Parachute, 1 avril 1976, Avril - Juin

[" RACH UT STEREO LP 1006/10 CHATHAM SQUARE MICHAEL SNOW MUSICS FOR PIANO,WHISTLING AND TAPE RECORDER Nffly first consideration in writing the text which you are now, I presume, reading (\u201cpresume\": I guess that this text will stiil be here to read later even if you aren't reading it now) was to write something which when printed would cover all four faces of this album.Of several ideas for a design for this album cover or jacket this seemed at the time to be the best.Remains to be seen.Ruminations gradually clarified to this stage: I would write something that would fulfill several requirements, the basic one being that it function as a \"design\" or \"image\" that would be both decorative and \"plastic\".Another requirement that might better be approached now as an intention or ambition was the image 064269 PARACHUTE directeurs de la publication FRANCE MORIN CHANTAL PONTBRIAND collaborateurs EVE CARPI THIERRY CHABANNE CHRISTIANE CHARETTE TOM DEAN JACQUELINE FRY PHILIP FRY RAYMOND GERVAIS SUZANNE GIROUX WALTER KLEPAC RAMON PELINSK! JEAN-MARIE POINSOT NORMAND THÉRIAULT système graphique ROLAND POULIN montage PIERRE BOOGAERTS PARACHUTE n\u2019est pas responsable des documents qui lui sont adressés ou non réclamés.tous droits de reproduction et de traduction réservés.les articles publiés n\u2019engagent que la responsabilité de leurs auteurs.PARACHUTE C.P.730 - Succursale N Montréal, Québec, Canada H2X 3N4 (514) 522-9167 publication trimestrielle le numéro\t$2.50 abonnement 9.00 étranger $15.00 (par avion) Dépôt iégal à la Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec et à la Bibliothèque Nationale du Canada.2ième trimestre 1976 Imprimerie Québécoise Servaco Montréal, Québec courrier de 2e classe enregistrement (autorisation en cours) ISSN 0318-7020 crédits photographiques pages 4-5 - La Galerie nationale du Canada pages 6-8-9 - Brian Merrett and Jennifer Harper pages 13-18 - Henk Visser pages 19-21 - George Swinton pages 32-33 - Pierre Falardeau \u2022 page 34 Maria Cardenas couverture MICHAEL SNOW, pochette de disque avril, mai, juin 1976 4 HENRY SAXE interview by Philip Fry 11 QUÉBEC \u201875 six mois plus tard par Normand Thériault 13 DAVID RABINOWITCH the construction of vision 73/75 by Walter Klepac 1 9 \u201cWe are still alive\u201d de LES LEVINE ou \u201cLa provocation ratée\u201d texte de Jacqueline Fry 23 TOM DEAN It feels like heaven 27 MICHAEL SNOW Musics for piano, whistling, microphone and tape recorder de Raymond Gervais 32 PIERRE FALARDEAU sur le film et le vidéo au Québec une entrevue de Chantal Pontbriand 35 LUIS DE PABLO une entrevue de Ramon Pélinski 38 INFORMATIONS Philip Fry: Henry, you called the five pieces you exhibited this winter an \u201cinstrument series\u201d.When I first saw the pieces, they struck me as being.well, very.urn, quite different from each other visually, and the thought of grouping them as a series still makes me wonder.I guess what I\u2019m curious about is why.no, how your work settled into that kind of a context.Henry Saxe.lt.ah, the instrument idea.Well, it happened sometime while I was working on the pieces.I just realized what I was doing - the mechanical principles and the.procedures, the procedures I was using seemed to indicate that I was building some form of instrument.I started thinking about things like weight - you know, to get balance in \u201cOver and Under\u201d - and I got involved locating points of view, sighting angles of view in \u201cSight-site\u201d.And then there\u2019s the fact that the level is a kind of sighting instrument.Well, the things that were happening suggested the instrument idea.Because I didn\u2019t have a preconceived idea of shapes or forms.(Extrait d\u2019une conversation avec Henry Saxe, sculpteur, à la page 4.) 3 Wedge, metal, wood, rope (four elements) 1971-72 132\u201d to 34\" (The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) The following text is an edited version of two taped conversations with Henry Saxe following the exhibition of his \u201cInstrument Series\u201d at the Agnes Etherington Art Gallery (1 9 Oct.-30 Nov., 1975) and the Owens Art Gallery (25 Jan.-15 Fev., 1976).The first tape was recorded on Dec.7, 1975 at Tamworth, Ontario.I would like to thank Jessica Bradley (J.B.) for her important contributions to that conversation.The second tape, recorded in Ottawa on Feb 29, 1976, was used to clarify and supplement the first conversation.One spin-off of these discussions was the correction of some details in the poem-captions published in the catalogue.I have inserted the corrected captions into the text under the appropriate sub-headings.P.F.Henry, you called the five pieces you exhibited this winter an \u201cinstrument series\u201d.When I first saw the pieces, they struck me as being.well, very.urn, quite different from each other visually, and the thought of grouping them as a series still makes me wonder.I guess what I'm curious about is why.no, how your work settled into that kind of a context.H S.It.ah.the instrument idea.Well, it happened sometime while I was working on the pieces.I just realized what I was doing - the mechanical principles and the.procedures, the procedures I was using seemed to indicate that I was building some form of instrument.I started thinking about things like weight - you know, to HENRY SAXE in conversation (about the instrument series) Philip Fry get balance in \u201cOver and Under\u201d - and I got involved locating points of view, sighting angles of view in \u201cSight-site\u201d.And then there\u2019s the fact that the level is a kind of sighting instrument.Well, the things that were happening suggested the instrument idea.Because I didn\u2019t have a preconceived idea of shapes or forms.P.F.But how.with no preconceived forms.no plan, how did you.um, how did your work settle into a single orientation, one direction.?H.S.Well, you know.I always just start working.I had pieces of scrap metal and bar stock lying around the shop and I just.well, I went to work with that.P.F.Isn\u2019t that quite a change from the way you worked in the late 60\u2019s?I mean, the new procedure seems to be a less planified way of putting things together.H.S.Ah.yeah, there is a big difference.I used to make, to use modules as the basis of my sculpture.You know, the \u201clink\u201d and the \u201cgrid\u201d pieces.they involved joining similar elements, the modules.Now I\u2019ve gotten into making and joining elements that are not similar in shape but are similar to a concept, a total idea.J.B.or there could be similarity of just the joining mechanism but not necessarily of the separate parts.H.S.The concept could concern the size of the elements, or their mass.P.F.So each piece involves mental relations that are just as important as the.um, well, the purely visual relations?H.S.Sure, there\u2019s the mathematical indentities.and other things that are pure physical realities like weight.P.F.But if that total idea or concept doesn\u2019t exist before you start assembling the piece, I still don\u2019t see how some direction comes out of the first stages.H.S.Well, some detail might catch my attention and suggest an idea to work on.or maybe it could be something morelyrical, something that happens as I\u2019m mani pulating the materials that.that indicates a formal structure, a pattern or With Reference to Pythagoras, painted wood and steel, 1974, 96\u201d x 55 3/4\u201d x 1 74\u201d.(The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa) & ^ «S»; M&m mm iÊmm .iS® St#ÉSl® Tr.i ; WÈmÊêËÊÈm m raMI æSiM SiilS 1 sni :\tv.