guitar piece (pier marton)

Early Video Excerpts by Pier Marton from Pier Marton on Vimeo.

horsemouth is mainly interested in pier marton's performance for video (1978-82) and in particular guitar piece. 

this 'contains sequences where marton would beat himself with a guitar until it disintegrated.' (new media in art by michael rush, world of art series, 2nd edition 2005.)

in case you are curious it takes two minutes and 33 seconds. but despite his best efforts the few seconds shown above are all that horsemouth has been able to find of it. 

'guitar piece is a darkly comical, angry work, in which marton hits a guitar against his head in a rhythmic, yelling "music!" in an accelerating fury until the guitar splinters into pieces.' (catalogue item at electronic arts intermix.) 

relax. despite having a surfeit of guitars horsemouth is not planning to do anything like this. 

for a start it looks too painful. and second horsemouth is a great respecter of the skill that goes into making musical instruments. (plus he's mean. it would be a waste of money and resources to smash a musical instrument). 

such is the outcome of reading new media in art by michael rush. quite how all this is different to performance art (by roselee goldberg in the world of art series which horsemouth also has) is another matter. to exist performance pieces either have to be performed to witnesses, or documented in some fashion, or recorded (horsemouth supposes). they depend on the existence of writing or video (of some sort). 

continuing the thought experiment perhaps the audience could be sworn to secrecy. instructed to deny that the event ever took place. perhaps the event could be a training in how to lie.  

horsemouth found himself interested in artist joyce kozloff. she and the pattern and decoration movement had a brief moment in the sun in the 70ies (they didn't expect for it to happen and they didn't expect it to suddenly stop either) and then it's gone. she wrote an anti-manifesto against ad reinhardt's minimalism. her name is made. later she becomes more interested in cartography  and she picks up large scale public art commissions (doing tile works for railway stations).

- 'a lot of people are asking about the 70ies now...'

- 'really?'

- '... I never really expected this kind of interest again.'

- 'it's true though, isn't it, these things do return. and at least, living in new york today, in this, you know, hyper capitalistic, very gentrified city, it's hard not to...'

- 'it's nostalgia for an earlier moment, yeah.'

it was the photo that drew horsemouth in. a young joyce kozloff and two friends sit out in the park talking (surrounded by hippies doing the same thing). horsemouth can't spot any guitars so he guesses they are artists. 

horsemouth has made it to the weekend again. in a sense now that he no longer works it is no surprise that he can do this. when he worked he used to count the hours (literally) but fortunately his work was mostly interesting, and when not interesting it was mostly involving and made up of bite-sized chunks. when he was working the time would zip by and then there were the distractions of travel and the possibilities for coffee and snacks, plenty of opportunities to do a little light book-shopping, perhaps some sitting in the sun reading,  some sneaking into libraries.

a friend has two photographs in an exhibit (today horsemouth goes to have a look). the weather doesn't seem to be the best for sitting out chatting. sunday is the anniversary of the death of mark linkous (sparklehorse).