DOES ANYONE IN THIS BITCH LIKE FORMALISM?

I'm thinking of writing an essay called something like Cute Microscopic Formalism For Girls. Thesis: We're used to formalism being macho either in its austerity (the high Avant Garde tradition) or in its impenetrability (beat science, propellorhead techno). But I detect a new formalism which is about tiny sounds, which is made by girls, which has a childish and cute feel, and which cuts up rather reassuring commercial material rather than great slabs of concrete sound a la DJ Spooky.

Examples: where once formalism was heavy drum loops, now drums have turned into clicks. Other Music describes the new album 'Open Close Open' by To Rococo Rot man Robert Lippok as 'examining frequencies and textures under a microscope'. Bjork says her forthcoming album 'Vespertine' will be made of sounds (concocted by Matmos from sounds like ice cubes being cracked out of trays) kept deliberately small 'so that they can be downloaded easily from the internet'.

And I (being, as I may have mentioned, in Tokyo right now) I'm particularily interested in the happy, childish formalism of the Japanese: Childisc label artists like Nobukazu Takemura, Aki Tsumura and Hirono Nishiyama, or people like Takako Minekawa.

would Boards of Canada's "M9" be formalism while "Iced Cooly" is not? Would Delia Derbyshire (usually) be a formalist and John Baker (usually) not? The difference between the above two examples - ice- cold minimalism (I *know* I should have Used Other Words There) versus a curious, even "quirky", pop sense - would seem to be what this question is about. Or perhaps, like Tom, I don't quite understand.

I'm not sure what the majority of the thread is about, as I dropped out of art school to paint pretty patterns on walls and record dronerock epics before I got to most of the terminology.

Though I must object to gender terms being used to describe inanimate objects and abstract ideas.

(It could be that what we need is a distinction between music where the form and content are one and the same, and music where the content follows according to the dictates of the style, though it is not itself intrinsically part of the form in terms of the organization of the sounds and stuff.)

I think you're getting at something here but you're forcing it. Autechre sound more "formal" than a Stones song but if you listen to enough a lot of that initial confrontation fades away. Is Bach's "Musical Offering" just as formalist as Autechre?

Sometimes it just seems as if "formalist" is used as a shorthand for "abstract and boring".

And possibly by people who like it, while still meaning "boring" in a good way. Kind of like I think Steve Reich is boring but in a fascinating way.

2. Here's another minor point: "Sexy Boy" wasn't foregrounding a new technology, it was kitschily recycling the 70s vocoder fashion (see especially the Roger solo LP, 'Introducing Roger').

3. Here's a very slightly more substantial point: I was listening to that new(ish) Kleenex / Liliput reissue recently and was thinking how, even when I could understand what was being said, the content was squarely in the form. There's such a glee in breaking rock music to pieces: the content is the noise. Resolutely non-macho, too, although perhaps not cute.

4. I'm still a little bit unhappy with the terms of the question, particularly the equation of form with intstrumentals and content with lyrics. It seems to me that there's plenty of room for making music strange via the combination of words and music. But I haven't thought it through yet. Sorry.

5. As for "the alternative to formalism is kitsch", I humbly submit that that statement was as wrong then as it is now. 1939 seems a particularly strange time to make such a claim. Of course, I could have misunderstood the quotation, I haven't read the whole essay.

Thanks everyone for doodling on this blank part of the map, I think I can write my essay now!

Next, I'm surprised that no-one mentioned the word 'remix' in this thread. 'Remix' is what we call it when a pop song gets tweaked until its formal properties eclipse its narrative, its emotional realism. The more you erase the 'story', the more the song becomes object-like, something remarkable for its formal properties alone.

Going formalist is a good way to be intellectual without appealing to the language sections of the brain. Because of its reduction of things to 'beautiful objects', Formalism aligns with the body. Remixes are generally considered more 'danceable' than the narrative songs on which they're based -- even when they have the same BPMs and rhythms! Transformed into dance music, the remix has an undeserved aura of intelligence, because it shines like an efficient new machine. The less grey matter you have to expend on narrative, the more there is left over for the pure intellectual pose of formalism. Hence the tendency of dance labels to adopt impressive-sounding formalist names like 'Deconstruction'.

