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Home , Arnold Dreyblatt, David Grubbs, Gastr del Sol, Marian Zazeela, Table of the Elements, Theatre of Eternal Music

Perverse Medium Specificity: in the 1990s, 1960s, and Now / Branden W. Joseph and Branden W. Joseph: I want to begin the dis- Jim was playing with him. It was at the Knitting cussion with how we met Tony and also how Factory on Leonard Street, I think, 1995. we met through Tony, because that was the case. I think it’s interesting to do so, in part, DG: It was a bill, and it because it’s hard to remember how mysterious was part of a short tour that did a figure he was in the 1990s. At the time, there with Tony. was barely anything more than his comments in Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga’s book BWJ: I remember going to see the show just Up-Tight: Story, Alan so I could name-check that I’d seen Tony Licht’s essay on the Conrad, because if you’re working on some- in the fanzine Forced Exposure, and, for a thing people always want to know if you’ve researcher like myself, material from 1960s film had personal contact. “Oh, did you see Lou books and magazines like Film Culture . . . but Reed? Did you see ? Did you see that was about it. How did you first meet him? Tony Conrad?” Often, I don’t care to see people forty years after their heyday. Sometimes, I David Grubbs: In 1994, I was playing in a group do. Sometimes, I don’t. And I had no idea what called Gastr del Sol with Jim O’Rourke. It was to expect, actually. I didn’t catch the Outside a duo of the two of us plus, basically, whoever reissue right away. I just was along for a particular concert or recording. didn’t know what to expect. He could have Jim, in May of 1994, played a show at a festival been playing piano. He could have been sing- in Frankfurt where Tony performed one of the ing. I had no idea. “Early Minimalism” pieces. In fact, a record- ing of that is on the box set Early Minimalism: DG: [laughs] Volume One [1997]. Jim came back absolutely beside himself, frantic with excitement about BWJ: He came out and performed backlit Tony Conrad. I knew of Tony through the behind the translucent curtain, and the room Theatre of Eternal Music and had first come just, I remember, solidified as though it were across his name in high school reading the under water, but with sound. I was completely Bockris and Malanga Velvet Underground blown away. The people I was there with book. I think, at that point, I had probably heard who ran Adult Crash records were also blown the Table of the Elements reissue of Outside away. I remember seeing them across the the Dream Syndicate [1973, fig. 22], which room just looking wide-eyed. At that time, I came out in 1993 and was slowly gathering was already working on the nexus or connec- force in the circles that Jim and I moved in. tion between visual artists and , It seemed like the blink of an eye, but it the Velvet Underground, and so on, and I just was three months later, and Gastr del Sol was decided I’ve got to talk to this guy because playing a show in Chicago at the Hot House. there was nothing really out there. I think one Suddenly there was Tony in the dressing room interview in a hard-to-find magazine, EST, had in his gray fedora. He had come to town to come out, and maybe something in French record Slapping Pythagoras [1995]. After reis- that I’d tracked down, and I was like, “I’ve got suing his one commercially available album, to meet this guy.”1 I wrote a letter to Buffalo, Outside the Dream Syndicate with Faust, where he was teaching, introducing myself and Table of the Elements was committed to Tony suggesting that I was going to call during a making new music. He came to Chicago with certain week to make contact. I called him up, a plan of Jim producing the new record and got ahold of him, and went up to Buffalo to do engineering it. Over the course the long interview that eventually became, in of maybe two weeks, we recorded Slapping a way, the backbone of my book Beyond the Pythagoras at Albini’s studio, which didn’t Dream Syndicate.2 It was an interview that I have a name at the time; it was just his house did over the course of three days, which for a on North Francisco Avenue. We could get into long time Table of the Elements was thinking talking about the recording of the album, but, might be the booklet for an Early Minimalism: to summarize, Jim was extraordinarily excited Volume Two, which is why it sat on a shelf for from having seen one of the early “Early a long time. Not all of it, but a lot of Tony’s Minimalism” performances. It seemed that it voice in Beyond the Dream Syndicate comes was a life-changing experience for him, and from those three days. Partly because there before I knew it, Jim and I were working with wasn’t that much out at the time, Tony really Tony on this new recording. narrated his whole development from before Harvard all the way through to the present. BWJ: It’s interesting, because I missed Tony’s Getting back to how we met, though, I think I performance in with Faust, but proba- first met you in person . . . Fig. 21. The Theatre of Eternal Music (also known as the Dream Syndicate) performing at the New York Film-makers’ Cinematheque, December 12, 1965 (from left: Conrad, bly saw the next concert he did here, which was , , and John Cale). Photo: Fred W. McDarrah. 44 45 the “Early Minimalism” performance where DG: At Under Acme. BWJ: Yeah, above Under Acme. of the people who passed through a lot of extension, the inaccessibility of that historical areas. There’s also an issue of historical tem- period were allegorized in his performances DG: Yes. [laughter] porality. Tony was absolutely central to New at various shitty rock clubs across the United York in 1965, 1966. Then he goes away to teach States. [laughs] BWJ: In the restaurant part on the ground floor, at Antioch and Buffalo. Subsequently, he has before Tony’s performance in the basement this other moment in the 1990s that, in a sense, BWJ: Yet, at the same time, although it was space. You and Tony were performing sepa- never stopped. It just kept building from that allegorized as being unrecoverable, my experi- rately, but on the same bill, switching, I think, point on. Why do you think that might be? ence of that first concert of his I saw was, “This headliners over two nights. is exactly what people described.” DG: I think the momentum for the extended DG: Right, yep. My first experience of Tony’s moment that perhaps begins around 1993 or DG: Well, Tony’s claim was that it was actually music, apart from recordings, was not seeing 1994 with his return