Antonin Artaud
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Boris @ The Empty Bottle
I have a few things to say about the Boris show this past Sunday, which was part of the larger Adventures in Modern Music Festival hosted by The Wire Magazine. Boris played last in an eclectic three band line up, which I believe is fairly typical of the festival, which tends to emphasize the diversity of contemporary experimental music. Boris played the longest set of the evening in addition to an applause enduced encore. The performance was an extremely visceral experience, the music was incredilbly loud and piercing (to the point of physical sensation, my ears rang for two days after the show) in addition to constanly fluctuating light environments, which increased exponentially everytime the entire stage was enveloped by an exhalation from the smoke machine. Boris's sound was hard to place, metal is the first reference which comes to mind, not just because of the music, but in addition to the band's persona and theatrical armatures which partly owes itself greatly to hair metal bands of the 80's and early 90's (long hair, head banging, piles of amplifiers, double neck guitar, smoke etc.). However, the sound was anything but retrograde. The music encapsulated an eclectic variety of sounds ranging from post-rock soundscapes to kraut rock's driving rhythm and repetition to sludgy metal. The sound was partially infused by the guest guitarist Michio Kurihara of Ghost, who gave the performance a psychedelic rock tinge.
The music seemed strangely familiar and nostalgic and at the same time extremely fresh. To be blunt, it was like a misinterpretation of several American musical genres, but in the end becoming an entidy all unto its own. Anyways, when the drummer climbed atop his drum set and then proceeded to plung into the audience for an epic crowd surf, I knew my night was finally complete.
Kevin
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When Kant wrote about the Dynamical Sublime, he was fortelling the existance of Boris!
Kant, like many philosophers, belived that music was the ultimate artform. Because of this, I feel that music would have an easier ability to be sublime. I also feel that Boris' music is sublime. It hits you like a wall of sound. The sound ingulfs you. For that moment in time all the thoughts in your head clear. The only thing you are concerned with is that one moment in time and the sounds that are washing over you like a tidal wave. In my opinion, Boris' music is a wonderful example of the Dynamical Sublime.
NOW IF I COULD JUST FIND A DAMN STORE IN THIS TOWN THAT SELLS THEIR ALBUMS!
Elan
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Where to buy BORIS:
Reckless Records
3161 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL 60657
phone: 773-404-5080
Monday - Saturday: 10am - 10pm
Sunday: 10am - 8pm
1532 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago, IL 60622
phone: 773-235-3727
Monday - Saturday: 10am - 10pm
Sunday: 10am - 8pm
26 E. Madison
Chicago, IL 60602
phone: 312-795-0878
Monday - Sunday: 10am - 7pm
Ika
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In “The Theater and the Plague”, Antonin Artaud talked about similarities between the theater and the plague. He thought that the theater gives the evil influence upon human minds same as the plague does. The theater makes people to get the perverse possibilities of the mind because of the theaters’ fictitious. Without contact, people can get the contagion by the theater which kills the people’s mind without destroying external of human body. I agree with his idea that theater could destroy the humans mind. In these days, we are incessantly exposed to Medias such as theaters, movies, internet, and music which sometimes make us mindless. Especially, young people, they just mimic what they saw in the move without responsibility and guilty. A few years ago in Korea, there were two teenagers who saw the movie together. In the move, there was the scene of murder. They thought that the scene from the move was great, so they killed the friend who they didn’t like. They bathed their hands in blood without guilty. At the same day, they arrested. When they killed their friend, they were mindless. They just did what they saw in the move. As we can see from the instance, people are destroyed by Medias unconsciously. The media is not only giving us many benefits, but it also brings harmful influences on humans mind.
JooYoung
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Did the author Antonin Artaud actually write this chapter, “The Theatre and it’s Double” to promote theatre? When reading the chapter I thought it was odd to compare the plague to the theatre, but Atraud does it and even cites St. Augustine. Honestly though what really makes me think he is promoting theatre is because he writes so passionately about theatre citing Ford’s “’Tis a Pity She’s a Whore”. Also the last paragraph, which is really the last sentence and the longest one in the world, leads me to believe he is actually promoting theatre in a perverse way to bring morality back to theatre because he obviously sees the power of theatre on the masses, why not utilize it.
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On Boris: Drone City Baby!
I really enjoyed the second opening act. Their music was soft at times and would only be appreciated and appropriate in a David Lynch film in some weird trashy club or log cabin juke joint (I’m not sure if such a thing exists outside a Lynch film). They might also be appropriate in a Kids in the Hall episode. One of the singers looked like a character in Kids in the Hall and every gesture he made was overdone, like he was mocking himself, he looked like a child actor who was trying to act and thus every mouth opening and gesture was obnoxiously overdone. The had an odd stage presence. There was a saxophonist on stage who played the tiniest saxophone ever and wore a plaid suit and most of the time he was just standing on stage kind of swaying. However he seemed to feel so awkward up there that I was anticipating before the end of the set he would do something kind of crazy….like maybe have a spasm and jump offstage or just sort of wig out and start doing the robot. That didn’t happen though. The guitarist for the second opening band was also the guitarist for Boris.
When I saw that people had actually brought ear plugs and started wearing them when Boris came on stage I was afraid I was going to get ear raped and was not looking forward to it. But the way Boris came on stage: They had a song that sounded like it was theirs playing really loud, then they came on stage, had some smoke billow, and then they just stood there waiting for the song to end. When I saw that they were just standing there with instruments listing like us to their own song I was thinking ‘Oh no, this is the experimental part. We’re just going to stand here looking at them, listening to pre-recorded music, and they’re just going to stand on stage looking like a band staring at us and listening to us talk over their recording. It’s the ultimate fuck you experience to give to people who talk obnoxiously loud and through complete sets on behalf of bands everywhere.” I was relieved when they started playing. They were really awesome. They were really loud. The guitarist who was in both bands was really amazing. He made both bands sound very Zen-like. Boris was kind drone like. Their songs were really loud and that’s it or really soft and that’s it. It wasn’t like for example the Pixies who mix it up a bit…it’s soft it’s loud, it’s fast, it’s slow. Those changes in music do a great job of keeping a listeners attention. With Boris I guess the music was loud and Zen-like in a way because the listener had to keep themselves focused and in the moment. And Boris used a gong.
Brenda
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Both Kevin and Elan's Boris Descriptions are right on. I just want to add to the psychedelic aspect Kevin mentioned. I think the psychedelic sound came from the guitarists because both bands he was in had that flavor. And with both bands I thought I could pick up hints of early Smashing Pumpkins songs. I could just be a weirdo though.
Brenda
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Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting
Response
From what I can gather, the alienation effect, according to Brecht, is an artistic technique used to represent a familiar concept in an unfamiliar way. By doing this the psychological mechanism that allows people to identify with the subject matter at hand is incapacitated, and the audience is forced to experience the work as a detached observer. It was Brecht's idea that one's identification with a subject was a function of the subconscious mind and that once identification occurred, any thought incited by the work of art, arose automatically and without conscious consideration. Brecht didn't want automatic responses, he wanted people to think. He needed a method he could use to prohibit the mind from going into auto-pilot, and he discovered this method in traditional chinese theater practices. In these practices he found many specific techniques used for the sole purpose of obstructing empathetic identification with the subject on stage. Some of these included violation of "the fourth wall", a separation on the actor's part between his body and his awareness, so that his body was acting while his mind was conscious of it (in contrast with the inverse approach used in traditional western theater in which the mind becomes one with the part being played and the body instinctually follows suit). The latter technique thus enables the audience to identify not with the character, but with the actor, who is observing the character he himself is playing.
Robert
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