Formalism in pop isn't going to go away, for some very good reasons:

The world is increasingly global. Formalist music, because it tends to omit language, transcends national barriers. You could say that Dymaxion is as meaningful / meaningless in Tokyo as it is in New York. Similarly, few non-French speakers bought French pop records until the overt formalism of the 'French Touch' generation.

Formalists, because they avoid language, avoid the political positions that coherent use of language tends to make us take. Formalists don't have an opinion, a weltanshaung, a position with a consistent view, unless it's formalism itself. This allows them to collaborate profitably with strong-minded 'personality artists' with whom they might otherwise, if they spelled out their worldview more clearly, clash. Madonna can collaborate with formalists like Mirwais and Orbit much more easily than with a vaudevillian like Momus. Formalists are hairdressers, vaudevillians are shrinks. It's easier to get a new haircut than get your head examined.

Phew, sorry, I'm writing that essay on your time now!

To pick up on several things which were said a while back (I'm only getting to read this thread at intervals): One would think someone like Wendy Carlos, having "walked both sides of the line," would have much to add to this "macho vs girly" talk. In the past, it seems both some feminists (but by no means all) and the most macho theorists have tried to deny women's sexuality as much as men's, while nowadays we are all supposedly busy "reclaiming" our sexuality of any of thirty-six current flavors. When Carlos started out, his/her music was, for all its novelty, still largely about male "classical" tradition and outward macho verve and thrust (albeit effete, baroque verve and thrust). Carlos's recent work has become increasingly about the "little things," the inner and the inward: the polished surfaces, microtonalities, lyrical arabesques, and very subtle and detailed tonalities and harmonies. (See discussion of "Beauty In The Beast" in the "switched-on" thread. I thnk I got the title wrong there.) Perhaps this has something to do with what might arguably be the ultimate formalist change a person can undergo-- into another sex. In a sense, the sexual chimera. In a sense, she has "remixed herself." (I would argue that becoming intersexed or sexlessly androgynous might be a bigger change. But then the only transsexual I know is straight girl to gay man.)

Throwing off sexual stereotypes: Does this mean going back to the child--the screaming child in a tantrum or the becalmed "inner" child? Is said child nonsexual or protosexual? (Think of The Residents' cute but creepy "Goosebump," based on nursery rhymes and played on toy instruments. Think of Carl Orff and his female collaborators, who got the shaft as far as credits go.)

In the future maybe we won't need to talk about the male/female homo/heterosexual dichotomy so much as about art and ideas Beyond Sex, where everyone's fullest human sexual potential might be realized in both theoretical and very real ways. Perhaps cyberhuman ways. Not to sound too psychobabble "New Age;" I really don't know what all this implies--except that I hope in music, too, even heavy metal bands (who've already done the superficial thing with makeup and hair) can play with their "girly" persuasions in ways that aren't suggested by the New York Dolls but, say, Fragonard paintings and Tangara figurines. Teenagers will argue about the words to an Arvo Part mass while building gaudy virtual temples to Hermaphroditus on their i-macs. Techno-geeksters will twiddle with sequences of sampled choirboys on computers built to look like rococco wardrobes. And the most innocent Japanese songstresses can sing country-western songs about quickie oral sex in the back of a Trans Am while wearing a combination of World Wrestling Federation belts, Diaghelev-inspired bodysuits, and Poirot by way of Erte turbans. Oh, darn, I suppose it's already been done...

To bring up Brian Eno once again... He also said once that we associate (Western and possibly all) instruments with genre so much (i.e. sax=jazz, violin=classical) that only the piano transcends all genres and hence can be used in ways that don't suggest or imply any particular form or, as it were, formalist conceit. One could wish the synthesizer could replace the piano, and someday it might, but until then it has too many connotations of "futuristic" and "scientific," besides being too mutable and protean. Wonder what W. Carlos would say.