to musical performance much better, because in the initial moment him live but, rather, Tony coaching the six is really kick-started through people encoun- of the Theatre of Eternal Music, they were guitarists who play on Slapping Pythagoras. It tering the live performances of the “Early frequently so high that what he was delivering was in Albini’s basement—the first rehearsal Minimalism” pieces, which made people think in the early and mid-1990s was much more of and beginning of the recording for Slapping about the history of musical minimalism. Also, powerful. He experienced it as being much Pythagoras. He passed out six 8 1/2" × 11" with that extraordinary staging that Tony more powerful. Fig. 22. Cover of Outside the Dream Syndicate (Superior Xeroxed sheets of very simple rhythmic nota- created: performing behind a scrim, backlit Viaduct LP SV048), 2016 (originally released 1973). tion. He asked who had the noisiest amplifier. with those enormous shadows of himself and BWJ: Perhaps, but maybe it was just as pow- I think it was Kevin Drumm, and Tony turned the other performers. Suddenly we were in the erful in the 1960s for the context of the ’60s, it all the way up, thus amplifying the 60-cycle realm of cinema and performance, and even with the descriptions I’ve read of it sounding hum, and tuned the first instrument to it and the pre-history of cinema. We were seeing the like amplified buzz saws or jet engines. . . . The where I first saw a lot of his films took place in then tuned up the other five guitars using the “cinema of attractions” live on stage with the recollections of the few people I’ve encountered clubs or alternative gallery spaces in Chicago 60-cycle hum as a reference tone. All the while, twenty-five-foot silhouette of Tony dancing on who did see the early Theatre of Eternal Music and were more like adjuncts to the music he was lecturing us on . It was the scrim. concerts was that it was incredibly powerful and performance. It was exactly the same crowd

really the most eccentric little schoolroom in almost painful, actually, in its amplification. that would see him perform at Lounge Ax or PERVERSE MEDIUM SPECIFICITY Albini’s basement, this strange homeschooling BWJ: Yeah, it’s true. In a way, he very clearly the Empty Bottle, these rock clubs in Chicago. lesson by Tony, who was wearing his grey staged his own recovery, both by appropriating DG: On the subject of harshness, I will say that I didn’t first encounter his films as being pro- fedora and what looked like pajama pants and and re-creating the music—making it accessible that was also my overriding impression of that grammed by film institutions or museums. was hilariously funny. in a way that he felt it hadn’t been made acces- first session of getting together and playing Even as we were trying very seriously to sible—but also by theatricalizing it, making it Tony’s music with five other guitar players BWJ: That was the same for me. Well, slightly take in all of this information [laughs], we were multimedia through the scrim and projection, on Slapping Pythagoras. I hadn’t really made different because, when I met him, as I said, I also just enjoying the hell out of it. I remember while also making it historical. The scrim was the leap to understanding Tony’s minimalist was on a historical mission. He was also, as he a couple of years later reading an interview signifying a certain historical distance from music in the broader context of minimalism. told me, at a certain point where he was inter- with Luc Ferrari that Dan Warburton did for the original moment, as well as signifying the In encountering it as music and thinking of it ested in looking at his own history through the BRANDEN W. JOSEPH AND DAVID GRUBBS Paris Transatlantic, where Luc was describing cross-disciplinary aspects of his career. in terms of what I knew of musical minimal- Early Minimalism project, and so he was inter- 1958 and Cage showing up at Darmstadt for ism at the time, which I would describe in ested in getting that history down. Tony often the first time.3 He was at pains to describe how DG: Absolutely. the thumbnail version as being made up of used conversations with other people as a way incredibly funny Cage was and how good it felt extraordinarily musically polished, virtuosic, to get his own thoughts together. Then he’d to laugh. That was a bit like my experience of BWJ: Then, once Early Minimalism comes composer-led ensembles performing works ask you for the tape! So I remember him being that first rehearsal/beginning of the recording out, there’s a theorization of what he’s doing. such as Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians very present through the music, then through session with Tony. He was just so extraordi- There’s a real intellectual engagement with or Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, on the the film. Although, I remember it as being narily funny, even as he was imparting this his own history in the text that he publishes one hand, and, on the other, a minimalism that fairly difficult to see the films. Even though incredibly heady stuff to us. in those liner notes, as well as in those for the has a whiff of the occult and an inaccessibility [1966, figs. 32 and 33] was part of Slapping Pythagoras release. In the reissue and that’s read about more than heard, particu- the “Essential Cinema” rotation at Anthology, BWJ: I still find it interesting that so many of Outside the Dream Syndicate, too, his liner larly the minimalism of La Monte Young. To be I don’t remember it being shown. Maybe they people were converging on Tony from different notes are really telling. in a room with five other guitar players sawing didn’t have a good print of it, or maybe they directions at virtually the same time. Jeff Hunt away and producing this incredibly harsh did, and I just missed it. . . . I first saw The of the Table of the Elements label, but also Jay DG: I think my immediate experience of seeing din and it having nothing of the polish that I Flicker by arranging a private screening at The Sanders in the context of an art gallery, Greene Tony perform the shadow play from behind a associated with the music of Steve Reich or and sneaking in a cou- Naftali, Andrew Lampert at Anthology Film scrim was that it made clear the impossibility of Philip Glass absolutely recalibrated my sense ple of people who wanted to see it by pretend- Archives, and myself coming from academia. In recovering the music of the Theatre of Eternal of what the term minimalism might be or what ing they were also scholars, even though they my experience, it wasn’t