£ \u2018\"frWH aAtifi&MluiMA iSsSfi SiiHHBÉi ;.Y,:Y M mœm s ¦ ¦¦ s ¦ gggM i isap' SMBS iilci r;flV ;= Hüï&$ $@8 if»?; : .nte'a\t; ®SSsMi - ;V'T.mm.m Wm ïï^M Si%⧠W%0s.a«P£?something like that.P.F.Huhm.I\u2019m not getting my question across very well.I mean, when you start, you manipulate the materials to do something.The materials are lying around and you talk of getting an idea while you\u2019re.urn, puttering around with the stuff.My question is about what do you do, how do you proceed when you are just puttering around?H.S.Mnn.I see.I try to use a logic, a kind of logic of the materials.Ah, the way they have been used., employed technically in history.I adopt the forms of use, and try to make sculpture from that.You know, using the same principles and the same attitudes as a builder, the way the trades are used in construction.P.F.So your puttering around involves.the way particular materials have been used, the adoption of a tradition?H.S.The way to say it is.Well, if I\u2019m going to cut a piece of steel, I\u2019ll cut it the same way that someone who\u2019s not an artist would cut it.Or if I were to use wood, like the wood employed in \u201cWith Reference to Pythagoras\u201d to make a partition, I\u2019d do it like any carpenter.Or making a knot - that\u2019s a good example, right?to tie things together, I won\u2019t invent a knot, I\u2019ll use the proper knot.the knot that suits the job.P.F.That seemsto suggestbuilding up an inventory of knots.!.H.S.Yeah.that\u2019s.a lyrical interest of my own, a particular effort I make, and I put it to work.P.F.Urn.uh, I was just thinking about one of your pieces at the National Gallery - the one with the ladder, it\u2019s called \u201cWedge\u201d I think - the hanging triangular part involves a lot of lashing and binding.and knots.I guess what I\u2019m getting at is that the knots aren\u2019t simply.urn, a traditional wayof using the materials, they actually form parts of the piece, you can see them in the piece as a kind of device.H.S.Hmm.I\u2019m not quite sure what you\u2019re getting at.P.F.Me neither, because it\u2019s still mixed up.But I\u2019ve a feeling that what you call the \u201clogic\u201d or the \u201cform of use\u201d of materials.Well, I think that that involves at least two different relationships and I\u2019m trying to pin them down.Urn, when you identify traditional building activities like cutting, leveling and some kinds of joining, it seems to me that what you\u2019re doing is selecting models of procedure.And so, when you\u2019ve used one of these procedural models, the form of the piece you\u2019ve made, that way it is shaped, becomes a kind of evidence.because you can see it as a result of the procedure or.maybe even as an example of the model.What I\u2019m getting at is that understanding the piece would have to involve grasping the procedure by which it was made.Then there\u2019s the other relationship which has to do with things like knots, wedges and bolts.Urn.in this case, while they refer to a technical procedure or even a model, in their actual use they become a material part of the piece and are visible as units.See what I mean.?H.S.Maybe.maybe we should talk about particular pieces.WITH REFERENCE TO PYTHAGORAS One right angle interwoven triangular plane ten squares on the hypotenuse one right angle one three panel reverse corner section one diagonal base plate 'wo carpenter square shapes cornering.one six sectioned block with reference to Pythagoras P.F.Sure, OK.Urn, the relationship between knots and the way you used them in \u201cWedge\u201d - the knots are not only a procedural model, they are visibly incorporated in the piece - is very different from the way you used the carpenter\u2019s square in \u201cWith Reference to Pythagoras\u201d.H.S.In that piece, the carpenter\u2019s square is a kind of jig, a key.P.F.There.that\u2019s what I\u2019m trying to get at.In \u201cPythagoras\u201d the square is a tool, a model for an arrangement of elements, but it doesn\u2019t actually enter into the piece.At least, not in the same way as the knots do in \u201cWedge\u201d.In it, the knots appear as something very material, something that you see right there as a part of the piece, whereas the carpenter\u2019s square just isn\u2019t there, it\u2019s a model that\u2019s exemplified by all the right angles.H.S.Yeah.I guess so.The square isn\u2019t there, not one-to-one.Not like.uh, when you think about the concept of \u201cknot\u201d and how it.I mean, to have a knot, you have to make it, and for that you need rope as having the flexibility to adapt to the knot shape.P.F.So the knot can\u2019t just be a principle to apply, it has to be there materially, if it\u2019s to be there at all.5 - *¦ , \u2018\tT-7- liTWlT ''s * .\u2022\u2022i'- I a HI Sg?is2i -v'ji.vv^ H.S.But if you\u2019re thinking of the carpenter\u2019s square, what you are involved in is interpreting its use as a principle.In that sense, there are squares in \u201cPythagoras\".Um, the base piece - that\u2019s the part separated from the main section - I would interpret it as involving two squares lying flat at the corners but not having the same proportions.And they are only right angles, after all.I interpret it that way because the whole concept of the piece is based on the carpenter's square.1 hat was my taking-off point, the thing that got me to the point of using my licence with the image.P.F.Your licence.?H.S Well, the concept is based on the square, but the work isn\u2019t totally dependent on that.There were choices to be made because of the materials, about what parts to retain to create the image, to illustrate the concept.And, uh, the proportions aren't precise, there are things that aren\u2019t exact, even some of the lines aren't squared off.But visually, it's.well, I feel it s acceptable to say: \u201cThese are my squares.\u2019\u2019 P.F.What are you getting at.?H S That it\u2019s about my interpretation.of my concept, of how the concept is involved in making the piece.I guess it\u2019s a lyrical interpretation of a concept.P.F.Maybe lyrical, but it seems to me that the square-as-model makes it more.well, visually coherent than \u201cSight-site\", for example.H.S.Which is because \u201cSight-site\" has a lot more to do with adopting different positions; \u201cPythagoras\u201d involves a fixed position, it is a fixed-position sculpture.You can only fix yourself to see the sculpture from one position There\u2019s not much point in moving around a lot Whereas with \u201cSight-site\u201d, you take up, you can plan which are the aesthetic views as you walk around it in a circle, you can pinpoint, you can make up your own choices.SIGHT-SITE One vertical sight-site one six-sided level plane four floating concrete bases four angled hexagon supports four adjustable wedges adjust to seasonal movement of terrain horizontal adjust indoors shore up concrete bases to plumb remove one concrete vertical slab supporting one vertical device five negative spaces various rock shims adjust to constant level of floor plane vertical P.F.And these \u201caesthetic views\u201d - what determines them?H.S.Well, ah.formal.um, yeah, formal conditions, sculptural conditions.yeah, I\u2019d say so.P.F.Like lining up the verticals and getting a.Sight-site, metal, cement, stone, 1973-74 .*% ¦.-:«\u2022 \u2022 ' VsDp&vY v *.-, vgfe r 6 H.S.Yeah.like with the metal plate on the top - lining up that horizontal plane - when you see it, from where you see it, it appears as a line until you get right in close to the sculpture and then you realize it\u2019s a plane.Or you can get away back or higher up or on a different terrain to look down on the little vertical piece.which is the point, the center from which you go around the piece and line up.what you want to see is the background of the sculpture.ah, using the sculpture to.J.B.But to me, the most important thing.well, it\u2019s always occured to me how \u201cSight-site\u201d differs from other pieces in the series.It has to do with the installation, it has to be at a certain height.Outside, that depends on the levelness of the ground and how that top plate can be sighted to the horizon line.Sure, you can get up on a hill or something, but basically that plate should be seen at chin level so that sights line up with factors in the environment.H.S.Well, with that plate.I\u2019ve always been conscious of what level people see sculpture from.To me, looking at sculpture from a certain height is very significant.in how you perceive the angles of view, set up a perspective.I tried to take that into account, so I based \u201cSight-site\u201d on what level you\u2019d see the plate as a line, a line of the same apparent thickness as the hexagonal bar pieces or the heavier pieces in the other element.From certain places, if you look further back, those heavier pieces in the other element become almost the same thickness as the materials in the foreground.P.F.And to perceive that, you have to change your position.H.S.Oh yeah.I used heavier gauge materials so that under some conditions, when you\u2019re looking at it.the lines seem the same.But you can\u2019t work it out mathematically because you\u2019ve got to see the piece from multiple distances and angles, right?Anyway, I intentionally made it so that the cable or one of the thick bars would be seen at certain points as being the same thickness as the vertical hexagonal bar.P.F.Why hexagonal.?H.S.That\u2019s one-inch bar stock that has six halfinch facets.They have a numerical relationship with the plate which also has six