wrapping

This piece grav­i­tates around the essay that would become the fourth chap­ter in Fred­er­ic Jameson’s sem­i­nal Post­mod­ernism, Or, the Cul­tur­al Log­ic of Late Cap­i­tal­ism: ​“Spa­tial Equiv­a­lents in the World Sys­tem”. Pon­der­ing on the orga­ni­za­tion of space, Jame­son push­es the read­er towards wider rang­ing reflec­tions on syn­tax. What belongs togeth­er? How do we com­bine our expe­ri­ences — per­son­al or col­lec­tive — in mean­ing­ful ways? The author reads through works of con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture to show how they illu­mi­nate and exem­pli­fy the ​“cul­tur­al dom­i­nant” that is post-mod­ernism. Chiefly among them, the Gehry Res­i­dence: archi­tect Frank Gehry’s own house. Orig­i­nal­ly a con­ven­tion­al Dutch colo­nial style dwelling, it was then expand­ed by envelop­ing — wrap­ping — the old house with seem­ing­ly ad hoc struc­tures of met­al and glass. The final impres­sion is, accord­ing to archi­tect Paul Hey­er, one of a ​“col­li­sion of parts, built to stay but with a delib­er­ate­ly unfin­ished, ordi­nary builder­like sen­si­bil­i­ty”; of an ​“artis­ti­cal­ly intu­itive”, ​“clut­tered expres­sion­is­tic” ​“acci­dent not resolved”. With the orig­i­nal house almost intact, these new forms lift back ​“the skin to reveal the build­ing as lay­ers”, with new forms ​“break­ing out and tilt­ing away from the original”.

wrap­ping pro­pos­es a sim­i­lar exer­cise. From an unchang­ing core, I build out a cha­conne. This under­ly­ing struc­ture is con­struct­ed (if you’ll allow two archi­tec­ture puns in quick sequence) out of sev­er­al strands of appro­pri­at­ed mate­r­i­al (which I’ll abstain from nam­ing): mate­r­i­al from com­posers of dif­fer­ing rela­tion­ships with their past or present, and pre­sent­ed ​“worked over, can­celed, sur­charged, volatilized, sub­li­mat­ed, or trans­formed” (to bor­row some bril­liant prose from Jame­son) to dif­fer­ent degrees — includ­ing as a direct quo­ta­tion, which I am sel­dom (if ever) inter­est­ed in. These are not sol­id foun­da­tions (sor­ry): any dis­cernible force that might be orga­niz­ing these ele­ments — their mate­r­i­al sim­i­lar­i­ties in tim­bre, spec­tral con­tent or behav­ior in time — can be quick­ly dis­in­te­grat­ed or reversed. Their awk­ward coex­is­tence is less resolved and rather more got­ten used to through its rep­e­ti­tion; impo­si­tion giv­ing way to adaptation.

This space, engen­dered by the elec­tron­ics, is inhab­it­ed by the instru­ments. I use this verb with license, but also with some pro­pri­ety: if the unchang­ing struc­ture of the cha­conne sug­gests a cer­tain sculp­tur­al qual­i­ty, the sub­ject-posi­tions engen­dered by the instru­ments pro­pose dif­fer­ent points of view of the same space: from here, a wood­en beam (let’s say) might be seen through a pane of glass; from there, a met­al struc­ture inter­sects an old­er wall, giv­ing rise to new assem­blages. Fun­da­men­tal­ly, it is not the sim­ple jux­ta­po­si­tion of dis­tinct spaces (musi­cal mate­ri­als, in our case) that pro­duces new forms, but their dialec­ti­cal work­ing-through, ani­mat­ed by the ensemble.

Last­ly, this log­ic is present in the way of orga­niz­ing the instru­ments them­selves — or, to be more exact, in the ways the instru­ments orga­nize them­selves. With­in the stric­tures of the cha­conne, the work is, in fact, rather open. On one lev­el, the play­ers are faced not with one line, but with mul­ti­ple: much like the Gehry Res­i­dence ​“lift­ed back the skin to reveal the build­ing as lay­ers”, so are the play­ers faced with con­cur­rent, syn­chro­nous staves, each with the same mate­r­i­al in dif­fer­ent stages of devel­op­ment, com­plex­i­ty or indi­vid­u­a­tion. It is up to them — through their indi­vid­ual pro­fi­cien­cies and through an essen­tial skill to be devel­oped in ensem­ble play­ing, name­ly active lis­ten­ing — to nav­i­gate this tan­gle of lay­ers through choice; through their own itin­er­ary through the space, if you will. The sub­se­quent lack of sta­bil­i­ty in the musi­cal text is bound to be rich in ​“accident[s] not resolved”, as the ​“delib­er­ate­ly unfin­ished” musi­cal tex­ture (per)mutates — fur­ther evinc­ing its con­sti­tu­tive lay­ers, now at the lev­el of instru­men­ta­tion. On a for­mal lev­el, each ​“rep­e­ti­tion” of the cha­conne high­lights a par­tic­u­lar instru­ment, and along with it its respec­tive char­ac­ter­is­tic musi­cal mate­r­i­al; echoes of this mate­r­i­al, how­ev­er, escape this for­mal delim­i­ta­tion, and over­flow into the fol­low­ing rep­e­ti­tion. Cou­pled with the fact that the order of these rep­e­ti­tions is not fixed, this assures a dynam­ic and unpre­dictable (and per­haps too lit­er­al) ​“col­li­sion of parts”.

This piece is ded­i­cat­ed to Diana, in admi­ra­tion of her strength, kind­ness and patience.