CN_9 (EXPOSURE)
Conductor Number Nine: To Forget Yourself Yet Remember Forgetting.
Real-Time Exercises from Symbolic America.
By Cary Peppermint
Postmasters Gallery, New York
May 20, 1999

"Media determine our situation, which (nevertheless, or for that very
reason) merits a description." […] "Whoever manages to hear the
circuit diagram itself in the synthesizer sounds of the compact disc, or
to see the circuit diagram in the laser storm of the discotheque, finds
happiness itself … At the moment of relentless subjugation to laws –
which is our case – man's illusion as inventor of media vanishes. And
the situation can be identified" –Friedrich Kittler, "Grammophone Film
Typewriter"

Entering Postmasters Gallery on a warm spring evening we find a blue
plastic tarp spread out on the floor and on the tarp what looks like a
crate for transporting chickens, only larger than necessary. Atop the
crate is a TV set and on either side speakers.

An image comes on the TV set of Cary Peppermint who is, it seems, inside
the crate with a video camera. Music comes out of the speakers and he
commences to perform the first of four "real-time exercises" along with
the music. We watch and listen but can't quite make out what he's
saying. We start moving around, go up to the crate and peer into it
between the slats and verify there is "someone" there moving around
though it's too dark to make a definite identification. We look at the
paintings of Christian Schumann on the walls that also seem to be saying
something though we can't quite figure that out, either.

Cary on the TV looks upset that we aren't listening. He snaps polaroids
of himself, grinning, and continues with exercises two and three. When
number four comes along we are invited to sit on the floor, which we do.
We are listening after all.

The music stops. Cary snaps a few more polaroids then the TV set goes
dark. A minute of silence then applause. We chat amongst ourselves then
leave the gallery quite content with the performance even though we
still don't know what we were being told much less how the exercises
might help us.

+ + +

On the CN_9 website (http://www.progirl.com/cn9) the work is described
as a "circuit." The audio is the "battery" or energy source. The
participant is the "conductor" who is the medium through which the
energy from the battery is channeled to the "resistor," contemporary
culture.

In his book "Invisible Republic" Greil Marcus writes about "the old,
weird America" described in older folk music recorded in the 20's and
30's that Bob Dylan and The Band reconfigured in The Basement Tapes in
1968. Tales of death and lost children from the 19th century with
analogies no longer making sense in the late 20th. The songs and the
people who sang them would have been forgotten if they hadn't been
recorded. Electronic media preserved them but also kept them from being
updated. Dylan knew songs didn't have to make make narrative sense to be
songs – think of the words to his "Subterranian Homesick Blues" or
"Visions of Johanna" – they only have to describe the situation.