sides.I used those numbers as a set.urn, to establish a key, a logic to put together the piece.That gives me a standard.well, my own kind of standard, because the plate isn\u2019t a regular shape with equal sides and the bar stock is not really a standard in practical use.Hexagonal bars are used by a blacksmith because they are a workable shape, the corners are less difficult to round off.So I can get involved in using round and hexagonal bars that are of the same thickness - the same bar stock - but there\u2019s a graphic quality in the surface, right on the surface of the material.And that can be seen in relationship to the cable, the stranded cable that shows a spiraling through.ah, in the line.So you have spiraling through a linear element.I mean, these details are very important to me during the construction.P.F.Urn.it seems to me that we\u2019ve shifted from talking about sighting with the piece to what can be seen in the piece.And I have a problem of always seeing a bit of the top surface of that plate.H.S.Because you\u2019re fairly tall.What I\u2019m trying to get at is that linearity, that thickness seen as a line.If a person is taller, then his line of sight isn\u2019t exactly onto the edge of the horizontal plane that I\u2019ve established by shimming up the piece.So when you look at it dead-on, then you see the edge plus a bit of surface.But you can adjust your height to see mere or less surface added to the thickness.so the edge can become a horizontal line.P.F.I want to try a different approach - for you, are there.urn, are there angles or places from which the sighting doesn\u2019t really work?H.S.I know I said something like that to you before, but it\u2019s not entirely true.It\u2019s just one of the aspects of this piece, that I keep trying to regroup different angles of view logically into a visual wholeness.I think that after inspecting parts of the piece, when you look at those parts, you make the piece up in your mind.Well, after you are very conscious about knowing exactly what each shape is, then there\u2019s straight-forward elements.When you look at sculpture as parts, you\u2019re always in your mind trying.there\u2019s a process going on in your mind trying to regroup them.P.F.What about that sort of separate section then, those uprights attached to the long bar that sags down.urn, the whole thing that\u2019s supported by some stones piled up and sections of cable and bar-stock.H.S.Well, what really interests me with that shape is that you have six vertical devices but they only define five interior or negative spaces.And I like the five-six combination.P.F.But it seems to me that the end uprights.Well, because the whole thing is so linear, the end pieces open up two non-determined spaces along that axis.H.S.Mnn.no, I don\u2019t look at it that way.They are like the frame of a canvas, the vertical and horizontal lines are always part.they always do something to the surface and any shape that\u2019s painted.P.F.Maybe this isn\u2019t getting clear or maybe there\u2019s a real difference here.I see what you mean when you\u2019re talking about the piece installed in a gallery, inside in a place where you deliberately get rid of things that don\u2019t belong to the piece itself.But when it\u2019s outside.H.S.It\u2019s just more clinical inside.that\u2019s all.P.F.That\u2019s what I\u2019m not so sure about.In the gallery, it\u2019s very clinical, very cleanly defined, and you can say: \u201cHere are my materials, my internal relations, my negative spaces\u201d.and that's it.But when the piece was outside, I had the feeling that it was grabbing on to things out in the field, all those incidents you set your sight on with the piece.What I'm saying is that the internal definition - that\u2019s what you see mostly in the gallery - shifts and acts more as a way of gearing the piece into the environment, to what\u2019s happening around it.H.S.Ah.well, the way I look at that.is that the graphic shapes are related to anything in the landscape.like a tree, you can line up things.I like what happens inside the whole picture.P.F.But that\u2019s why I was talking about those end pieces as opening up to.H.S.There\u2019s something else that\u2019s interesting.Why I located it there.There was a fence running across the back, and it seemed to be a logical thing to have happening visually inside the piece.There\u2019ll always be something happening in most landscapes, something in the nature of a reference line.P.F.You did have something like that at the Agnes Etherington showing.There was that line on the wall.That was given, I mean, outside the internal definition of \u201cSight-site\u201d.H.S.Sure, I had to consider that line.But, well.the internal definition of the piece works all the same.it\u2019s always necessary to get in close to the piece, line up things and even get involved looking at details for that matter.but you\u2019ll still see, still refer to the background, the periphery.the azimuth.P.F.I\u2019m still interested in how you started off making this piece.urn, how you came to think of a sighting instrument.H.S.Well, I just started working in the shop, building the piece on the ground and I discovered that it had to be lifted up.So to do that, I thought that I\u2019d bring the whole thing out into the open.P.F.How much of the piece was.already done when you made the move?H.S.All the steel parts, everything that had to be welded and bolted.The way it was inside, the location, wasn\u2019t successful.So I decided I would install it outside to make it.well, illustrate more or less what I was attempting to do.I had problems with seeing inside the shop, because I couldn\u2019t get back or go in a circle around the piece.P.F.But what was it that made you.uh, dissatisfied?H.S.You see, I wanted to make a piece that would work indoors and outdoors - that\u2019s my contrary nature again, using oppositions.Anyhow, I ended up trying to work the piece into where I would be putting it.exactly.That was by thinking that if I started by constructing a level plane, I could bring it up to the height I wanted on a site by adding another cement part.That would mean I could bring it back into an interior space.I was thinking of the piece in a double way, for inside or outside, using the plane as a constant.the starting point of my sculptures being a level plane.P.F.So the instrument is based on a horizontal.H.S.Well, just accepting the fact that you\u2019re putting the sculpture on a floor which is a flat plane.Or considering the problem that.ah, if you put a sculpture on an uneven terrain, like a natural setting, that.from where you start off - from the ground up - that the intermediary spaces used to support the sculpture you\u2019ve made are as significant as the sculpture itself.P.F.Then when you took the steel sections outside, you had to pour concrete feet.And you put metal wedges between the feet and the superstructure.H.S.The wedges were added after I\u2019d built the supports, I built four of them, four shapes.And when the piece was relocated inside the gallery, they weren\u2019t necessary any more, so I just put three of them on the floor.P.F.Why weren\u2019t they needed.?H.S.Because my feeling was that.once I\u2019d shimmed it up, the level was established and constant.P.F.The floor does that.H.S.But outside, the wedges were used.ah, needed, because in the springtime everything starts shifting and there is a relocation.That\u2019s something to be anticipated when you\u2019re installing things outdoors.P.F.As well as being visual elements, then, the wedges are functional.used to keep that line horizontal.H.S.Yeah.because those cement supports might appear to some people as foundations, but they aren\u2019t at all.They were poured directly onto the ground.So the frost reshapes the piece.that\u2019s one of the things I like.I like the effects of time altering things like the location, the physical changes.What interests me are 7 things that are stable and things that are unstable.and how I can make comparisons.OVER AND UNDER On a horizontal plane four ten foot lengths of metal stock one square one round one flexible one segmented in ten parts four six-sided blocks three aluminum one steel one six-sided half inch plate one balanced section of wedged parts tack welded and galvanized three one inch across flats hex-bars one axe wedge a horizontal balance over and under P.F Uh.I just noticed.there are things that I thought were clear, and now I\u2019m not so sure.It seems to me that we\u2019ve been talking - the way we\u2019ve been talking - about three