Nowadays 4'33" as Cage wrote it would be the sound of cell-phones ringing and vibrating throughout the audience, Palm Pilots chiming, and distant Gameboys chinging in the foyer of the auditorium. Pretty, "girly" sounds. In the future, we are as plastic as the sounds we create. In the future, Wendy Carlos is us.

[Incidentally, I'm writing this while visiting Iowa, where both myself and Grant Wood's "American Gothic" originate. Interesting to me because that painting, while it has grown to symbolize "America" (with or without quotation marks) to the world, supposedly began as a sympathetic if not sentimental portrayal of the farm "couple" (it's actually father and daughter) standing in front of the gothic house-- and became thought of as some sort of formalist critique of both painting and patriotism. I spoke to the "daughter" in the painting myself in the late '80s, but never dared ask her what she considered to be the "truth." The point being that perceptions of formalism and naturalism change over time, in art as in music.]

Momus, why not create a vaudevillian formalist? (I could have said go genrefuck yourself.) Haven't you already?

In reference to so-called "girly specialties", M writes that we should not "throw away centuries of female specialisation and achievement". Eh? The world's most renowned chefs have until recently almost always been male, as have most really well- known makeup artists. So when we talk cosmetics and cooking, -are- we talking about girly achievements? It seems that in general, those who are famed for their achievements in these fields are male.

squid a better-than-average painter but no Kevyn Aucoin

Squid: I'm really using 'girly' as a brand, an essence, independent of the gender of the people involved. It's true many great chefs and make- up artists are male, but the activities have a stereotypically female position in our culture. As a man with an interest in genre/gender fucking, I get excited whenever I come up with new male-female idea combinations, like Cute Formalism, the same way I do when I see a new fashion trend, like the current one in Tokyo for Frilly Military, ye old military camouflage made frilly, its shapes mutated into girly pink hearts instead of the usual amorphous camo blobs.

Perhaps this art is an example of girly formalism

Ok, a few things first, before I get into my real response:

1. I realize that you're using "girly" as a bit of shorthand and think I pretty much know what you mean by it. 2. I agree that sneering at stuff that's traditionally known in this culture as "women's things" and "women's work" is misogynist. 3. I also like a good genderfuck. 4. You would probably like the most recent issue of "Bust".

Onto the post proper:

You write: It's true many great chefs and make- up artists are male, but the activities have a stereotypically female position in our culture.

Yes, of course, but that wasn't my point, and I should have clarified. The important part of that was not "males can be good at this work also" but that those who are considered "artists" in these "female" fields are not usually female. This is particularly true of chefs. Only recently has there really been a proliferation of women chefs. What does this mean? I -think- it means that women cooking because they want to cook and not because they have to is a pretty recent innovation. This is not to say that no one who had to cook ever enjoyed it, merely that generally speaking, one is much more likely to perceive cooking as art when one doesn't perceive it as an obligation.

Ditto makeup. Where I grew up, a woman who wasn't covered in it was a Lesbo Commie (not that there is anything wrong with being a Lesbo Commie, just it was commonly used as an insult there). The women I saw growing up spent a huge amount of time and energy (and money) on diets, surgery, cosmetic dentistry. They exhausted themselves with self-flagellating over every small "imperfection". Rejecting the traditional beauty culture wasn't about rejecting "femininity" for me, it was about rejecting the notion that due to an unfortunate accident of plumbing, I was obligated to spend all my free time and energy worrying about the size of my pores. When I finally did decide to have fun with makeup, it was after I'd spent years around people who didn't require it of me and I was finally able to see where it could be something other than than soul-draining and stupid.

I guess I'm also trying to say, be careful who you call "misogynist" and why. There are still plenty of places in this world where "post-feminist" is an oxymoron. I'm sometimes uncomfortable with the way some third wave feminists have a tendency to forget that and rag on people who haven't yet reclaimed pink lipgloss. It's every bit as insulting as other kinds of feminists assuming that someone who shaves her legs is a bimbo.

>> the same way I do when I see a new fashion trend, like the current one in Tokyo for Frilly Military, ye old military camouflage >>made frilly, its shapes mutated into girly pink hearts instead of the usual amorphous camo blobs.

