An Open Letter to Brad Armitage + MaxNormal.tv
Friday, May 04, 2007
We, here at ArtHeat, don't normally post criticisms on music. But when they are sent to us by All Theory. No Practice. we can't help ourselves. Especially when the musician(s) accused do dabble in art. Especially when the criticism could be as equally levelled at some others...
Hi Brad,
Having recently visited your new website and having seen MaxNormal.tv perform at Carfax several weeks ago I have to ask - why don't you invest as much time and energy in generating your very 1996-looking digital graphics as you do in your new music? Also I find it quite disturbing Waddy's reaction to his audience at Carfax - he clearly doesn't enjoy the middle class white jocks that exclusively still listen to his 'music' - his performance was really quite sad to witness, the reasonably intelligent and informed group that used to constitute his fan base seemto have been replaced by a group that Waddy is at odds with, but he's also sufficiently aware to realise he has no other choice. He was aggressively desperate. A trait most patently pathetic in a performer who is basically, and by his own admission, singing for his supper. Second question - and I mean this most genuinely - how did you guys convince the French Institute to waste their money on you? Third question - if you're the moneyman of the band why don't you invest in some plausible suits for the band members - the low budget, charity shop, I- borrowed-my-Dad's-jacket look doesn't work. Your use of the Taal Monument as an ironical gesture especially doesn't work if you all look like the original arseholes who made the thing. Fourth question - why is MaxNormal.tv so reliant on irony? If you're proposing 'revolutionary' new languages (be they linguistic, musical or visual) the use of irony undermines this stance from the very beginning. How can you change the way people understand music if you start off by saying you don't actually believe a new language exists? That devoting time and energy to creating and developing a new language is seemingly uncool. It's a cop out - it's fucking hard work and I would posit that the band fronts irony over content because you haven't in all honesty put in that much work have you?
I write these things as I find what you're doing with your time to be a waste. Not sure if it's a condition of being from Cape Town, but why are you guys hiding behind so many tired guises - why not create work with intent, as adults that is contingent on life in this country - not this
endless stream of weak re-invention games made by 30 year children obsessed with notions of cool and lame escapism.
Regards,
All Theory. No Practice.
Check out All Theory. No Practice here
Check out Max Normal.TV here
Hi Brad,
Having recently visited your new website and having seen MaxNormal.tv perform at Carfax several weeks ago I have to ask - why don't you invest as much time and energy in generating your very 1996-looking digital graphics as you do in your new music? Also I find it quite disturbing Waddy's reaction to his audience at Carfax - he clearly doesn't enjoy the middle class white jocks that exclusively still listen to his 'music' - his performance was really quite sad to witness, the reasonably intelligent and informed group that used to constitute his fan base seemto have been replaced by a group that Waddy is at odds with, but he's also sufficiently aware to realise he has no other choice. He was aggressively desperate. A trait most patently pathetic in a performer who is basically, and by his own admission, singing for his supper. Second question - and I mean this most genuinely - how did you guys convince the French Institute to waste their money on you? Third question - if you're the moneyman of the band why don't you invest in some plausible suits for the band members - the low budget, charity shop, I- borrowed-my-Dad's-jacket look doesn't work. Your use of the Taal Monument as an ironical gesture especially doesn't work if you all look like the original arseholes who made the thing. Fourth question - why is MaxNormal.tv so reliant on irony? If you're proposing 'revolutionary' new languages (be they linguistic, musical or visual) the use of irony undermines this stance from the very beginning. How can you change the way people understand music if you start off by saying you don't actually believe a new language exists? That devoting time and energy to creating and developing a new language is seemingly uncool. It's a cop out - it's fucking hard work and I would posit that the band fronts irony over content because you haven't in all honesty put in that much work have you?
I write these things as I find what you're doing with your time to be a waste. Not sure if it's a condition of being from Cape Town, but why are you guys hiding behind so many tired guises - why not create work with intent, as adults that is contingent on life in this country - not this
endless stream of weak re-invention games made by 30 year children obsessed with notions of cool and lame escapism.
Regards,
All Theory. No Practice.