different sorts of things: there\u2019s how you get involved in the process of making the piece.and another thing is what there is to see, I mean what is given visually in the piece.and we\u2019ve also been talking about how \u201cSight-site\u201d acts as an instrument.And well, I hadn\u2019t seen \u201cOver and Under\u201d quite like that, I got involved with how it balances.H.S.That one.it started off with one part.with me trying to put together a shape - putting things over and under, not knowing how I would apply it.P.F.Does it make any sense then, to ask you how you got involved with the number ten, or what you thought about the relationship between straight and curved lines and things like that?H.S.Some of it has to do.ah, with sort of opposed elements that eventually made the piece work for me.The other thing is the fact that I tried to keep the work consistent.I used four lengths of metal stock all ten feet long and as I walked around the piece, I wanted that round piece of bar stock to be curved.And instead of saying: \u201cWell, aesthetically it would be nice to divide this curve I want into six parts\u201d, I figured I\u2019d use ten, divide the ten foot length into ten sections by cutting part way through.The rest was trying to keep to that code, instead of relying on my pure instinct.To rely on the code numerically, to see how far I could go, how far I could push it.because it gets involved in a form of symmetry.P.F.Humm.maybe I should tell you that when I first tried to get into \u201cOver and Under\u201d I kept having a difficulty trying to determine what I was supposed to deal with.You know, there\u2019s the obvious references to the way the whole thing holds together and how it ba'ances there.But then there\u2019s the linear.well, draughted qualities that happen with the metal bars.And I could spend a lot of time wondering about this as a three-dimensional drawing.J -Meg- ¦ v.; mmm SMPjta* smsm Over and under, steel and aluminium, 1974 (The Canada Council Art Bank) H.S.It\u2019s.it\u2019s that.You know, you can look at it easily as a drawing, as something weightless, but if you look at it as weight or balance, then you\u2019ll see that each shape has not only its surface qualities.you accept that it has heavy parts to it and light parts.Ah, a drawing, it\u2019s an illusion on a flat plane.But if you see \u201cOver and Under\u201d as sculpture, you have to think of it spatially.the fact that if there\u2019s more steel, more weight on one side, the piece won\u2019t work because it will fall over.P.F.Maybe we should try to trace your steps as you built the piece.H.S.We were talking earlier about whether I had a concept when I started.I didn\u2019t.I really started with one section - the part that is galvanized with the cold galvanizing stuff.I made it grey because it was the part made over and under, just weaving and springing the materials into place so that.in theory it should stay.If you knocked it, it would fall apart unless it were tack welded.But if you look at the shapes, where they lie together.they just lock themselves into one another.P.F.So the actual parts that made up the first section were a self-contained.H.S.A set.or you could call it a system if you want.It\u2019s the first system in the piece.P.F.That doesn\u2019t include the metal blocks.H.S.No.they are in other systems.P.S.So the first system involves two ten foot lengths, the plate and shorter bars that are wedged at one end and that small bar with wire to attach.H.S.Well, that\u2019s.I left that wire to make an attachment there, I left it instead of making another piece for that.At one point, there was a piece of cable woven to hold the bar in place, but I removed it and put the block of steel there.The block of steel makes the second system because it sets up the balance.The third part of the piece became lifting the balance off the ground.ah, placing it on those blocks.P.F.The first system wasn\u2019t balanced then, it was just interwoven steel stock.wedged together at one end with an axe-head.H.S.That locks it in.P.F.That means that system one is based on a weaving-tying-wedging operation, system two is balancing and three is.urn, lifting.But what about number four, isn\u2019t there a system that brings in the separate segment by recalling the curve of the bar.?H.S.It\u2019s more than that.P.F.There\u2019s also the block shape and the flexibility.and the whole thing is horizontal, right on the floor, so it\u2019s not balancing.H.S.It\u2019s.got nothing to do with balancing.it\u2019s to make the visual unity of the whole piece.The relation of lines to the plane, the floor.in a lot of cases, depending where you are looking from, you can\u2019t discern what is resting on the floor aTid what is above because that first system is over and under.So I put the flexible length on the floor and slid it under a bit so it would pass under that bar.P.F.And that is to re-establish the floor plane.sort of re-affirming the visual relations you want to have noticed.H.S.Yeah.sure.Because \u201cOver and Under\u201d is quite different visually.that is, its shapes and forms, than some of the others.for example \u201cthree is a Number of One\u201d.8 THREE IS A NUMBER OF ONE Three is a numDer ot one, steel, 1973 s '' *¦ ***?#/ ^ ^'1 \u2018a\u2019-./ \u2022«, ?.>T// -*¦ £ %v,\t'f /#;' MM* ¦ stiff MMM Vertical Romanesque Constructions ot Vision in Two sheets no.1, 1975, pencil on paper, each sheet: 50\u201d x 38\u201d, overall size: 100\u201d x 38\u201d.Vertical Rom^esque Constructions of Vision in Two Sheets no.2, 1975, pencil on paper, each sheet: 50\u201d x 38\u201d, overall size' 100\u201d x 38\" 16 O > P ) Vertical Romanesque Constructions ot Vision in two sheets no.3 pencil on paper, 1975, each sheet: 50\u201d x 38\u201d, overall size: 100\u201d x 38\" Vertical Romanesque Constructions of Vision in two sheets no.4, pencil on paper, 1975, each sheet: 50\u201d x 38\", overall size: 100\u201d x 38\u201d ¦ ¦ vu-i rçtfi 17 Vertical Romanesque Constructions of Vision in two sheets no.5 pencil on paper, 1975, each sheet: 50\u201d x 38\" overall size: 100\u201d x 38\" ciple of direct observation remains of course central to the \u201cFour Constructions\u2019\u2019 as it does for the entire Amati series (1974) of which it is a member and to the Vertical Romanesque Constructions of Vision in 2 Sheets (1 975).But these modified procedures allow Rabinowitch to turn the Construction of Vision series, as a whole, into a new direction: the drawings after 1973 become part of an extended investigation of perceiving scale, contiguity and the complex and illusive phenomena of comparing discrete observations.One of the limitations of the 1973 Construction series is that these drawings never quite attain the rich variety of appearances that is evident in the planar mass sculptures of this period.While all the components in both the drawings and the sculptures are clearly visible from the first and nothing is hidden, the fact that one has the opportunity to walk around the sculpture allows for the continual discovery of distinct views and new appearances due to the realigning of internal components of the sculpture such as the holes, the border edges and the cuts.Restricted by its virtual fron-tality, the drawing on the other hand must depend soley on its figures and their interrelationships to generate interesting and varied appearances.In the 1973 series, the device of switching back and forth between the literal plane of the sheet and the illusionary plane generated by the ellipses and the lines together with Rabinowitch\u2019s uncanny structuring of resulting effects affords, at best, only a finite range of appearances.Because of the pungent and inexplicably exact character of their individual figures these drawings never loose their freshness no matter how often we\u2019ve looked at them.Their limitation, however, is that repeated veiwings of them do not give any new insights or knowledge once we have detected the available number of possible relations and their organization.In \u201cFour Constructions\u2019\u2019 the figures of the early series (i.e., the circles and ellipses) become discrete constructions in and of themselves.Because of this increased autonomy of the individual constructions Rabinowitch is able to vary as he could not before both the intensity of a construction (the relative density of its outline) and its scale (its size and inherent special ambience) and thereby sustain greater viewer interest in each one.Furthermore, because he is concerned with our comparing constructions of the type