all just the reissue of Music. Not only was the Theatre of Eternal Music its history might be. had come from the music world. So, the music Outside the Dream Syndicate. Again, I missed as a performing ensemble a thing of the past, When I was just hanging out with Tony and sort of came back first; then the film work came that reissue initially and was coming at Tony but at the time Tony was forcefully making his having get-to-know-you kind of conversations back; then the video work came back; then the completely through thinking about minimalism, case about the fact that La Monte Young had in the 1990s, the things he was most interested art work came back. But he was really working and thinking about minimalism as a cross- refused to make copies of tapes for him from in at the time, apart from music, included pri- on Studio of the Streets [1991–93, figs. 105–8] disciplinary practice at that time. I was always the period between 1962 and 1965, when he marily the cable access work that he was doing and the Homework Helpline projects when I very interested in following artists when they participated in the group—unless he signed a in Buffalo. He was very proud of the Homework met him, as well, and was always very proud of crossed outside of, or into, my supposed area contract identifying Young as the composer Helpline [1994–95, fig. 119], and somewhat that work. He continued to talk about Studio of of academic expertise, art history—like when of the work represented by these recordings. less enthused about, but also glad to share, the the Streets and show it periodically but, I think, goes to make films. Tony is one The inaccessibility of those recordings and, by 46 47 earlier film and video works. The screenings only really successfully found a way to exhibit never to arrive at that pitch—as if one were revived in a different time and a different moving toward a horizon but never arriving. context. Now it exists, actually, in different For the first forty-five minutes of the piece, the states. It can be produced, still, as a live perfor- person playing the long-stringed instrument mance. It also exists as that first performance is told to play upward-moving glissandi only, from 1972 at the Kitchen on an LP that can be as though you’re fighting gravity, climbing listened to for its musical content alone, and a hill, but never arriving at the pitch that the it also exists now as an art piece that’s been bass cannot deviate from. His instructions to accessioned by the Tate Modern in London. me were that in the second forty-five minutes It exists in three different forms from at least of the piece, if I was ready—because it’s a three different times and maybe more. serious decision to have made—if I felt I was I feel like the temporality of Tony’s work, in able to make that decision, I could engage in or general, is like that. I think Jay Sanders said indulge in downward-moving glissandi. I could something about this in Tyler Hubby’s 2016 reverse direction. documentary Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present, but it really seems that Tony’s work is BWJ: Did you? both recursive and expansive, going back and picking up earlier threads and developing them Fig. 23. XXX Macarena performing at The Kitchen, New York, September 24, 2009 DG: Every time I played it I only did so in the in different ways—sometimes within the same (from left: Conrad, John Miller, and ). last fifteen minutes of the piece, when I felt work, like Ten Years Alive, sometimes in sepa- I was ready to make that decision. I guess rate works. Another example is the film Coming all of this is to say that, in the possibilities of Attractions [1970], which goes back to Tony music-making in an ensemble, there were and Beverly Grant’s work with Jack Smith and it during his New York University Gallery show Then, the second performance was in 1996 all kinds of roles that could be played and takes it to a different place. Sometimes it’s not in 2012 . . . at the Empty Bottle in Chicago at the Yttrium sometimes these parts were governed by the so evident, at first, how such pieces relate, like Festival that Table of the Elements organized simplest imaginable instructions. we were talking about how Studio of the Streets

DG: That’s exactly what I was thinking. [fig. 24]. At least in that second version, it was was not immediately obvious in how it related PERVERSE MEDIUM SPECIFICITY a musical performance by four individuals: BWJ: I want to pull a little bit out of the details to his other work. But it seems to me that, if you BWJ: . . . where he made it into a piece that Alex Gelencser playing amplified cello, Tony of different pieces and start to think, if we scratch the surface of any one piece, you’ll find could be seen and could also be contextualized playing amplified violin, Jim O’Rourke play- can, about how Tony’s work and presence a web of connections to earlier interests and through some of his other community-based ing an electric bass that pulses on the same functioned and operated. I don’t want to say pieces. There’s a quote that I have in Beyond the film works, such as Waterworks [2012 (filmed pitch at sixty beats per minute for the ninety “legacy,” yet, because I’m not fully resigned to Dream Syndicate from a letter that Tony writes 1972), pages 360–61]—which is an incred- minutes of the piece, and myself playing the the fact that he’s not with us anymore. [laughs] to Gerald O’Grady in 1975 that I found really ible piece—and also, in some ways, Loose long-stringed instrument, which is one of Something like Ten Years Alive happens in interesting. Tony says, “Though I find my own Connection [1973/2011, fig. 52], which is a Tony’s Invented Acoustical Tools. In retro- a certain place, in a certain context; then it’s oeuvre impeccably consistent and directed, its documentary and film technology experiment spect, I can call it that. At the time, it was just BRANDEN W. JOSEPH AND DAVID GRUBBS that creates its own center of attraction and this homemade instrument that had only, I its own center of community, in the sense that think, ever been played in public at the first people on the street ask about this strange performance of Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Fig. 24. Performance of Conrad’s Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (1972) by Gastr del Sol rotating camera that he’s pulling on a wagon, Plain, when Tony performed in a trio with (Jim O’Rourke on bass and David Grubbs on the Long String Drone) with Conrad (on violin) and Alex Gelencser (on cello), Table of the Elements Festival No. 2: Yttrium, The Empty Laurie Spiegel