This week, Pieces grappled once again with the never-ending quest for the perfect band name, for the benefit of a good friend. For some reason, he was less than impressed with our suggestion that ‘PRICK’ would be a good name for a Modern Jazz quartet…
The last week saw at least two events involving culture-related injuries. the Pamplona bull run saw its first (human) death in six years, and at least two other grizzly gorings that had newspaper readers turning away in disgust as they saw more-graphic-than-necessary pictures. And it was revealed that Tate Modern is fighting at least two claims for compensation from people who have injured themselves at exhibitions including Carsten Höller’s slides and the recent recreation of Robert Morris’ Bodyspacemotionthings.
Both of these revelations made me think about the role that danger plays in our cultural experience. There’s not many traditional art forms that can offer us real danger as part of the thrill of experiencing them – difficult to think how you would produce one, although a painting that reached out and grabbed random viewers and strangled them a little bit would be pretty amazing. But the experiences that do offer us something that we just can’t get anywhere else – that feeling that it could be the last thing you ever do if you’re not careful. Obviously people work in the armed forces and on building sites are exposed to this kind of dangerous environment on a daily basis, and it’s not necessarily a thrill to do so. I think that makes it all the more remarkable that the rest of us would ever choose to put ourselves through things that could potentially do us a lot of harm, and not only that but under the guise of a cultural encounter.
All of this has to be kept pretty distinct from experiences that provide us with simulations of danger, like rollercoasters or going to watch a horror movie, because they don’t (intentionally) expose us to any real danger. You can sit all the way through a horror movie and be a real killjoy by smiling the whole way through, safe in the crystal clear certainty that nothing bad will actually happen to you, just the same as you can ride a rollercoaster without any serious repercussions unless you have some kind of heart condition – in which case you should really have read the safety bits at the start of the queue. No matter how much anyone tells you about how going on thrill-rides at theme parks is all about pushing the boundaries of fear, the fact is they’re designed to be completely safe. Now no-one who’s ever been on Air at Alton Towers could ever say this makes them boring – all I’m saying is that this kind of ride is not where the real danger lies.
The real danger lies in the blood and gore you could see at the bullfight, the bones that could get cracked falling from large wooden structures in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, even the thought that one of Anthony Gormley’s ‘statues’ might slip and fall of the plinth in Trafalgar Square. All of these have been described as Art rather than Sport or even Recreation, and the Art comes from a knowledge that there is beauty in the willingness to gamble life (or even just an eye or two) for experience. This would have been Ernest Hemingway’s argument anyway, as anyone who’s read Death In The Afternoon will know (and if you haven’t, check it out – best book about bullfighting you’ll ever read). We even get thrills from watching other people go through this kind of pain – think about how, even if you tell everyone you hate them, you still secretly giggle at Jackass, Dirty Sanchez, Tokyo Shock Boys etc. Only here it’s not art, it’s in the same category as sport – it can be glorious (a great catch in cricket that nearly breaks the catcher’s neck), heroic (think of Terry Butcher or Paul Ince bleeding profusely through bandages while playing for England), even moving (German goalkeeper Bert Trautmann being hailed as a hero after winning the FA Cup even though he broke his neck in the 75th minute). But they’re not beautiful. Beauty through danger, beauty as the result of danger, that’s the preserve of art.
And so to this week’s playlist, which is another hour of little cool noises. Click the link below to hear it all.
1. Ubu Dance Party - Pere Ubu
2. Swell Maps - Big Empty Field
3. The Mekons - The Shape I'm In
4. Classics IV - Spooky
5. Matmos - For Felix (And All The Rats)
6. Tal Farlow - Fascinating Rhythm
7. The Johnny Mann Singers - Up Up And Away
8. Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Fire
9. The Harmonising Four - Pass Me Not
10. Babatunde Olatunji - Aiye Mire
11. Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Abba Zaba
12. Fennesz - Caecilia
13. Camera Obscura - French Navy
14. Igor Stravinsky - Symphony In Three Movements: I
http://open.spotify.com/user/blownawish/playlist/3eJvOPavlMWum2gCXNIU6m
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