in the drawing, the increased range of variation now possible in each construction permits an almost unlimited number of possible contrasts between constructions.Thus, the location of one construction near another calls attention to the generic differences or similarities between them - they do not, as in the 1973 Constructions, optically interact.The presence of the double construction serves to emphasize the relationships (scalar, spacial, and otherwise) between the other individual circles and ellipses in a given drawing.This pairing off of all the constructions in a drawing into sets of a circle and an adacent ellipsis provides the key terms to the special logic of observed relations present in \u201cFour Constructions\u201d and all the drawings after 1 973.Rabinowitch has in effect compensated for the lack of views inherent in a drawing as opposed to a sculpture by intensifying and complicating our acts of perception in the case of each construction and, by means of the logic of relations, has provided an extensive analysis of the full dimensions of comparative observations.We are gradually made saliently aware in looking at the constructions of a drawing like \u201cFour Constructions\u201d of the time factor involved in having to go from one construction to another and back again, of the separateness of each act of observation, of the non-hierarchical nature of observing discrete particulars, of the distance of our bodies from the drawings and hence, to our angle of vision.Our awareness of each of these conditions of actual vation is triggered, as it were, by the fact that the construction observed has taken on a distinct appearance.¦ 18 'tdfjHr**' ** -C , ^ * - .' ' M Jacqueline Fry fV /» pspipiini pl» ' \u201c/T FEELS LIKE HEAVEN\u201d THE THIEF Like god you are forgotten.amnesia, reflexion till absentia can\u2019t see the woods for the trees.the master thief\u2019s collateral is ancient, this criminal iteration, the palaver of mirrors, he moves invisible through crowded rooms, like god he is forgotten.the master thief\u2019s collateral is his vision, his mastery of reflex and reflexion, the mirror image.He is your shadow, the sound of your footsteps, and your reflexion in the mirror.Like god you are forgotten.Any vision which is ancient enough is considered both improbable and immortal.A vision unrepeated fades with time.At a certain age it achieves immortality.It is so long since we have seen god\u2019s face that we doubt his existence.The faint memory we retain achieves the verity of myth.When we glimpse the face of god the symbology of the myth is understood for what it is.Like the thief in my mirror you are forgotten you are the thief\u2019s collateral, sheltered by nepenthe spies must die or forget ancient, improbable, imortal.the thief\u2019s collateral is his capacity to be invisible, and to be everywhere.the thief\u2019s collateral is that with which he pays should his crimes be discovered.the thief\u2019s collateral is his vision, his mastery of reflex.the thief's collateral is oneself, casting the shadow which is the thief.the thief\u2019s collateral is the face of god.the thief\u2019s collateral is that which he thieves, our vision.the thief\u2019s collateral is security, reward, punishment and illusion.the thief\u2019s security, the spy\u2019s reward and punishment, the dupe's illusion, reward and punishment: god and women.Why like god?why like a thief?only because it is forgotten, one does not look on the face of god or into the eyes of a thief.Looking into your eyes is like looking into a mirror and finding it empty.Like god you are forgotten, but even this shadow at my feet even this face in the mirror even my footsteps, and oh, yours, even these faint spectres, dazzle my memory\u2019s clement eye.The vampire, the undead, must drink the blood of others, in a lust that gives life only to lust, the junkie draws his own blood, instills it with lust, and reinjects it.autoeroticism.the taste of blood is never forgotten, the tame animal, having tasted blood, becomes wild, the undead have dared to.taste the one taste desired the vampire's victim joins the undead.the vamp is a woman, the vagina is a wound.blood fed, the criminal still found.The blood of Christ is the blood of the lamb, the magician\u2019s own flesh on the altar, the magician swallows his own tail and disappears.23 We know truly only the dead because they exist only in our minds, the dead are at the mercy of the living, women are at the mercy of men.the demon rises, enter its mouth, the reflexion intolerable, our eyes viewing ourselves, the flesh turning on itself, as does the child, the demon living in the mirror, waiting for our eyes to invent it.living in the eyes, waiting for a mirror to invent it.the vampire casts no reflexion: or its reflexion is intolerable.Nor do angels, the vampire is transcendental because it has ceased to believe in its own reality: but its lust remains, lust without the beatification of ego.mirrors are cruel.Ironical that one wishes most to embrace an absence, the irony is the tragedy, the dilemma, the knot, the impossibility, the insolubility, the limits of one's self love: the limits of one\u2019s self love are defined by the irony that one most wants to embrace one's absence.Gaining strength, to be worthy of nothing Learning to move fast enough to fill the mirror Filling myself to not feel the gap Scraping bottom for the letter of the law, the runes.What fills no space is understood, loved.love and will: choice in the void.' \u2022 mm\" THE GIFT When I wake each morning with you inside me, my little morning nightmare, I don't believe you love me for a minute.Possession is penetration, making a woman of the possessed Wake each, morning.Like a prayer, the pain of penetration, each morning again and again it clicks its sweet numbers.You wear men down with your love: till they are helpless before you.You could squeeze love from a stone.You make a fool of me, no wisdom, no strength, no will, no choice, no power.Loved, the pit yawns, waking now to bottomless hunger.The ventriloquist gasps for love.Surrender drifting like snow, the pit of my stomach is ice.You come back to squeeze the price from me like blood.I fear so.A treasure forced on me, making me a thief.The law is not on my side, I am a hunted man, a haunted man.Now I must be wrong, now I must possess.Now I must be unworthy.On the wrong side of the law, on the wrong side of myself.Against myself.I have never loved you.You are my mother.The pit of my stomach is ice.The eye, the lash.You brought me, out from nothing.Under the pain of gravity your perfect disc spiralled into the coil of the serpent, my pretender, and yours.I fear so.I do not pay the price.Incubus.Oppression during sleep.The dream fears only the dreamer.You will take what is yours, leaving me in a starving rage for impossibly rare fruit.Loved, the pit yawns.You will leave me desiring as only a woman may desire, on my back, with legs spread.The taste of someone\u2019s heart breaking is very impressive.Refined palates may be achieved.Food that falls short of the mark no longer satisfies, no longer holds the interest, impresses.The taste of blood is never forgotten.Almost enough to make a man bitter.Another man bitter.Wrapped in the fabric of your love till the skin softens like a worm\u2019s, held high to be renounced.Tumbling through heaven like a cowboy, led to the crucifixion again and again, like a brick wall, memory shattered and cleansed of knowledge, reward and punishment, justice and crime.You make a fool of me.Wake, each morning.Like a prayer, the pain of penetration, each morning again and again it clicks its sweet numbers.INCUBUS My little mourning nightmare.Again the child is torn from your flesh.Posing in the beg of God before His children.The rape of the goddess, amore agonistes, the conjugal act was the crucifixion: rape on the cross.Opening yourself to mortal love you become Deus Absconditus, thighs torn to ribbons in an agony of impossible love.Posing in the beg of God before Her children, the loneliness of God.The flesh turning on itself.The child is the penis.In birth the penis enters the world.Woman allows man to think he is free in order to free herself: for men hold the genitals she knows to be hers, and which she knows better than to wear in the flesh.The vampire knows better than to bear the gravity of life: or bears the grave, in order not to bear the gravity.In allowing these dupes to hold her genitals she achieves what men achieve by putting their genitals in the hands of God.But she is forever dependent