playing the bass part and Rhys show themselves on it, and follow it around. Bottle, Chicago, November 7, 1996 (from left: Grubbs and Conrad; not shown: O’Rourke and That must have been intentional because the Chatham playing the long-stringed instrument. Gelencser). Photo: Tyler Hubby, from video footage. only thing Tony does in Loose Connection This is, for me, one of the great experiences of is go from his apartment to the local bodega playing with Tony: that no matter how refined and back to his apartment with the camera, so his sense of utilizing microtonality in impro- he’s tracing a trajectory within his somewhat vised performance could be, there were also anomic community (because it’s a community very simple tasks for people to do. in Times Square) and making that a part of There’s no score for Ten Years Alive on the piece. Without knowing those other works, the Infinite Plain. The long-stringed instru- which I didn’t know for quite a while, Studio of ment plays a melodic role, creating these very the Streets was a little difficult to get into. slow-moving glissandi. The pitch that’s being played in a regular pulse on the bass is the DG: [laughs] Yes, it was difficult to understand central pitch on the long-stringed instrument. the connection. I will say, also, about the The long-stringed instrument is a two-string music practice and—again, from the van- monochord with the two strings tuned to the tage of where I was living in Chicago in the same pitch. It’s played with something that’s 1990s—seeing his film and video work first in similar to the type of slide that would be used the context of screenings that seemed related for a pedal steel guitar or a lap steel guitar, but to concerts, I think another piece that really it’s actually a kind of heavier metal implement had an extraordinary impact on people who that Tony found and polished, a piece of junk. were able to see it performed is Ten Years The verbal instructions that Tony gave were Alive on the Infinite Plain, which is a perfor- to make upward glissandi that move toward mance first realized at The Kitchen in 1972. the central pitch on which the bass pulses, but 48 49 diversity (I realize) obscures the plane of this it the projection, or is it . . . ? There are all these consistency.”4 The consistency and the diversity different ways that the Yellow Movies start to that he talks about are things that take place, I open up, even before Tony started showing think, both materially and temporally. Does that the “video” versions or the “35mm format” resonate with your experience? versions of them [figs. 60–68], some of which I think are really only going to be broadly seen in DG: The consistency does resonate temporally this exhibition, perhaps. I had heard from Tony in that I imagine that—in nearly all phases of about the Yellow Movies early on, but when I his working life—everything was on the table actually saw them, it came as a surprise just and could be revised and understood in a how strong they were visually. I think that was different temporal context. I think that in the the case for a lot of people. 1990s he was interested in early minimalism because it was an odd, unexpected recontextu- DG: Yeah, that’s a comparison that makes sense alization of the legacy of minimalism for him. to me: that the Yellow Movies were to a visual It was not simply reviving a particular musical arts context what the LP reissues and the return style, but all of a sudden there’s a whole new to live performance were to music. It’s interest- range of questions about historicizing minimal- ing because I had certainly known for at least ism and so forth. In 2009 I sat down with him ten years before the Yellow Movies were exhib- and interviewed him for Frieze magazine.5 This ited how important Tony was to a generation of was not too long after your book had come out. visual artists who were, perhaps, in age halfway I wasn’t quite sure how to begin the conver- between Tony and me. My introduction to a lot sation except to say that I felt we didn’t need of what was happening in visual art in the 1990s to begin at the beginning, but we certainly came through playing in The . would move back and forth in time. It really Every artist I knew through The Red Krayola was apparent in any conversation you would seemed to have encountered Tony at different

have with Tony that this was a certain kind of points along the way. People like Stephen Prina, PERVERSE MEDIUM SPECIFICITY intellectual MO. Christopher Williams, and Mike Kelley held Tony in a kind of esteem bordering on awe, BWJ: Although, he was always very good, in even as the idea of Tony’s work being shown in interviews with me, in differentiating between a commercial gallery or a museum was more the historical context and the present context. than a decade away. He would quite often say, “Well, now I think this, but, at the time, what was important to us BWJ: That also really struck me about Tony. was this . . . .” Not every cultural figure has that It’s hard to think of another artist who’s had kind of distance on their own development. such continual intersections across genera- BRANDEN W. JOSEPH AND DAVID GRUBBS tions. There are the many connections that DG: Absolutely. Early in the conversation, I he had in the 1960s, then with the genera- asked him if being responsible for the back tion that you’re talking about—Mike Kelley, story and presenting the back story in a linear , Ericka Beckman, John Miller, fashion had come to seem like a burden to him Christopher Williams, Stephen Prina, Jutta in 2009. He said, “To start at the end and look Koether—and then down another generation to back is a good way to do it. We’re always at the or Bernadette Corporation. I love end.” That, to me, speaks to that kind of con- how Tony appears as a character in Bernadette sciousness you described—always accounting Corporation’s screenplay Eine Pinot Grigio, for how he’d regard something at the present Bitte [2007]. He appears as a character and as moment and trying to capture what the stakes an alter ego: Tony Conrad and Toby Cobweb. would have been in the past. [laughs] I also remember an artist definitely of a younger generation, Melanie Gilligan, BWJ: You came to Tony’s work through music telling me how important seeing a screening as, in some ways, almost everyone, but not of Coming Attractions (of which there can’t everyone, did. That became the first culturally have been that many) was for her before she legible part of his past, maybe. But when the had even become an artist. To have a career Yellow Movies started to have a presence, at a certain time, and then to have a revival of I feel like they were for the art world what both interest and impact later, that’s somewhat those “Early Minimalism” concerts were for common, but to do that two, three, four, or five the music world, where people came in and times in different periods and contexts seems were just blown away by works that are, on really uncommon. one level, minimal and simple, but open out almost immediately into a kind of multiplicity DG: [laughs] Yes. Let me ask you this: Beyond of implications. Is it a painting? Is it a film? How the Dream Syndicate was conceived, as you Fig. 25. Conrad performing “Early Minimalism: May 1965” (1994) in his installation described to me when you were still writ- Implicating Lully, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1998. is this film related to minimalism? If it’s a film, Photo: Tyler Hubby. 