by Th ulani Davis. Blank Forms Editions, jugular of the experience, following working in poetry, theater, journal- New York, NY, U.S.A., 2020. 63 pp., illus. the soaring cycles and spirited fl ashes ism, history and fi lm, using all these Paper. ISBN: 978-1733723565. of inspired but ephemeral circuits of approaches to engage with African- creativity as performed by the musi- American life, culture and history Reviewed by John F. Barber. Email: cians, dancers, poets and choreogra- and her concern for justice. While jfb [email protected]. phers she chronicles in these poems. a student at Barnard College, Davis https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02087 She is drawn to document the raw began her performance career putting Th ose who followed music in the feelings, the smoke in the air and her words to music by Cecil Taylor, 1960s—whether soul, rock or rhythm empty bottles on the fl oor, the impul- Joseph Jarman, Juju, Arthur Blythe, and blues from Detroit, Memphis, sive energy, the dance to celebrate Miya Masaoka, David Murray, Henry humanity. Th readgill, Tania León and others. Featured musicians and dancers Her bibliography includes libretti for include Cecil Taylor, the Art Ensem- the operas X, Th e Life and Times of ble of Chicago, Bad Brains, Henry Malcolm X and Amistad; scripts for Th readgill, Th elonious Monk, Th e the fi lms Paid in Full, Maker of Saints Revolutionary Ensemble, Th e Com- and award-winning PBS documen- modores, MFSB, Dianne McIntyre, taries; the novels 1959 and Maker of Ishmael Houston-Jones and others as Saints; and other works of poetry. Her experienced at historic venues like the writing for the 1993 Queen of Soul: Five Spot, the Village Vanguard, the Th e Atlantic Recordings by Aretha Apollo, Storyville and Club Harlem. Franklin was awarded a Grammy Under this performance docu- for liner notes, making her the fi rst mentation is a foundation of in-the- woman to receive this honor. She is moment struggle in a number of an ordained Buddhist priest and an crucibles: civil rights, Black Power, associate professor in the Department the New Left , feminism and bohe- of Afro-American Studies and a Nel- mian ferment on both coasts, San lie Y. McKay Fellow at the University Francisco and New York, all of which of Wisconsin. leave their marks on the music—are Th is latest work, Nothing But the the music—in both celebration and Music, while composed of poems escape. Many of the poems in this that have enjoyed numerous prior

474 Leonardo Reviews

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 anthologizations, is not simply a l e o n a r d o Pioneers of the Global Art Mar- reprise of prior work but an impor- r e v i e w s ket, Paris-Based Dealer Networks, tant performance/statement that o n l i n e 1850–1950 edited by Christel H. Force. has the feeling of having waited Reviewed by Giovanna L. Costantini. for its time, like the jazz musi- june 2021 cian waiting for the right moment The Farm by Joanne Ramos. Pourquoi le style change-t-il? by Gilles to launch a solo. Here, assembled Reviewed by George Gessert. Philippe. Reviewed by Jan Baetens. for the first time, this collection is everything, including the music, Critical Zones: The Science and Politics A Story of Us: A New Look at Human and Davis holds the room and the of Landing on Earth edited by Bruno Evolution by Lesley Newson and Peter moment with her journalistic expe- Latour and Peter Weibel. Reviewed by Richerson. Reviewed by Gregory rience and ability to incite serious Jussi Parikka. Tague. political thought at a time when it Fiction-Science—Buvard et Pécuchet is desperately needed. While Davis april 2021 by Dominique De Beir, Baptiste is a crucial figure in the cultural Edde-Chevrier, Samuel Étienne, The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir by landscape surrounding the Black Emma Genty, David Mendy, Laëtitia Sherry Turkle. Reviewed by Amy Arts Movement, her poems leak Mamodaly, Anicet Oser, Marie Tellier, Ione. into the complex ecosystem of Christina Tran and Tania Vladova. Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, Say Reviewed by Edith Doove. A Gust of Photo-Philia: Photography Their Names, COVID-19, police in the Art Museum by Alexandra murders, the tyranny and deceit of Grammaire de Formes by Éric Tabu- Moschovi. Reviewed by Jan Baetens. Donald Trump, nationalism, popu- chi, Jordi Ballesta, Guillaume Bonnel lism, activism, protests each night and Danièle Méaux. Reviewed by Jan March 2021 through the spring and summer Baetens. Curating after the Global: Roadmaps and, always in the background, a for the Present, edited by Paul O’Neill, solo musical performance spiral- Magritte et les Philosophes by Sémir et al. Reviewed by Edith Doove. ing through interpretations of the Badir. Reviewed by Jan Baetens. present moment where hope refuses The Marquis De Sade and the Avant- to retreat, maintaining itself with Orozco’s American Epic: Myth, History Garde by Alyce Mahon. Reviewed by gratitude, generous laughter, iterat- and the Melancholy of Race by Mary K. Allan Graubard. ing future possibilities, unrehearsed Coffey. Reviewed by Mike Mosher. but familiar from lived experience, may 2021 Une fille comme toi by Jan Baetens. eager to learn and experience what Reviewed by Edith Doove. the soloist brings to the band. Brutal Aesthetics: Dubuffet, Bataille, Printed in a limited edition of Jorn, Paolozzi, Oldenburg by Hal Fos- 2,000 copies, Nothing But the Music ter. Reviewed by Stephen Petersen. is an important reference, one that Colourworks: Chromatic Innovation in you will want to carry with you and Modern French Poetry and Art Writ- consult often, reread the soaring pas- ing by Susan Harrow. Reviewed by sages, contemplate the labyrinth of Robert Maddox-Harle. life and listen to the music, for there is much there [1]. Èloge du mauvais lecteur by Maxime Decout. Reviewed by Jan Baetens. Note A History of Art History by Chris- 1 This review is featured in Episode 2 of Leonardo’s podcast Between Art and Sci- topher S. Wood. Reviewed by Edith ence: www.leonardo.info/podcast. Doove.

Leonardo Reviews 475

Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021