on the dupe: him she must love to survive.The dupe is not so dependable as God, for whom perfect love is possible.The woman\u2019s relationship to her dismembered part is intrinsically painful.The vampire must drink the blood of others, and eternally.The genitals autonomous, self destructing, violating and abusing themselves and others, manipulating themselves.The woman must always be a conspirator.The violation in extremitus, a woman\u2019s relationship to her abortionist.If the child is the penis, abortion is castration.Scraping and rescraping, the definitive nightmare.What is the price?A man is threatened by murderers.He uses a woman, one of the conspirators taken hostage, as protection.As a shield, not a solution.The woman comes to identify with the treatened man and so switches her allegiance.Together, they still find no help, and are finally tricked into captivity again.The man is held helpless and the woman becomes the object of the threat, the mouse.But she is a conspirator in this also, accepting her role as the murderer\u2019s victim.The woman is always a conspirator: murderer, dissenter, victim.The sacrificial lamb as magician, manipulator.Christ the most exquisite ideation of God, not-being\u2019s most painfull experience of being.Christ, bereft of his genitals, copulates in the crucifixion with his only being, this impossibility, this terrible, transparent ruse.The donkey\u2019s carrot, each the surrogate of the next.Christ figures, sacrificing self for the sins of the world, nailing self to the cross in an agony of impossible love.Who is saved?Millions die in religious wars.A man\u2019s heart is broken.The manipulator, the reckoning.Selfless love, personality like the donkey\u2019s carrot.The Christ that so loves us is also the Father that first inflicted this wound on his own flesh, this sapience.You who love me love your own hope, your only dream, your only sapience: your only pain, your gravity.I am your only hope.I don\u2019t believe you love me for a minute.I hate women.I want to be alone.I fear almost everything.My heart so proud to be careless.I know myself very well.Sometimes I make feeble lies for the world.24 THE PRIESTS Jim:.¦ ¦ Who is the highest priest?Every puppeteer held by his strings.I will render you a coquette.I will make you feel what you have never felt before.I will give you everything you ever denied yourself, I will give you the poison you were most warned of, the gifts you first feared.I will trap you in your own thieving questions.Pray for me.I will be your mocking bird and your humiliation.Draw my thin blade.The knife in your heart is your heart, and mine.The ventriloquist gasps for love.You fed the proper cup, murderer and manipulator.I know only animals.Your poisoned cup, and now I am crippled, shrunken, the dwarf of desire.I now must love cripples, through these eyes.\u201cThe plan: This torn heart, others can offer it so much more.What are you but a fool and a waste?I have loved you so.Time will finish you off.I love you! I love! Oh, can I be helpless?I, with so much! The world is at my feet, tear this love from me.Whom may I love after you?Do you think you ar-e worth so much?I will build, and grow, and pray for you in your helplessness.Oh God.Can I be helpless?I, with so much! \u201cMy heart is yours, and I am free.Empty I love, with wonder, longing and joy.Foolish myself, thinking this pain to be mine.Oh, it is wonderful, wonderful! Wonderful! Do you know how I love you?I love you as you should love yourself.I am led to this love by my own hand, by no hand.I walk in freedom, and in joy.I am led by my freedom, by my love and my joy.\u201cI have asked too much.I have been greedy.My desire roosts in me like a vulture, feeding on my immolation.\u201cBut now in my loneliness I look in the mirror, and find a friend.My desire roosts like a dove in my heart, I embrace you my love.\u201cMy virtue is a nest where my pain and loneliness curl and sleep.My goodness holds me in its arms like a lost father.My purity is a pillow for this weary child\u2019s head, and for yours, my love.\u201cMy ambition, born from happiness, my strength, born from love, I am alone.My power grows like a phoenix.I am fearless.\u201cGive to me! Have I dreamt this giving?You hear my words like a ghost.How can a ghost tear this heart?I break my own heart with my own trapped questions.I give you myself, and you take it away from me.In the mirror now a stranger.\u201d The only way to face the devil is alone.To possess is to be possessed.You fed the proper cup, the purist vision you knew, murderer and manipulator.Goodness and practicality.I know only animals.Your poisoned cup, and now I am crippled, shrunken, the dwarf of desire.Like a cripple, making love to strangers.Where tenderness sprouts a vice, to look like love, like a rose, fit, like a glove.Pursued to this inevitable end.I now must love cripples, through these eyes.COMMON GROUND Contenders appear Limbs congealed by gravity Thin air of privilege concealed in the thighs of a dancer, Fancy with design, tatooed texture and symmetry, Wet from irrigation ditches fed by the blood of equals.The figure lost: in a ground with no texture.The equal privilege is met, and the ground shifts: to beneath one\u2019s feet, the common ground.Where may the earth find common ground, Except in the sky, mountains fit to pits like a glove.An allegory met to give poise to vacancy, Vulgar foundation, common ground.Parenthetical presences insinuated by doubt, The whispering of gravity, Fit, like a glove.Vacancy nudged, Usurpers come to redivide the spoils.Usurping lovers, come to tear the body of the child.Genitals insinuated by doubt, Sharing a part, the equal privilege: Wrapped in dead heat.The vacant ground shifts, To beneath one\u2019s feet.Common ground.Common ground: genitals insinuated by doubt, fallen faith.Common ground is the stock exchange, the market place, the government, the commons, the battle ground, the lover\u2019s couch, the class room, the board room, radio, television and the written word, the stage, the nature of things, god, the child.There is always contention.We must be constantly redividing the spoils, redistributing the wealth, reinventing the wealth.Common ground is profane ground, profane origin, profane birth, original sin.Common ground emerges from sacred ground, spotless ineffable ground, the virgin birth.Common ground is altered ground, altared ground.The sacred named is profaned, its ruse transparent.Common ground is dismembered ground.The equal privilege is met: edges are watery, palsied, denied the grasp of privilege, mastery, denial.The begrudged sharing of parts, parity.Figure ground.Ground figure is dust.Figured by gravity, ground to dust, rose and loom grave to bloom.Common ground is wherever equals meet.Each ground is singular and therefore must be contested and divided.Common ground is battle ground.When our passion, love, sacrifice, creates a work of art we have possessed that haunting, that possession: possessed ourselves, losses become gains.Creating a work of art out of love is an act of war: claiming precisely that territory the partner thought he most firmly held.Common ground is lover\u2019s couch.The greater the partner, the greater the possession, the greater must be the act of love, the work of art.The ingeniously conceived battleground.The act of art.The work of love.The labour of the spear, the labour of the wound.In this equity, possession dissolved by a work of love, the child is born, conceived in ingenious forgetfullness.The lost child is found, in a moment\u2019s dare.HOMUNCULUS Allowing her my blood like a fact of life The least of mothers feed their children no longer able to question no strength no will no choice 25 The lamb, finding itself on the altar, attempts acts of magic death becoming necromancy, a beginning: an autonomous ectoplasm, homunculus.The one that most possesses the genitals need no longer touch them: the nun, the stripper, the artist, the well-loved.The aristocrat acts through surrogates in the mundane universe.Bearing the weight of your descent, bearing the weight of your ascent, bearing the projected demon of your agon, alchemized by your penetrations: your descent into the image and barren nightmare of the mother, where you found me, your perfect child.Scraping and rescraping, the definitive nightmare.Scraping and rescraping: the abortion is also conducted on my flesh.I am the image, possessed by your projection, your demon: as that demon suffers, so do I.As it fades, it draws from my flesh from like hair, torn by the roots.Adhesion