50 51 then is it the screen, or is it the emulsion, or is ing the book, as Tony being the Virgil of the Inferno of the underground of for onions, and we can pickle it. Then, well, if him and others, like and La Monte implications of Cage’s work in different direc- the 1960s. we can do that, then we can do other recipes. Young, during that period. tions. Then, the real heterogeneity is Tony’s We can do other things. We can do curried film, coming across Jack Smith, through Young and BWJ: I think in the book I called him the Creole film, film sukiyaki,” the last of which DG: I think that’s something you and I probably Marian Zazeela, and, as important as Cage is to Orpheus of the New York underworld, but becomes a performance—but which became had in common, in those shared experiences Tony, Smith is absolutely as important to him either comparison works . . . a performance because he said that running of having these long, detailed conversations in terms of opening up the possibilities of what the original sauce-covered Creole film through with Tony before we even met one another. an artistic and aesthetic practice can be. DG: I see him as Virgil, narrating, “Who are the projector was already such a performative What Tony really impressed upon me was all these people being tortured?” It makes me thing for the projectionist. the aporia of Cage that others like Henry Flynt DG: I certainly feel that by the time Tony is wonder, and particularly given the turn in this I think that once he got into a more gallery- also encountered, and that was, in some ways, doing the soundtrack for Jack Smith’s Flaming conversation about subsequent generations oriented context in later years—which wasn’t defining the terrain. Creatures [1962–63], Cage has really receded. I coming to Tony: If you were to write about totally foreign to him, as he had exhibited was really struck in speaking with Tony about Tony from the 1990s, would the model that video installations in the 1980s and ’90s—he BWJ: I think it’s absolutely central that he Cage, how it seemed to be within a particu- Beyond the Dream Syndicate took, of Tony as got very good at taking that diversity and encounters Cage early on. In college, Tony’s lar moment of this first encounter with Cage. the guide, still be a useful one? folding it back onto itself as something that interested in contemporary, avant-garde When I was talking with him about Cage, could stand on its own, as well as open up to music. He and Henry have a little bit of a rivalry I remember him talking about his reading BWJ: That’s an interesting question. As you other things. I think it’s still that same het- about finding new stuff, and they happen to of Cage and doing scare quotes around the know, Tony becomes the guide to a certain erogeneous moving between different ideas be at Harvard, where there’s a lot of new stuff word “reading.” In the interview for Frieze, artistic, creative, and cultural milieu in a certain and implications, but sometimes now within to be found because Christian Wolff, David Tony said, “I received Cage from a completely place in New York—largely downtown New a more compact package. We can think about Behrman, Frederic Rzewski, and others are different direction, not as a modernist at all, York—at a certain time in the 1960s. The reason the Invented Acoustical Tools. They’re musi- there, and advanced composers are coming probably because I had never studied mod- he’s the appropriate guide (because anyone cal instruments, but they’re also . through, performing, lecturing, and otherwise ernism at that time. I just found him playing a could be the guide) is that he crosses places A Yellow Movie, as we discussed, is a movie, being visible. It’s interesting that Stockhausen concert in front of me.” To me, it’s fascinating where other people don’t go. As an art histo- is a painting, and so forth. . . . We find film as comes through and doesn’t have the same to think of that challenge to which Tony and rian, I could find many guides, but they would music (The Flicker), painting as film Yellow( effect, even though Tony will later go and Henry responded in 1959 or 1960. Also, I do

all lead me into the art history of that time. Movies), film as (the three-dimen- meet him. When Cage and David Tudor come agree with you that by the time, just a couple of PERVERSE MEDIUM SPECIFICITY Tony leads me to all sorts of other histories. As sional Flicker “Exposure Timing Sheet”), and through, though, they have the effect of being years later, when he’s working with Jack Smith, the quote I read earlier has it, he’s impeccably so on. The video Cycles of 3s and 7s [1977] is a seen as a type of challenge—a challenge not the challenge of Cage is something already in consistent and directed, but in a way that is so video, but it’s also, because it’s on a calculator, just to how to make music, but a challenge as Tony’s past. diverse it obscures the sense of that direction sort of a play on computer music, I think. All to what music was or is. What are the bound- for other people. I was really interested in how this is true, but the works that he was making aries of something like music? BWJ: Although the connection, for Tony, things—things that the histories as they existed later, when he had the opportunity to show in a By the beginning of the 1960s, Cage has between the Cage side of things and the Smith up to that time were telling me were very gallery, could stand on their own and then still already, in his work, writing, and thinking, side of things is also part of the legacy of separate—were, in fact, connected. But, also, refract and move out beyond that space in their broken down the distinction between art and Cage. Tony talks about one of the ways that he not just that they