EXCERPT FROM AN EMAIL FROM CONNOR TO SKYLAR
24 April, 2006
Wow! This is wonderful, and you've given me so much to respond to. I started writing another response, but scrapped it a couple paragraphs in because it was veering too far into abstraction.
Basically my case was, to frame your comments and to somewhat address Joe's concerns; I do not look at this as being a free-for-all. I have developed an understanding of Gothic Funk that I'll stand by, largely as a synthesis of the work and writing we've produced thus far. That being said it's a way of thinking about art as opposed to a mode are a means of creating it. One of the most exciting things I've seen in the last year is recognizing different works as *being* gothic funk, even if they must now be applied in a completely different context: the painting of JMW Turner, the writing of Thomas Pynchon, music spanning from Tchaikovsky to the Swans: it's all gothic funk. It has been lacking an encompassing critical apparatus to tie it all together, but all the ingredients are there.
To expand on this a little, I'm increasingly looking at our efforts as a response to an evolution from (and possibly also a revolt against) postmodern theory. In its simplest distillation, the early part of the 20th century was dominated by modernism across artistic fields which, as a salient characteristic, argued that assumed meanings were encoded in systems of communication and that these ossified codes must be broken by dissociative use and conspicuous structuring. After the World Wars, postmodern thought rise, arguing that the bias imposed on any system is too great; that language distorts itself through use; the objectivity is nonexistent and that "meaning" either does not exist or, if it does, does so independently of its signifiers. Well, then. There are a lot of political and psychological arguments that come into play, and I am not yet at a level of being able to address them. It is interesting to me, however, that the changing political dynamic of the planet in the last forty or fifty years is one that accords less political influence to the arts even as arts are more numerous, pervasive, and accessible than ever before. The fact that the critical aparatus undermines itself has to play a part in that.
Gothic Funk is an evolution from, a response to, and a rebellion against this mode of thought. It's an evolution from modernism/postmodernism in that it admits the validity of many of their propositions. It is a response to modernism/postmodernism in that it proposes that an awareness of bias, a constant "checking" of oneself allows momentary situation, in which communication, albeit flawed communication, is, in fact, possible. Finally, it is a rebellion against postmodernism in particular in declaring its whole-hearted but misinformed reliance upon the uncertainty principle to be atavistic, a shirking of responsibility, an unwillingness to scrutinize... a refusal to "play ball."
I think that there are several things that make up Gothic Funk, and I think we've identified all of them, but we haven't explored their relationships sufficiently or even given them all names. Quite simply, it work with contradiction and provisionally against irony. Contradiction: if in a work of art, you see two OBJECTS CONTRADICT, the CONTRADICTION requires a maintenance of skepticism (bias = if we hear a woman's voice samples in House music, we are aware that this is not a woman's voice as we straightforwardly understand it), but the fact that we're dealing with OBJECTS allows us to engage the subject at hand, to make arguments; to make progress; to communicate. Against IRONY... which is in its stipped down form any way of saying something but intending its opposite: irony can be involved in Gothic Funk art. But irony cannot be at the center. Irony undermines communication because it must be implicitly, not explicitly, understood. The desire to communicate is what drives the Gothic Funk premise. Somewhere, when we're more experienced and eloquent, we will probably go on to argue that this is why passion (as embodied at all parties as well as by both you and Amber in your statements with a force that eluded some of mine) is also indespensible to the movement: explicit passion cannot be ironic. Or rather, irony when amplified into a conspicuous choice retains its structural component, but is sufficiently visible to lose its obfuscating qualities. If, then, the critical trump card of postmodernism has been Deconstruction, gothic funk will employ a Reconstructive mode of its own.
I bring this all up for four main reasons.
- The first is my own cautionary stance: I do not consider this to be a wide-open field; there are parameters and boundaries to the idea, though they are more like regions than they are borders in a strict sense. There are choices that are non-Gothic-Funky; the further in we wade, the more opportunities we will have to make mistakes of discretion and trajectory.
- The second is that because Gothic Funk derives from a relationship of a work to its creator and its audience vis a vis contradiction, at any time period or part of the world there will be numerous examples of Gothic Funk; they simply have not been connected to one another because the critical apparatus has not existed. Ideally, Gothic Funk is a sort of Rosetta stone that allows us to find similarities in superficially dissimilar objects. Another possibility: Metaphor is to Gothic Funk as a cube is to a tessaract.
- The third reason is that this is just as much a soul driven (in the sense of music, not theology/philosophy, though, of course, all is linked) movement as an intellectual/critical/artistic movement. Which is why I think we've been able to masterfully create Gothic Funk art without even having a fully-conscious idea of what we were doing. Also; why most Gothic Funk art results from work lying abreast commercial efforts; art that strives for relevance and accessibility (unlike much postmodern art) but that embodies as its central premise the desire to express an uncompromised vision (unlike strictly commercial art). (I strongly suspect this to be a pillar of the role of electronic music in the whole equation).
- The fourth reason is reassurrance. I think your instincts, whether they pertain to Improv Everywhere, a GF Beach Party, and even a murder weapon in a cake are absolutely spot on. They all *do* contain explicit contradictions, they all employ irony as a tool, not as a defining premise, and most importantly, they are all true to the spirit of what we have built so far.
It is to understand that something fundamental trumps earthbound cynicism.