torn from the skin.As your vision suffers so do I.Your ravaged hope is my body.The form you discovered from your barrenness haunts me.You have left me barren.CONSUMPTION You have made a miracle of your vacancy but you have not made a miracle of mine.I have been discovered by the dreamer, my mother, in whose womb I waxed, but have not been given a child.I am barren.I cheat myself.Where is the absense I love more than myself?I have given you my absense, you consume with ecstatic hunger.Loved, the pit yawns, waking now to bottomless hunger.With the love of a mother for her lost child you have consumed my rare autocracy.I cheat myself, where is my love?You have left me with no adulterers, and my autocracy without a child.Ah, you sleep while my heart weeps.I cheat myself, where is my lo/e?Lips parted in a smile, you sleep.I love you mo'e than all others, you have left me with no adulterers.Sacrifice, selling at a loss for an implicit return.The adoration, humiliation before your own fruit, tears for your own beauty.The sacrifice is holocaust.Consumption perpetuates life, in a whirling ecology of pleasure and pain.But in the holocaust the lamb is consumed by fire, taken out of the race: sold under the counter, over the edge.Inventing a new ecology, dissolving the donkey\u2019s carrot.The fire is a surface, and a dissolving.The magician becomes enchantress, nature reentering itself: the curling lash.Disguised as the lamb, the magician dissolves his edges and his life, for the sake of retrieving what was lost: sucking blood from his own horizon.His long finger curls forward to peel the fruit of his own womb.Consumption is achieved for a terrible rectioning.Now consumption yields new horizons, in a whirling ecology of prophesy and curse.The pit yawns, bound now by hunger to its impenetrable surface.The dreamer is suddenly bound to his dream, fooled by an old trick.Breath labours its full consumption, Pulmonic and gradual, the turning loom.Replete with remora, a bed of rose, We sink like fish in a sea.The holocaust in implicit adoration Binds its slow surface In flame The whirling necromancer The host\u2019s high reckoning of love.Enchantress juggling promethean glamour, Paraclete whirling her high scarf, maniple Clutching the arm of the priest: The holocaust in implicit adoration Binds its slow surface.Breath heaves its awful consumption, Pulmonic and gradual, the curling lash: Replete with remora, a bed of rose We sink, like fish in a sea.The child in the womb: turns like a butterfly, brushing the edges, the surface between mother and child.The child breast-feeding: consumption and ecstasy.The possession: a demon brings forth the child.The inexorable movement, labour, contraction.The child has no choice in his compulsion but to use the flesh of the woman as a vehicle, searing the flesh with his flight and resurrecting a memory of the first joy, the sapience simultaneous with the vanishing, the razor\u2019s edge of ecstasy, the taste that is never forgotten.The spite of the inexorable for his exorcist, of women for their abortionists.What is the price?The bloom of the child transmutes: the ingeniously conceived battleground.The child torn from his host screams: the scream congeals into a profound cipher, an abstraction of the child\u2019s face.The garden shifts like clockwork.What is the price?The abstracted face of the child will be the father\u2019s enemy.It will contain the spite of the lost child, as men hold the spite of their held genitals over women.Its beauty will blind me, Oedipus Rex, torment me: you have left me with no adulterers.I am barren.You have dared to bear my child, with your flesh.You are my enemy, the usurping child.You have dared to bear my child, my avenger.Your visions are mine.I am your child: the abortion is also conducted on my flesh.The agony and the ecstasy of your child is mine.Common ground.Where may the earth find common ground, except in the sky, mountains fit to pits like a glove, fit, like a glove.Contention: usurping lovers come to tear the body of the child, the trembling precision.I am your body.Bear me.The rapist in infinite compassion, the Christ, Who in rape allows her own: Whose privilege is infinite, even as her love.You are my hunter.Inexorable you come.Baying you come.Bound by your inexorable labour, nine months: Am I free now?Am I free?I am you body.Bear me.Bear me.I am not yet born Oh, let your insistant inevitable beauty Bloom like Rose Teach me that foreign Lock in a sapience that chooses its words.The future is my child.I live for you.Your turned head is laughing, most beautiful child: Whispering new war new war new war I am your child.Bear me.Bear me.¦ AFTERBIRTH The birth: an ecstasy takes place at the edge between sleep and wakefulness.Labour.26 MICHAEL SNOW: Musics for piano, whistling, microphone and tape recorder (Chatham Square 1009/10) par Raymond Gervais La pochette double consiste en un long texte rédigé par Michael Snow sur les quatre faces en caractère d\u2019imprimerie de plus en plus petit d\u2019une face à l\u2019autre, du début à la fin.Ce texte, Michael Snow l\u2019a conçu non seulement en fonction de son contenu explicite mais aussi plastique, décoratif, visuel.Il en suggère pour certaines parties, une lecture et audition simultanées: \u201cYou will soon see that certain parts of this text might be read against or with certain parts of the music and I plan to make it evident when such parts occur.(.)! hope that the music can be listened to often with or without this text.The music is more important than this.It occasioned it.However, I would really like this to be as good as the music.(.) The text and the record are records both.\u201d Michael Snow définit lui-même le contenu de chacune de ses pièces: \u201cOne will perhaps note that the tapes used here date from \u201870-\u201972 and the record is being issued in \u201875.Perhaps you wondered why there aren\u2019t more recent pieces.No?Well, anyway for the last about three years apart from sound for my films, I have been very involved in playing freely improvised music, with certain groups in Toronto (mostly The Artist\u2019s Jazz Band (A.J.B.)) and apart from a couple of other solo tapes (one for trumpet), I have been a contributing member in these groups and the music is collective composition.I had been wanting to make these \u201cpersonnel\u201d tapes publicly available for sometime and it finally became possible which made possible the idea of wrapping these solos in this solo.The original tapes are \u201chome\u201d tapes and not studio quality recordings.There is more sssssssssss certainly.However, I felt that I could not re-make them in a studio.They partake of a certain time and place.They have been expertly assisted to this stage by Kurt Muncacsi of basement recording studio and by Klaus Kertess (.)\u201d.\u201cFALLING STARTS\u201d: \u201cIts a piano and tape recorder piece made in 1972 (first version 1970) and is dedicated to Baron Von Kayserling.(.) Those first groups of high sounds that you are hearing, have just heard of if you\u2019re just reading this and haven\u2019t as I suggested, put on the record, will hear when you do.do it now.are sped-up re-recordings of a piano phrase which at its \u201cnormal\u201d speed should be heard soon, just has been heard, will be etc.This phrase was composed and played by myself for its use as a subject tape recording compression and elongation.Tenses.(.) Its built on an F minor scale and harmonically there are some open major sevenths.Flatted fifths and seconds.Several phrases were tested out, this one seemed to have an internal fitness for its intended use.As you can hear, it starts very low, the right hand with slight acceleration rises and falls and rises and falls to the top of the keyboard while the accompanying bass figure revolves in the same low tonal area.The right hand phrase covers almost the entire range of the keyboard and the bass provides a reference for this aural space.The chordal clusters and the requisite amount of resonance in performance generate new inner vibrations and re-reveal their original ones when slowed down as you may be hearing right now.If one has understood the subject phrase structurally then the subsequent variations may be more than sensation though that can be a lot.Bathyspheric bubbles under ping ping ping ping ping, \u201cFalling Starts\u201d continues its descant descent on Side 2 with the final and lowest version which is a fundamental experience of sound generation and reception as tactile.Membrane to membrane to brain\u201d.W IN THE D\u201d: \"Its a recording of me whistling and breathing.There are no electronic alterations in the sound.Its documentary, real time.I held the microphone in my hand and moved it into and out of the air stream of the whistled phrase (sometimes it's just air, no notes).The air intake preceding each phrase brackets them all.The length of each phrase was determined by how long I could whistle on the amount of air I\u2019d stored.I tried to make each phrase a distinct event in itself although there are some repeats with slight variations of a dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee repeated single air-note motif.