were connected, because implications. music. If you look at the writings from around received Cage—the Cage that is more on the BRANDEN W. JOSEPH AND DAVID GRUBBS anyone can meet anyone, but resonating with But to get back to your original question, 1954 up to 1960 or so, he’s always saying Zen side of non-attachment and disinterested- and actually having creative impacts upon one I do think that, if one were to go back to the “art.” He’s saying “art,” or he’s saying “the- ness—was as an imperative to challenge one’s another. One of the things I remember Tony 1990s and 2000s, Tony would not be a bad ater.” He’s talking about empty space as well own aesthetic taste. The way Cage would try to telling me was how different it was to go from guide. How else would you cross between, say, as empty time. He’s implicitly looking to peers eliminate the hierarchies and the distinctions Jack Smith’s loft, say, to La Monte Young’s loft. Anthony McCall and MV Carbon and Lary 7 like Robert Rauschenberg and others he’s between music and noise, or between harmony He said it was like going between two com- and Mike Kelley and ? Even if associated with, and I think it’s interesting to and non-harmonic sounds, Tony really took pletely different planets, neither one of which you only think about the number of people he think about that as the context in which Tony as being a project that was to be adopted on was Earth. That’s where this whole concept of collaborated with musically, he still crosses all becomes an artist. He becomes a composer a subjective level: one was to give up one’s “minor history” comes up, in dialogue with sorts of lines. because composer seems, at that time, the preconceived notions about what is music Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler’s The Poetics more expansive category. More expansive than and not music, or beauty and not beauty, or Project: 1977–1997 [1997] and Deleuze and DG: Two things to say about the way in which being a visual artist. Being an artist connotes to what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable, Guattari’s notion of the “minor.”6 I do actually his career moved forward in the 1990s: First, it him just being a painter or something. and open oneself up to a type of difference. think that the notion of the minor and its het- obviously doesn’t have the tight geographical That’s not a bad reading of something like what erological relationship to “major” artistic cat- focus of downtown New York that’s described DG: Not working with time. Cage’s silent composition 4’33” [1952] does. egories still characterizes his work. Although, in Beyond the Dream Syndicate. But, second, Give up your notion of what is music being at present I think it’s interesting to see how, the subtitle of your book is “Tony Conrad and BWJ: Not necessarily working with time, not performed on stage and open yourself up to now that we know even more about Tony’s the Arts after Cage.” I think of that as very working with performance, not working with sounds that are in the concert hall or—if you career, he rings changes on certain pieces much of an organizing force for the multiple space in the same way, not engaging with happen to be in the Maverick Concert Hall in and makes certain series, varying and testing disciplinary practices that Tony was engaged the full multiplicity of stimuli. Tony and Henry Woodstock, where the piece premiered and different manifestations or permutations of in in the 1960s. I’m not sure that in the 1990s encounter Cage after Allan Kaprow has pushed that opens up physically to the actual woods— ideas. We can think of the various cooked and there’s a single kind of gravitational force that into Happenings, which is part of Cage’s leg- accept those sounds from the natural setting as processed films. He’s like, “I’m gonna do one needs to be broken that would have been akin acy, which has become this incredibly hetero- having an aesthetic component. with pressure by hammering it. I’m gonna do to moving past the composer John Cage. geneous place that’s already crossed media When Tony meets Jack Smith, at least as one by electrifying it,” for instance—all these and disciplinary boundaries. Then, of course, he was recounting the story to me, he finds different, alternative ways to “expose” film. BWJ: Definitely, that whole idea of having to Tony and Henry immediately trip into La Monte that Smith posed a challenge to his aesthetic Then he goes into, “Oh, well, then I can cook move past Cage in that way came from discus- Young and his circle and George Maciunas sensibility. He saw what we now recognize as it. I can make a film in which film substitutes sions with Tony about how important it was for 52 53 and the Fluxus circle that are developing the the camp side of Smith or the allegorical side of Smith’s work, recovering outmoded things, DG: I think media artists in the late 1970s and you get feedback. It’s film as performance, film didn’t take for granted the space or place as a real challenge. For Tony, it was like, “OK, early ’80s in Buffalo have the same open-ended as music, film as video, and it also relates to of artistic practice. You’ve talked about first I can accept all this new, avant-garde stuff, but promise that becoming a composer might have feedback like guitar amp feedback and attains seeing Tony’s films or videos in rock clubs, can I accept Smith’s recovery and reformula- had in 1959 or 1960. another resonance with that. There’s what I as opposed to more institutionalized settings. tion of old stuff, like old Hollywood movies?” want to call a perverse medium specificity. . . I think both of us were at the Also, Tony is opening himself to subjective dif- BWJ: That might have been the case. Although [laughter] . . . where he’s interrogating what memorial concert at the club Tonic many ference, to a very different community. Cage’s media artists are sometimes sectioned off this medium can do and then figuring out in a years ago, where Tony did the piece with community is a queer community of a certain from the more gallery-centered art world, it’s different way what it can do, or what it can’t do, the drill, which we now recognize as one of kind, but Jack Smith’s community is a queer an aspect of Tony’s work that I think makes and then making it do it anyway. the Phonarmonica works from the Invented community of a very different kind. This is him legible to somebody like Cory Arcangel Acoustical Tools, right? [For an example from another example of how, for Tony, it’s a more as this kindred spirit from another generation. DG: Film Feedback, really, for me, was one of 2003, see