Or even simply using other colors than the usuals. I saw some camo things in powder blue at nordstroms that I thought were great. It's not just that it's a collision of "girly" and "butch". What I really like is that it's basically taking something associated with violence and obliterating it with hearts and flowers. Go fearsome girlyness!

loveonya, squids

Squid: You would probably like the most recent issue of "Bust".

Ha, funny you should say that, I just did an interview with Bust on Thursday. Because my head was popping with stuff from this thread, I gave the interviewer, who goes by the splendid name of Bianca Jarvis, great 'head'. She was still transcribing the tape days later!

She does a great online diary of Tokyo, a lot more sussed about youth culture and more honest about sex and stuff than I am on my site, so check it out:

http://shibuya.diaryland.com/010524_75.html

There we go. Sorry Momus, had to fix your botched HTML.

Frilly Military = Fritillary?

Rroland who cooks a mean block of tofu

Hi. Wow. I love the way you phrased that. Sort of like a literary version of "I fucked her so hard she couldn't walk for days", rather "I was so loquacious she developed carpal tunnel from transcribing!" I am still grappling with the concept of formalism myself. I think I was actually asked to define "post-modernism" on a test for a film theory class once. Back to our regularly scheduled thread.

There are hundreds of magazines that are more thought-provoking than Bust. I'm not going to stoop to read it simply because it's "for women". It's just Cosmo in "hipper" clothing. Barf.

Eh, it does manage to have articles on some interesting people you would never see in Cosmo...like Momus and Amy Sedaris. Still, it will never be as cool as Sassy.

I wasn't a big fan. OK, it was better than 90% of the "Young Miss" type teenage girl magazines in the late 80s/early 90s, but I found it more patronising than I ever found it redeeming.

But then, as a rule, I don't like "girly" magazines. Which is probably why I object so fundamentally to the term "girly" when used about things which have nothing to do with gender. (ie the future of formalism in avant guarde music)

I really *will* keep on topic in future threads, and leave this one alone. I swear.

I remember reading it when I was really young, and it did expose me to bands like Sonic Youth that I hadn't had much exposure to before. Not only that, they never featured all the diet and makeup crap that pervaded all the other teen girl magazines. I'm not saying it was perfect, but it was a lot more positive and interesting than any of the other girly stuff out on the market at that time. Okay, that's the last of my Sassy rant...

Um, yeah, but that's a horrible thing? I don't always want to be thought-provoked. Sometimes I want something non-taxing to read in the bathtub. And it may be horribly fluffy to say so but actually I -do- like to read about fashion and celebrity decorating. Bust is a lot more likely to feature fashion and celebrities that interest me.

I do my share of serious reading. If I want a candy bar now and then I don't see the harm in it. Maybe I should be outraged that it purports to be more nutritional than it actually is, but I'm really not.

loveonya squid

which after reading the thought I can only ask, how full of shit was I?

I'm not angry. I didn't mean to come off snarly.

>honest fluff to something that pretends to be the savior of young womankind.

Well, this is a tangent really, but a couple weeks ago when I took Doug to get oral surgery (owie!) I spent some time perusing "Seventeen" in the waiting room. Believe me, I'd way rather younger women read "Bust". At least they can see non-skinny models, get sex advice from Susie Bright and read about girl bands and zines. It's a hell of a lot better than "How to Get Guys To Kiss You" and "Ricky Martin, Better than God!!!!!!!".

>Beneath the surface the magazine just doesn't stand for much, and I feel ripped off when I buy it *because* it promises to be >intelligent and well-written, but it's not. It's like the Reader's Digest of feminism.

Mmmmm.......you mentioned "Cosmo" earlier and I think it's actually a better comparison. I don't want to insult anyone by saying that. It's a bit like what I would like "Cosmo" to be, instead of a hundred and one articles about how to catch a man and quizzes about whether or not I'm a good dater.

squid

Julie Taymor's "Titus" gave me some ideas

"cute" is yin seen as SMALLER; "kawaii" is "cute"
from the reverse-telescope of Japanese culture which
is yin-patriarchal, so doublesome

i am following the trail now to Bollywood, where things
are not quite so aggressively polarized.

m.