Check out All Theory. No Practice here
Check out Max Normal.TV here
posted by Robert Sloon at 2:10 PM
11 Comments:
I'm sure Max wadperson must be fascinated by this tirade from some twat living vicariously through his experiences and not having the imagination to realise what its like. I mean, if his band had been called all theory no practice imagine how many people would have fought their way through the door to be his fans
The practice of All Theory. No Practice IS academic, theoretical, intellectual. I love the work & enjoy his writing. It is amongst the best around at present. But does this mean that someone like Waddy is to be judged by their parameters and dissed out of validity. I don't think so, I believe that Waddy is a kind of master at what he does. I do find it strange that Waddy chooses to do what he does, but suppose that somewhere out there the issues which underpin his ironies are of some concern, to someone. I am not in a position to judge why he speaks in the way he does, or how sincere he is. For all I know he could be a congenital idiot informed and manipulated by mental traces, remnants of a rehabilitation programme that The Previous Scientists were running to sanitise nonconformity and dissent in Plaateland Hoer Skole. That he may be a late footnote to 1980's new wave pop culture meets afrikaander counter culture is going to seem less historically displaced later, say in ten years time, than it does now, when it easy to believe that we have all moved on, and that he is the fucken DINOSAUR. Perhaps when time has passed and the dust has settled we' ll have forgotten Waddy and Max.Normal. We'll be worrying about other things. Like we forgot Seinfeld and Kramer. They were just part of the culture, the entertainment/commentary/recreation/wallpaper . The real stuff is always going on elsewhere, and it demeans the real to seek it through dissing the honest bemusements of a natural clown. What I'm saying is that I would rather see All Theory. No Practice, wrassle with the many practioners of LAME THEORY. LAME PRACTICE., than bullying the makers of games rooted in No Theory. All Practice. Or are we all to be deadly earnest?
oh my god i will NEVER forget Kramer...
exactly, JR, excactly, AND spoken as a fan not a critic?
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaai! Fonzi!
'aaaye'
'fonzie'
This case is a brilliant example for examining a very thorny question: does art theory work in practice?
When you go into an Alan Alborough show and there is work which has no meaning, everyone who's studied art knows that the viewer is supposed to think: why would an artist make work with no meaning? And then they will start to get the brilliant point the work is actually making about the importance of questioning the need for meaning in a work of art.
But does this ever actually happen? Has anybody ever tested whether thought-provoking work of this kind has ever provoked a thought? We know its SUPPOSED to, but does it, to anyone other than the initiated?
So here, in the person of Waddy Jones, is a member of the 'uninitiated'. He has not studied art theory at university. He is working from within the framework of that which is available to non-tertiary-educated members of the public: popular culture. We know enough about him that we can't write him off as being stupid. So if it was possible for a member of the public to learn anything from looking at art, Waddy would have learnt it.
And yet he makes this stuff which the members of “All theory no practice” see as juvenile and faddish. Trendy stuff that's going to date horribly fast, while any random fine arstist, like say Alan Alborough or someone, who probably has half Waddy's brains, is having a brilliant lasting international career.
I know it is very difficult for a university-educated artist to think the impossible thought: that they have been TAUGHT to use particular structures of thought and that these are neither the result of their own intelligence nor the logical outcome of common sense. How far would they have got with anything, if they had to go it alone in the compromised real world like Waddy without their theories to cushion them? Perhaps instead of criticising what he does it might be a good idea to feel very very humbled by what your privilege protects you from.
And also, perhaps he is being more effective in reaching people than you are.
Ja I agree. Mr theory and practice can go fuck yourself. Or just whack off infront of the computer like you normally would.
Wonder how may porn sites mr ATNP visits daily? Gotta be like 7 upwards at least. No there's a thought.
it may be interesting to view Waddy's practice as a kind of participation ritual, rather than as Art. Art, we might agree, is burdened with all kinds of weighty and historical ramifications and meanings which practioners are assumed to be aware of. A contemporary participation ritual could range from dog-walking along the Sea Point Boulevard (we don't have to call this 'just' exercise), to dancing the salsa at Arthur Murray ( we don't have to call this 'just' a class). Or skinning a dead cat at full moon?
Waddy has great style skill, he is a master of pastiche, at fitting in to the language and moves of the sub-cultural niche he inhabits. This does not neccesarily involve invention, though Waddy has also shown much wit and cleverness in improvising and 'riffing' within his chosen domains.
Oh fuck it, this is so sweet! Can't he be lauded, for God's sake? At least for his perfect moves? His swish art direction, his razor eye for what is right, for how the bits cohere within the whole.
By comparison to the truly cutting edge work of say The Smiley Bomber, his work is benign and etheric, unlikely to change anything in the world. This, arguably is a pity, but has - for those of us privileged enough to feel that we do inhabit a world - the benefit that it is destined to pass us by. For this Wadkin Jones must be given credit.
i think the letter was written by "jane marple" pretending to be ATNP...seems like her, no sense of fun, no humility, no grasp of what is going on around her...................
Yeah, as we say in Cape Town, the chlorophyl on the far side of the mine dump is a dull golden brown. But green with envy.
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