fig. 137.] or less direct move from one thing (Cage) to So, it isn’t that surprising to me that Cory and the most potent of his works that I encountered another (Smith), but it’s so vast in terms of its Tony would have this connection, and that in the 1990s when I was first trying to wrap my DG: Yes. [laughs] Uh-huh. implications beyond what other people would Cory would take on realizing Tony’s massive brain around the work of his that extended far necessarily connect or see. project Music and the Mind of the World, which beyond music. Jim O’Rourke, Kevin Drumm, BWJ: It began with him talking about being began decades earlier, in 2017. It’s such a vast and I presented a screening of that film with a close to the same generation as Fahey—which DG: It makes you wonder what Tony’s orien- musical project that it’s really not just a musical live musical score at the already had a certain poignancy because tation toward recovering works from different project. It becomes a media project, and it in 1996. It was met with such a blah response Fahey had, of course, just passed away—and stages of his own production would have been needs a certain media to be realized.7 that at the time it would have been difficult theirs being a generation that had encountered without the example of Jack Smith. to imagine Tony’s work finding footing in an 78 RPM records, and how the needle was so DG: I’ve started to encounter Music and the academic context in the way that it certainly tough on that era of record that playing it vir- BWJ: That’s a good point. It’s also interest- Mind of the World daily through a Twitter feed. has by now. tually destroyed it. He had this refrain, which ing to think about some other aspects that One of the things that people gravitated toward he kept saying: “You had to break the records condition Tony’s development and recovery very quickly with that piece as experienced via BWJ: Oh, really? you like,” or you had to destroy the records of his earlier work. As we mentioned about Twitter were things like who was born on a you liked. Then he was performing with the

the context of the arts post-Cage, Tony enters particular day or what happened in history on a DG: Yes. [laughs] drill instrument, and playing things on it, and PERVERSE MEDIUM SPECIFICITY the scene at a very heterogeneous moment. particular day. Now, if you follow this particu- breaking the records. This was a fully worked- Then, because his film The Flicker is so suc- lar Twitter feed, you can hear what Tony was BWJ: Funny. I wonder if the soundtrack was out performance art piece that he could have cessful, he gets coded as a filmmaker and, doing at the piano each day of the year.8 the issue, because there’s something about done in a more formal context. He could have particularly, as a structural filmmaker. It’s on watching Film Feedback in silence that’s very developed it for Performa or in some of the that basis that he gets a job at Antioch. The BWJ: That’s Cory, I’m sure, who did that. But funny. It’s this sort of mise-en-abyme of two-­ ways that he later did performances at Greene music never entirely goes away, but his artistic it points to the fact that Tony was always inter- dimensional scenes, almost like animation, and Naftali, but he just inserted it between the sets persona largely becomes that of a filmmaker. ested in new technologies. As any of us who the temporality is so slowed down that you see of two bands. That’s where you find him in the literature of went into his spaces knows, it was an archeol- something jiggle, and then you watch it jiggle a the 1960s and ’70s. Then he gets hired in the ogy of new and outmoded technologies. little bit further back, and you watch it jiggle DG: Yes, and he described it to me in advance BRANDEN W. JOSEPH AND DAVID GRUBBS Department of Media Study at the University a little bit further back again. But about that as, “I’m DJing.” [laughter] at Buffalo, which is filled with other modernist DG: I was going to say new technologies and screening: one thing that I’ve said before, which and/or structural filmmakers, really outmoded, trash technologies. was always very impressive to me, is that Tony BWJ: That was soon after the Thuunderboy! and most prominently, but there was absolutely unafraid to “fail” in public, to CD [2002] had come out, I think. were other figures such as James Blue and BWJ: Exactly! But he never simply jumped on try something new in a certain context and see the Vasulkas, as well. I’ve always thought it the bandwagon with new technologies, new how it played. Some of those “failures,” such DG: I should also say that he told me after the was interesting that the three filmmakers— media. He always interrogated: “What is it that as the way that he talks about everyone leaving fact that those records were spinning at, what, Frampton, Sharits, and Conrad—all enter it’s good for? And how can it be used? And how the original screening of “The Army Movie” 3,000 RPMs or something like that? All of Buffalo as structural filmmakers, high mod- can you then use it against the grain?” He was [Hail the Fallen, 1981] are really failures of the these 78 RPM records stacked on a very long ernists, in some sense, because so consistent in using stuff against the grain, audience, because “The Army Movie” is incred- drill bit. moved back into a genre of high modernism. like in Film Feedback [1974]. That’s a perfect ible. It brings so much together by creating this Then they all become media artists, working example where it’s like, “Oh, video’s the new work that interrogates the history of genre film BWJ: Yeah, I’m glad nobody lost an eye. with computers or working with video or other thing. Video can do immediate feedback,” via a theorization of power relations. I think it’s technologies. Maybe Sharits less so than oth- and Tony was like, “I’m going to make film also related to him thinking about, probably, DG: When he touched the needle to them, they ers, but he also makes a video. I think what’s do immediate feedback.” Then it immediately Eleanor Antin’s works like The Nurse and the would just explode. It was really unbelievable. interesting is that in that period, the late 1970s also creates this whole performative process. Hijackers [1977] or The Angel of Mercy [1977– into the ’80s and early ’90s, Tony never really I’m sure you’ve heard him talk about shooting 81], where she’s interrogating things through BWJ: Another example: I don’t know if you becomes a video artist, at least not solely a Film Feedback and how the film comes off the invented personas of different kinds. That’s one came to these, but the series of Harmonic video artist in the way that many other people back of the camera, then goes into the devel- of the strongest pieces of his that I think still Seminars that he did at the old West Nile space are at the time. Rather, I think he inhabits and oper, then into the fixer—I forget the exact hasn’t been fully engaged and assimilated. on the waterfront in Williamsburg . . . 