There is a column in the English music journal »The Wire« called »epiphanies«. Here, people write about their revelatory experiences – primarily, the concerts that have made the most impact on them. I like reading these »epiphanies«, even if I am wary of believing them. The »great« moments are mostly difficult to perceive as such at the time, precisely because of their »event character«. More often than not, it is only in retrospect that everything takes on meaning. And, looking back, one quite often finds the ecstasy one felt at the moment rather embarrassing. But even if everything is true, if everything is felt, experienced, recognised at the right moment: what actually constitutes such a wonderful event?

I prefer the burden of having been born too late, of having always missed everything that was important – structurally speaking, of course. The event has always already happened; it does not define, as deconstructionists would have us believe, a »Messianic« horizon of expectation or openness, but a specific form of closure, of having-missed-out, of the opportunity passed over. For those who believe in the »event«, everything after the event can perhaps only be decline and deterioration; for the likes of us, however, decline is the prerequisite of the event. Both views, as mutually referential rhetorical formations, are nonetheless not as interesting as the work on that which has been missed: i.e., on the conditions of historicity in the sense of the possibility of change and differentiation.

The thing I like about Mathias Poledna’s new works is that he constructs such »epiphanies« while at the same time addressing the difficulties of the historical »decision«. He shows the event as something that is inevitably past and missed, in which the act of creation of meaning is inseparably connected with its recollection and the way this recollection is processed. Whereas »Scan« (1997) was still about the complex and contradictory processes involved in the institutionalisation of punk history – the event disappeared in the various facets of its reception, so to speak -, »Actualité« (2001) tried to bring event and recollection into line with one another and, reconstructing the very impossibility of such an endeavour, to represent them performatively and on film. As opposed to the purely discursive reconstruction work carried out in »Scan« (in the form of interviews with various protagonists in this history), »Actualité« aimed to trace the event, a specific moment in post-punk history, to restage it and to subject it to various forms of treatment within this restaging: musically (with Mayo Thompson), cinematically, photographically, and in terms of stylistic history. The 16-mm film then ran as a loop in a specially constructed cinema booth.

»Western Recording« (2003) functions in a similar way to »Actualité«, but treats a different moment in pop history. However, the work no longer seems to rely solely on a restaging, and thus brings into play exhibition-related aspects to a greater extent. This applies particularly to the repetition of the projection of the film (on DVD) in two adjacent booths, as well as the placement of these in the middle of the exhibition room at MUMOK in Vienna. This led to the creation of spaces to the left and right: the left one remained empty, while in the right one several photos were hung of the recording studios in which the film was made and the backing track was recorded. »Western Recording« shows a young singer who is recording the vocal track for the piece »City Life« by Harry Nilsson at a legendary recording venue (»Western Recorders« in Hollywood). The Beach Boys, for example, recorded »Pet Sounds« in the same location; everything has been kept as it was, right down to the microphones and panelling, and the hairstyle and clothing of the singer have been meticulously reconstructed. In the film we see the singer from two camera angles: once in the recording room from the side, once frontally through the window of the control room; once, only the singer’s voice is heard, then all the instruments are added.

On the one hand, then, there is a great effort to achieve »authenticity«: the actual original studio, and the pains taken with the reconstruction. On the other, however, there are as many hints as possible about the extreme constructedness of the exhibition situation. Following Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, one could speak of a »double logic of remediation« in which »immediacy« and »hypermediacy« enter into a peculiar relationship. The event and the institution of pop history no longer seem to unfold in a discursive manner, but to fall precariously into one another. Seeing the event as belonging to the institutive aspects of history, however, may allow another form of access, one not premised upon a rigid polarity. Whereas Fredric Jameson, for example, said that the most important thing was to differentiate between nostalgia and history, we could learn here that precisely this differentiation is not really possible. »Western Recording« undermines the unambiguity of the difference between the fetishist, nerdish collector, and historical, critical reconstruction. There is no historicisation without a nostalgic presence, no evocation of the historical event without fetishising undertones. For where do the motivation, the fascination and the desire to engage with certain phenomena at a historical, critical level come from in the first place? The apologetical collector infatuated with the historical material as remnants of genius may make a rash short cut of the laborious path into history, but the contextual gain made when applying the historico-critical approach also has a legitimation problem because, even with the abstraction of the desire, the selection criteria cannot really be made transparent. This is really a moment of decision, of historicity as aesthetic experience. So why Harry Nilsson? Yes, well, why not.

MUMOK Vienna, 11 June to 24 August 2003

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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