(.) here comes the ending now, sort of Beethovenesque in an airy way, the dee dee dee dee dee dee dee repeated note motif is repeated sans note, just air, and is followed by a long exhalation.That\u2019s it.\u201d LEFT RIGHT\u201d: \u201c\u201cLeft Right\u201d was taped in \u201871 and is also a tape piano piece because it was recorded in a way that made a part of the recording process a part of the music.In other words, it wasn\u2019t only a \u201cdocumentary\u201d recording of the piano being played.(.) The piano music was recorded by laying, lying the microphone on its side on the top of my old upright piano with the recording volume way past its proper maximum.This was done to a nice tape recorder, a Uher which seems to have survived the strain.The percussive playing of the chords smackrattled the microphone against the piano top.Other sounds you will hear, are hearing or have heard (not that again!) are a metronome tick tick ticking and a telephone bell ringing.Rrrrrreading matter.You can tell that I didn\u2019t answer the phone.I didn\u2019t answer it because I\u2019d spent several hours getting the sound that I liked and the performance was going well and after my first dismay I hoped that the bell would sound well.Rring, rrring, rrring, rrring.it does, it fits, même famille.Who called?Later I coughed a bit, couldn\u2019t help it.Quite a slow tempo isn\u2019t it?Socialist and sinister.That tick tick tick tick tick tick sound which started the piece and continues throughout is the sound of the metropolitan gnome.Right now the music has just left being alternately a chord in the right hand and a single note on the left.It is essence of \u201coom-pah\u201d.A ragtime or \u201cstride\u201d left hand strain.I\u2019ve played Jelly Roll Morton, Earl Hines, stride and ragtime influenced piano for many years so this piece comes out of that but also it is kin to a film I made in \u201868-\u201869 called: \" wherein the camera pans back and forth at different tempi in sync with a percussive machine sound which emphasizes the arrival of the picture at each left or right extreme with a thump thump thump thump thump.to return to the music, now its changed to a single note in the treble alternating with bass chords.I played this piece with alternating right and left hands, a back-handed compliment to Paul Wittgenstein, barm barm.Those are alternating chords in both hands brark breek brarch breekeek bracque back to top single note bottom chord crash ping crash ping crash ping crash ping.It certainly is a slow tempo.One of the reasons for that is that it enables one to have time to hear all the music that is emanating from the sounding of each note or chord.Hear what I mean?See what I mean?\u201cLeft Right\u201d gets pretty fast, racing ahead of the metronome beat vers la fin\u201d.\u201cSuch is the modifying power of the prior experience in a temporal work that the signifiance of the ending can only be truly apprehended against the record of the voyage towards it.In isolation it is not an ending is it\u201d -Michael Snow, Notes.La thématique de base, au départ sollicitée pour ce \u201cvoyage\u201d est des plus rudimentaire: une phrase musicale, quelques accords, des sifflements.Puis, par répétition de ce matériau initial de façon plus ou moins systématique dans Left Right (avec accélération vers la fin) ou par ralentissement graduel (Falling Starts) ou par juxtaposition de courtes séquences de sifflements chacune différente et d\u2019une durée d\u2019un souffle reliées les unes aux autres par la respiration qui les sépare, Michael Snow opère une réduction à l\u2019extrême du langage musical tel que nous le connaissons: aucun développement mélodique/abstrait, aucune dialectique sophistiquée.Ce faisant, il nous force à concentrer notre attention sur quelques éléments choisis de langage, de vocabulaire musical, lesquels par voie de manipulations subséquentes subissent dans leur exposé une série d\u2019interventions d\u2019ordre minimaliste.C\u2019est avant tout à une expérience de perception sensorielle que nous convie cette musique, \u201ca fundamental experience of sound generation and reception as tactile.Membrane to membrane to brain.\u201d, une expérience où la mémoire comme telle n\u2019est plus vraiment sollicitée mais bien plutôt l\u2019instant présent, le moment vécu dans/par le son.La durée de chaque pièce correspond au laps de temps nécessaire à son efficacité LE.pénétrer/ immobiliser/habiter l\u2019auditeur.Cette musique s\u2019adresse donc aussi au corps biologique, au psycho-physiologique (Falling Starts) elle tient compte des mécanismes de perception de tout individu.Un rythme rapide, répété ou accéléré accentue notre pulsation.Un rythme lent, continu ou ralentissant la diminue.Notre respiration s\u2019en trouve de la sorte modifiée.On juge d\u2019une musique (affinités) suivant \u201csa respiration\u201d, celle qu\u2019elle nous propose/suggère/impose, un rythme de vie, une conversation avec ici et là des silences, des pauses, des temps morts: une information.\u201cW in the D is about 23 minutes long and you can breathe along with it.\u201d Nous fréquentons et interprétons différentes musiques suivant nos besoins individuels, qui nous sommes, une logique subjective, une nécessité.Nous rompons sans doute pour les mêmes raisons: Commencer par/puisqu\u2019à toute fin correspond.Dans notre musique traditionnelle ou contemporaine la mémoire a un rôle important à jouer.\u201cLes plus récents travaux sur la pensée élémentaire et les mécanismes du cerveau indiquent que nous ne pouvons pas isoler la perception des rapports sonores de leur signification.Notre mécanisme mental est essentiellement un instrument de communication et de défense orienté vers la solution de problèmes d\u2019intérêt biologiquement vital.Il ne fonctionne donc qu\u2019avec des éléments qui ont un contenu objectif, avec des sons qui ont une signification émotive ou intellectuelle.Nous pouvons probablement, par un entraînement spécial, arriver à faire fonctionner la machine à vide ou à faux.Mais ceci ne peut donner naissance qu\u2019à des constructions abstraites, de caractère instable, temporaire et non communicable.\u201d -(1), p.14 \u201c\u201cLe mécanisme men- 27 STEREO LP 1009/10 CHATHAM SQUARE ICHAEL SNOW IUSICS FOR PIANO,WHISTLING ICROPHONE AND TAPE RECORDER ^quality and the reading quality be unified and that it be \"literature\" that could be read with aesthetic profit, script, largely dialogue, for a 4'Æ hour film.I'm self-taught on piano, trumpet and typewriter.Whistling is natural § started out learning how to play blues-boogiewoogie piano because I liked it.No doubt there were other reasor y first consideration in writing the text which you are now, I presume, reading (\"presume\": I guess that this text will still be here to read later even if you aren't reading it now) was to write something which when printed would cover all four faces of this album.Of several ideas for a design for this album cover or jacket this seemed at the time to be the best.Remains to be seen.Ruminations gradually clarified to this stage: I would write something that would fulfill several requirements, the basic one being that it function as a \"design\" or \"image\" that would be both decorative and \"plastic\".Another requirement that might better be approached now as an intention or ambition was the image >too.I met some other problem children in high school who were playing other instruments, and gradually ther Swere bands and then even gigs, especially after high school while I went to the Ontario College of Ar $!¦# % .Hit»':-;;; jstïtfe w to**®**: pjlnhEiUt'lua®- even gigs ^Subsequently for about 3 years I mostly made my living from music and played with many fine musicians such ^Cootie Williams, Buck Clayton, Jimmy Rushing, George Lewis.In the summers of '48, '49, '50 for a week or two! oand some of my Toronto jazz friends went to Chicago where we jammed here and there, once with the great Pel ¦