[KS] lost in progress
kevin parks
kevin at macosx.com
Mon Oct 25 00:39:03 EDT 2004
Leaving aside the question of whether it is safe to assume that
anything is a "universal phenomenon", (that is just too big a ball of
wax) and leaving aside an East -vs- West division of the world which is
perhaps the most bogus false dichotomy in history....
I would just point out that i was not questioning whether cultures
other than our own value innovation. That the other cultures you
mention value what they might see as "progress" is clear. I was raising
the possibility that you were putting to much of a premium on
innovation as a value in art, in general. Additionally there is the
whole question of what is and constitutes artistic "progress" (and the
related notion of "progress" in art as being depicted as linear, and
who decides what progress is, etc.) The very notion of artistic,
aesthetic, and historical progress is problematic. These issue seem to
me paramount in Korean Arts, and it is interesting to me to see how
certain artists address them in their work and talk about them (I think
here of some of what Hwang Byoung-gi has had to say in some of his
interviews).
Again, i ask, do we listen to the Rite of Spring, Miles Davis, Ornette
Coleman, read Virginia Wolff, Yi Sang, etc., etc. & co. , only because
they represent progress and caused a ruckus and we can tell anecdotes
about how hard it was for them to get publish, performed, etc. ... or
are there other values we hold, or intrinsic qualities in these works
that cause these pieces to resonate? Or do these works live on only
because everyone recognizes your "fundamental fact"? The only (or in
your words *exact*) reason they are "in the canon" is because they
broke new ground. I don't want works excluded from "the canon" because
they are radical or subversive. I also don't want works that are not
"radical" excluded because the they didn't ruffle the prerequisite
number of feathers. You seemed to suggest that a work was only worthy,
if it was radical. If that was true huge tracts of Korean dances,
musics, and poems, (for example) would have to be purged from the
books, as would largish swaths of "western classical" music and
"western" literature ... Also, implied is that pieces that are not
innovative (per se) are never excluded because they are too
conservative. This happens too.
As a composer, and an "avant-guard" (yuck!) one at that, i am in the
ironic position of feeling like i often have to defend, artists whose
work is not confrontational, or works that are made up entirely of
things "that have been done before." This is one of the things that
leads to the appropriation of non-western art forms, for example.....
I once asked a very well known and established composer why he worked
with the music and instruments of Tibet. I expected that he would say
something beautiful about the sounds of the instruments, or the
performance practices, or how the culture had resonated with him, or
his deep regard for certain traditions, etc.... but no.... his answer
was this (i'll remember this forever) " I do it because it hasn't been
done before." So... there you go... when novelty comes first and
foremost things can get funky.....
One of the things that living in Korea for the better part of a decade
has done for me (that coupled with an obsession with certain Korean art
forms *^-^* ... ), is that it has made me question some of the very
fundamental notions i once held about art. But perhaps this has gotten
all a bit too off topic since your discussion of this was really in
service of another point, so now i have veered somewhat off course, so
i'll let it drop... but since this is the Korean Studies "Discussion"
list, i hope you'll indulge...
back to your regularly scheduled programming.....
-kevin--
On Oct 24, 2004, at 9:57 AM, J.Scott Burgeson wrote:
> Especially within the modern period, aesthetic
> progress and evolution has always gone hand-in-hand
> with innovation and transgression of aesthetic
> categories. This is a universal phenomenon and not an
> imposition of so-called elitist Western values upon an
> Eastern cultural context. Many Korean, Japanese and
> Chinese artists, writers, etc. happen to value
> innovation, too, and it's rather condescending and
> reactionary to argue otherwise, in my opinion...
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