peaceful- I like modern classical music with its dissonances and weird time signatures. Stockhausen launched a thousand WTFs? from the critics.
- I like annoyingly-egotistical abstruse jazz.
- I like electronica that just consists of strange beeping sounds or disconnected samples with no rhythm.
- I like confronting mixed media art and performances that might consist of people cutting themselves and filming the results and playing the video and hanging up the bloody bandages as part of an installation.
- I like awkward theatre that might consist of accosting people in the audience or the streets, with varying degrees of method performance, unformed scripts, yelling and odd physicality.
- I like architecture that is challenging and odd and makes you wonder how it can function as a building. Or wonder if the prison plans got lost and got inadvertently turned into actual residences or commercial buildings.
Would I like to personally consume all of these things myself? Frankly, no.
I love Pollock and Rothko and Hotere, but I think the whole 90s Britart scene was utter wank. Not to mention Picasso. I listen to some musique concrète, but just the stuff with rhythm, and a bit of something "going on". Zahar Hadid's architecture is like the equivalent of glossy souless Helmut Newton fashion photography. I wouldn't live in a Corbusier building, but Habitat 67 is fucking awesome.
So why do I like all the things? Because they fertilise the arts. They mix it up, they oxygenate, they inspire others to riff off it to create their own (possibly more palatable to more people) creations.
Imagine what it was like when the Europeans broke away from the monks' plainsong by developing polyphonic songs and music. We've heard of the impact of the Impressionists over and over and over. Stravinsky had run-ins with the police because of his music.
If it weren't for the people way out on the fringes, the arts would not evolve. I certainly don't situate myself on the fringe at all, in terms of what I like to consume, but I'm glad it's there.
This entry was originally posted at http://trixtah.dreamwidth.org/287731.htm
grumpy