“With an extreme rigour evocative of Pol Pot’s visions of the same period for the future of Year Zero Cambodia, Otto Muehl, one of the Vienna Actionists, demanded the eradication of all books, languages, art works, music and factories; the famines that will result from these systematic destructions are to be welcomed (human bodies can then ingest one another in a lethal sexual pandaemonium, with the weakest being consumed first). Muehl also warmly advocated incest, filmed orgies and all kinds of bestiality, and attempts to eradicate the distinction between human and animal life; however, he demands the extermination of all ‘useless animals’ together with the destruction of forests and cities…” from The Art of Destruction, The Films of the Vienna Action Group by Stephen Barber. Music by Dieter Roth, Gerhard Ruhm and Oswald Wiener; Berliner Dichter Workshop 1973, and both sides of the single Psycho-Motorik Musik by Otto Muehl.
Category Archives: Wavelength
Wavelength – Destruction in Art part 13. Niki de St. Phalle. Arman.
Letter from Niki de St. Phalle to Pontus Hulten: “In 1961 I shot at canvases because shooting allowed me to express the aggression that I felt. An assassination without a victim. I shot because I liked seeing the canvas bleed and die. I shot to reach that magical instant, that ecstasy. It was a moment of truth, I trembled with passion when I shot at my paintings”. Four tracks from 2010 by Pierre Henry in memory of Arman composed for the recent retrospective at the Pompidou.
Wavelength – James Tregaskis and UKUncut.
James Tregaskis in the studio with a recording he made whilst taking part in a peaceful demonstration outside Boots on Oxford Street with UKUncut. During this protest the police used CS gas against the participants creating a mood of panic. Followed by brief extract from The Revolution Starts Now by Galaxia/Steve Wallis.
Wavelength – Business as usual.
Business goes on as usual by Roberta Flack from the LP Chapter Two. Who’ll pay reparations on my soul? by Gil Scott-Heron from Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. Money Blues parts 1,2 and 3 by Archie Shepp from Things have got to change featuring the voice of Joe Lee Wilson.
Wavelength – I don’t want to shoot your children (Destruction in Art Part 12).
Interview with Steve Pratt who served in the Special Air Services or SAS from 1969-1981 before becoming an artist. Steve lives and works in northern Finland and London and works on paintings which attempt to expose the hidden realities of conflict. I met Steve for the first time about 3 weeks ago when he showed me a copy of a new book about his work entitled “I DON’T WANT TO SHOOT YOUR CHILDREN” with the subtitle “The Making of a Dangerous Individual” followed by a long number with a black line through it… Steve Pratt:
Wavelength – In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven there were men and women.
Composed by Robert Ashley in 1972, released on Cramps Records in 1974. The text is by John Barton Wolgamot, written in 1944 and published privately in two different versions. The book was reputedly found by chance in a second hand bookshop in Greenwich Village in the 1950s. ‘Wolgamot said he had sold twelve copies of the first edition and two copies of the second. Wolgamot said that the “book” was essentially the title page, that one should consider the title page to be the “body” of the book, and that the 128 pages of names should be considered as “the blood flowing through the body”. Wolgamot was being modest, facetious, self-deprecating, whatever, when he said, “It’s harder than you think to write a sentence that doesn’t say anything”‘.
Wavelength – Ed Baxter on Artists in Ruins (Destruction in Art Part 11)
Interview number six with Resonance Executive Officer Ed Baxter and ostensibly part two of Ed’s association with Art in Ruins (Glyn Banks and Hannah Vowles). Alcohol gets a cameo role, Dermot Todd’s book: Filth, is passed over (grisly and embarrassing), disarmingly candid introspection.
Wavelength – Four tracks which seemed to have something in common but now I’m not sure…
Join the angry side by Stewart Home from the CD Stewart Home comes in your face, Motor City is burning by The MC5 from Kick out the Jams, Happy Jack by The Who Live at Leeds University 1970, and The Wolfman (1964) by Robert Ashley; tape, voice and feedback, produced at the University of California at Davis by Composer-Performer Editions. First performed at Charlotte Moorman’s “Festival of the Avant-Garde” New York, fall 1964, created, processed and mixed by Robert Ashley in his studio in Ann Arbor Michigan. The piece gained considerable reputation as a threat to the listener’s health
Wavelength – Blue Blue Christmas… The Wavelength Annual Christmas Party
How will you spend Christmas by Reverend A.W. Nix; Fighter Pilot’s Christmas by Captain Richard Jonas; How I hate to see Christmas come around by Jimmy Witherspoon; Santa Claus goes modern by Rod Rogers, Teri Summers and The Librettos; Christmas Time by Black Ace; No Christmas in Kentucky by Phil Ochs; Did you spend Christmas Day in jail? by Reverend J.M. Gates; Blue Christmas by Low; Christmas Blues by Larry Darnell; One Special Gift by Low.
Wavelength – Destruction in Art part 10 with Richard Thomas
Conversing with Resonance apparatchik Richard Thomas on Tenerife, anti-design, a Markson piano, ResoVision, and the recent student demonstrations.