9 deterritorializes the notion of video in that sequence—and it has to be timed because the “minor” sense that he does with so many whole process has to take place in the dark, so it DG: No. I think in all likelihood, future audi- DG: I really wish that I had gone to those. I feel other genres. But he also becomes a media has to be done with a metronome, which makes ences will fail. . . . like I’ve had many conversations with people artist, which is a very different thing entirely it a performance and also, in a way, music. Then after the fact about those. than being a video artist. In some way, it’s in the freshly developed film runs underneath the BWJ: [laughs] I think it’s also worthwhile to that role that he could do anything because door to the other room to get projected back think about how Tony addressed the place BWJ: Those were also fully worked out, very “media” at large isn’t really defined. [laughs] onto a screen where the camera is filming it, so 54 55 of artistic practice, how he interrogated and serious. You thought it was just a lecture, but then you realized, after hearing Tony talk about the drilling, he delivered something very the Pre-Socratics and things, that he’s staging special, which was an incredible concert of his it on the model of ancient Greek pedagogy, minimal style performance. It’s a bit like what where people come and have a contract you were talking about in performing Slapping with an instructor. It was a school, but it was Pythagoras, that you’d expected a certain also a complete performance piece, staged kind of refined minimalism and got, instead, at West Nile because that was the studio he this very hard-edged sound. I think that’s an shared with Carbon and others. He didn’t feel important part of what kept Tony from being he needed to pitch it to the New Museum or just a legacy artist in the 1990s. somewhere with more visibility. He worked out the whole thing himself and said, “OK, cool. DG: He once told me that before he started I’m going to do it.” There’s something import- teaching at Buffalo, when he first went there ant about the fact that he thought artistic prac- to show films, he had the idea that he would tice could live in various different spaces and shoot a film while also showing recent films of places. It’s not that he didn’t seek an audience his. To shoot the film while they were showing or legitimation or context. It’s that he was so films, there needed to be additional illumina- open to different audiences, different contexts, tion. Fireworks were the answer, and so fire- and different possibilities that he could do works were set off in the screening room. This work on the steps of Buffalo City Hall, or public story came up in talking about the changes access television, or a disused space in Times undergone by the over Square, or West Nile, or the stage at Tonic. It’s time. He said if he did anything like that at the not necessarily that all those pieces received present moment, he would be arrested, but in the same amount of attention as something like the particular year that he did it, they gave him realizing “The Jail Movie” [Jail Jail (unfinished, a full-time job. [laughter] filmed 1982–83)] as the installation WiP [2013] This conversation took place in New York, September that required extensive fabrication and every- PERVERSE MEDIUM SPECIFICITY 20, 2017. thing, but it did require thought and a serious amount of care to do those pieces. Another thing that I think is important is that Tony was, as you mentioned, funny and he Notes

could be very loose, but he never lost his edge. 1. Brian Duguid, “Tony Conrad Interview,” EST 7 I remember the Tate Modern Turbine Hall per- (Summer 1996), http://media.hyperreal.org/zines/est/ formance in 2008—Unprojectable: Projection intervs/conrad.html. and Perspective [fig. 26]—where he began with 2. Branden W. Joseph, Beyond the Dream Syndicate: a version of one of the process films in which Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (Brooklyn: Zone BRANDEN W. JOSEPH AND DAVID GRUBBS Books, 2008). you drill several holes into a reel of film leader 3. Dan Warburton, “Interview with Luc Ferrari,” Paris and then project the film, which has what look Transatlantic Magazine (Summer 1998), http://www.paris- like spots or dots on it. At the Tate, he decided transatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/ferrari.html. to do it with amplification on the drill. 4. Joseph, Beyond the Dream Syndicate, 53. 5. David Grubbs, “Always at the End: Artist, Composer, and Filmmaker Tony Conrad in Conversation,” Frieze 124 DG: Ooh. [laughs] (June–August 2009): 142–47, https://frieze.com/article/ always-end. BWJ: So the first sound is this incredibly 6. See Joseph, “What Is a Minor History?” in Beyond the loud power drill grind resonating throughout Dream Syndicate, 11–58. the Turbine Hall. People are literally rushing 7. Published in 2017 by Cory Arcangel’s Arcangel Surfware, Music and the Mind of the World is available at out the door covering their children’s ears. musicandthemindofthe.world. Tony clearly recognized—and decided to put 8. Arcangel Surfware launched the associated Twitter bot a wrench into—the type of populism that a “On This Day” (@on_this_day_mmw) in September 2017. program such as the Unilever series at the Tate 9. On the Harmonic Seminars, see page 33. Modern Turbine Hall called for. A lot of artists did great work in that series, but everyone had to deal with the spectacularization and the size of that space. Olafur Eliasson does a giant sun that you can lie down and look at; Tania Bruguera deals with the context very differently by having a riot policeman on horseback move the crowd around, and so on. Tony was equally sophisticated in understanding that this is a big populist event and essentially responded, “People are coming to be entertained, and Fig. 26. Unprojectable: Projection and Perspective (2008), performed by Conrad at USB Openings: I’m not going to give them what they want.” Saturday Live, Tate Modern Turbine Hall, June 14, 2008. Performance by four string players (two violins, [laughter] Then, for those who made it through 56 57 cello, bass) in two duets with shadow projections, running time: 71 minutes. Photo: Sheila Burnett.