Koons, Dada

Great article by Martin Filler for NYRB attacking the Koons retrospective at the Whitney, with strong words for Dada:

Dadaism, which erupted a hundred years ago in the midst of World War I, may be one of the most misunderstood developments in twentieth-century art. There is a purity, almost an innocence, about the carnivalesque impurity of the original Dadaists and their objects and their ideas... Art, Duchamp worried, is “a habit-forming drug,” and with the readymade he somehow hoped to break the habit, which is perhaps what every artist hopes to do by inventing art anew. Jean Arp, one of the very first Dadaists—he was also and almost simultaneously one of the great classicists of twentieth-century sculpture—wrote that “Dada wished to destroy the hoaxes of reason and to discover an unreasoned order.”

Listening: Sandwell District Fabric 69

I don't listen to much Techno these days but the Sandwell District Fabric mix is hugely enjoyable. Played in near entirety on the commute to work (still have the closing minutes to hear), with the listening situation - in motion on public transport, Autumn sun intermittently peering through the windows, listening crisply on headphones to which techno is well suited - worked in its favour. Not too much of the dull grey Berghain-post-Basic Channel sound - which tends to bore me - but it's definitely represented, and well, with strong linear chug from Mary Velo, JPLS (sounding very Basic Channel), Rrose and Markus Suckut.





But these work best due to timbral detours via Untold, Mark Ernestus doing BBC, and Plastikman, these strung together beautifully.



I can't help but find far more time for Rrose than others of their ilk due solely to the name. It retains enough 'concept' to provide faceless Techno with a hint of face, and it being Duchamp's, it's a cheeky, playful one.


But one needs an 'in', anything, to make choices in today's music marketplace.





And Rrose's work with Bob Ostertag provides further interest: