Popular Culture

The advantage of writing your own discourse is that you are always right. Unless you express some doubt. This entry will deal with popular culture. Popular culture can not be defined, but it can be described by its qualities: Popular culture is the nominator for an easy accessable collection of ideas, images, products, art that are accepted within a definable group of people.

In western european culture I don't see any alternative culture. I don't know enough about the other continents, but overhere every experession, be it intelectual or artistic or commercial is part of a popular culture. Avantgardist, undergroundist, noisist and whoever are all part of a greater whole where they can express themselves freely, get stimulated, iconated, listened to and reproduced.

It is the big pop icons that make popular culture hard to accept: the great dictators of the first half of the last century (whose hollywoodian operette style got copied by the south american dictators in the second half of the same century) have obscured the idea of popular culture. The esthetic approach and the massmeetings of uniformed Germany in the 1930-ties and early'40-ties, are adopted and made harmless by their successors.There are so many successors now, that all the names vanish in front of the tv-screen or the newsstand.

The day before yesterday's "Do you want total war", and yesterday's "give me an F, U, C, K" by Country Joe and the Fish, are met by today's "give me an H U M P A", with a crowd responding by cheerfully singing "humpa humpa humpa tetterèè" Which to me represents a joyfull moment in history.

But those joyfull moments are far away if we believe the newspapers or follow the superficiality of our supposed leaders.The optimism that is spread here is very close to the junkieculture, maybe the one and only alternative to popular culture,coming to think of it. The last years the greater audience has been kept alive with shots of optimism. And every short living slogan of your next door populist has been and still is followed up by another one.

The managers with their tactics of fading responsability are frightening and deafening alike. A place like IKEA, a result of managerial strategies, can lead to traumatic experiences: in my case it has caused an aversion against anything that was swedish. (And then I went to Sweden, and encountered everything I thought I wouldn't find.)

There is different ways of presenting my music. Call it musique concréte because of the use of tapes; call it noise because it can be loud; call it dark ambient, because you like it that way; call it industrial, because there is some drones every now and then. Call it poetic, because you want to get away from worn out definitions, or call it soundscape, because you have read that one book. I call it pop music. And by now I know there is enough of us, worldwide, to justify this defintion.

dnasnow/mouseup

dnasnow/mouseup

to be continued, soon.

About Projects and the Needle

Early nineteen seventies the Dutch group Focus was conquering the world. It's guitarist Jan Akkerman was considered one of the best guitarists ever. Excessive touring brought the group wide recognition. In the early nineteen seventies heroin was putting an end to the hippy movement, helped by their political counterpart who fought for liberation and bureaucracy.
Heroin was also a threatening danger to Jan Akkerman. He exclaimed that he saw the needle approaching.

Nowadays we live another kind of smoothener: the budgeteering of the so-called projects by the numerous institutions. Google gives 709.000.000 links if you search for the word 'project.' Something is going on, apparently.

I quote from wikipedia:

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service.

In the above definition "temporary" means any project will have a start date and end date, doesn't mean short in duration. Unique means the product or service at the end of the project should be some thing different than the existing (Can be an invention or an innovation.)

It can also comprise an ambitious plan to define and constrain a future by limiting it to set goals and parameters. The planning, execution and monitoring of major projects sometimes involves setting up a special temporary organization, consisting of a project team and one or more work teams. A project usually needs resources.

Nowadays every artist has a project. Every artist needs resources. Some time ago I was guest to a friend in Sicily. He has holiday houses, and sometimes I can stay there for a few weeks. Of course there is also somebody who does maintenance. He came one day to look at the walls, if they needed some restoring and painting. When he saw me there, he didn't want to disturb me. He told me not to worry about leaving him without anything to do, because he had some other projects.

I don't have projects. These days I am in the middle of preparing das kleine field recordings festival. This festival is not my project, it is not a product neither a service, simply because it is my, and fast becoming a kind of our, festival. Preparing I don't consider a project, because I am simply preparing.

As you might understand I don't like this improper use of the word 'project.' Somehow it has an aggressive feel about it, an undertone of "leave me alone, I am busy," but it also expresses a fear of taking responsibility of one's actions. When you are involved in a project, the road to conclusion is still far away. And some people might fear judgement about final results, hence the safeguarding word 'project' that implies that the work under construction is still open to changes. But somehow it also sounds as if people are on a military campaign.

Because everything makes sense, once the word 'project' is used in the application form for getting funding. Here the project will land on the desk of a manager, and he/she will gladly judge if this intention to do something should be rewarded. The result is that in some way or an other all the 'projectonians' are qualifying for funding.

I can't explain why I don't like to apply. Maybe I just don't like drugs.

my website + das kleine field recordings festival

here.

with thanks to
zeromoon
for hosting

After half a year in Berlin I started with a new initiative:
das kleine field recordings festival.
From working with salon bruit, a collaboration that I have stopped,
and organising tape only concerts , tape care
I got to learn the club-situation in Berlin,
and the open mentality of many
that welcomed my proposals without hesitation.

The festival was the first bigger work.
I owe a lot to Martin from Wendel in Kreuzberg,
who gave me the possibility
to host two evenings a month at his place.
Through this experience I remained in touch with local and visiting artists.
But his help was of importance when organising the festival.

Since this a no-budget blop,
the next report here should be
on how I raised some money for the second edition.

It can't be true that artists have to go home with 7 euro from the door.

Unfortunately I am very bad with the money burocracy.
I think there is something contradictory in it.
As if one has to qualify for funds.
Where as it should be the money people
who should also be able to spot new initiatives,
and offer money without hiding behind a fence of rules.

Next step will be to find some people who can speak the blablacratic language.

on the roof, in the dungeons

Saturday 23rd of September, blu sky, some musicians with their satelite instruments decoding the sonic waves, a camera team trying not to fall deeper, and some birds will change the rooftoplandscape in Schöneweide.
Later that evening I will play tablecricket and drink tea, and watch a recording of the eight o'clock news from 23rd of September 1978, with Lepke B (aka The Hands of Glory), while playing some sounds from tapes and cut-up cd'-s.

Sunday I am of for a noise picknick with Kate Donovan and Laurent Lavole and some others. Later that evening I will go out to get some ss- skeletons from the wells, somewhere in the deep waters of Schönefeld.

23 september rooftopconcert, Factory-Berlin, Berlin Schöneweide
23 september duet with Lepke B, Wendel, Berlin Kreuzberg

24 september The Wolfgang Pedersen Trio, Festival der ungewohnten Musik, Berlin Kreutzberg
24 september duet with Marco Lampis, experimentcity, Berlin Schönefeld

mini tour with Radikal Satan and TB

16 september - Scherer8, Berlin
17 september - Das Jaz, Rostock
19 September - Astrastube, Hamburg

Slow Entries

Berlin is responding generously to my activities. It really is a free haven to the poor. People are very open and curious to new initiatives. Places to perform are easy to find. But the money problem remains.

The aim of this blog was to report from no-money places, and to write letters to people in responsible positions in order to ask them for some kind of financing.

I haven't come to that point yet.

Almost every organisation moves on a no-budget basis.

For the moment it is best to go to salon bruit if you want to read about my activities in the German capital.

Dutch readers can find me here.