Art and History and People

When we think art doesn't matter....

The Walker Art Center and Museum in Minneapolis has come under fire for a very large installation called "Scaffold" (2012) by artist Sam Durrant recently installed on the Center's grounds. The wood and steel installation layers forms of seven historical gallows for US sanctioned executions until 2006. One section evokes the hanging of 38 Dakota native American men in Minnesota by Lincoln's presidential order after the US-Dakota war in 1862, the largest mass execution in US history. The executions incidentally occurred the same week as the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

As nearly as I can ascertain, the installation is only the gallows. No ropes or symbols of those hanged can be seen in photos, although there must be some narrative aspect, even if it's just a label.

Indian wars were a significant concern in expanding America. One source lists 17 Indian wars in the 1800s, five each in the 1700s and 1600s. New Englanders will find historical parallels to King Philip's war of 1675 that burned and killed through settled villages in Massachusetts for a year-and-a-half, until the capture and beheading of Metacommet.

The execution of the Dakota is considered one of the greatest atrocities in American capital punishment history. That event is not alone in the artwork installation. Six other complex scaffolds in the exhibit placed around the Walker's grounds memorialize the executions of John Brown, the Lincoln Conspirators, four other Americans, and Saddam Hussein. Native Americans find the work insensitive and see no parallel in their treatment, in that their efforts were in defence of their lands and lives.

The actual history of the wars with native Americans in Minnesota is complicated with different groups at different times. Thousands of settlers were attacked in wars driving them into forts and forcing them to abandon harvests and homes throughout Minnesota and the Dakotas in the 1860s, just prior to the Civil War.

Walker director Olga Visio responded in an open letter to a publication devoted to native American news and arts. She regrets that they did not anticipate better how the work would be received by native American audiences. She first encountered the installation in Europe and saw a powerful artistic statement about capital punishment, histories of violence, and colonialist hegemony.

One must have some sympathy for the Walker, which fundamentally is an art museum. Art is a complicated matter, no longer confined to design and craft, inspiration and vision. It is culturally invested, and museums struggle to make aesthetic and critical connections while representing history and culture with sensitivity. Our times are fraught with conflict over who has the right to tell a story. The Walker is casting a critical eye and provoking thought about the enormity of the action in the past and present, to execute those who war against the state. The exhibit touches on the larger question of capital punishment, itself.

I have sympathy for the native Americans. They are in position to feel broadly connected, if not blamed, for the history of resistance to advancing Euro-American civilization. They rightly feel their heritage might be attacked or dismissed. Any challenge also risks being generalized into a categorical critique of the race. It's a good thing that they are vigilant and challenge easy narratives. To paraphrase Red Green, we all really do need to be in this together.

Arthur Dirks

18 September 2017

Recorded Music Collecting

This is a musing about music collecting evolution, the mystical appeal some people find for vinyl over cds, and a note on collecting practice.

For a few years now, I've been reading about a fetish that privileges vinyl over cds. There are technical reasons that might support this: vinyl is analog and continuous physically encoded sound, but cd's are digital bits that are read and interpreted in sequence electronically. Some people claim to be able to hear the difference on a high quality system, pronouncing the vinyl "warmer," and a modest vinyl resurgence seems to come and go, usually at steep prices.

Savvy folks know an mp3 is an encoding that loads the entire digital file for play. It is compressed at variable densities, but usually quite small. A wav file typically is less compressed, but it, too, is sequenced digitally in "samples." Freeware low-end encoding and home-grown editing may not produce the quality of the best commercial encoding, but it can be at least as good as many off-label "collections" that are burned en-masse in limited runs from original sources of questionable quality.

For several years now, Diane and I have a practice of buying a half-dozen new original issue cds for each other as Christmas gifts. We do have our preferences, but we try to be generally open. We feel a little like we're driving a Model A in the Tesla era. With streaming and its convenience, the shrinking of brick-and-mortar music retailers like Tower Records and the fading of "alternative radio" as universities sell off their frequencies, a paradigm shift of sorts certainly has occurred - or evolved.

I began collecting singles retired from juke boxes. My father bought them in mixed boxes from the vendor. It was a great source of obscure artists and b-side gems which, incidentally, had received very little play. Record stores were rare to non-existent, but music stores sold records. I ordered several singles and albums by mail through the music store in the city. Like many others I joined a record club and wound up with expensive albums I didn't like because I didn't submit the refusal.

Diane shares my interest and we have schlepped our increasing collection of music from living place to place over the years.

In the 1970s We discovered used music at Salvation Army and Goodwill. Often bare vinyl, often ethnic and foreign, rootsy R&B or obscure pop, and always somewhat over a decade old - sold for 50 cents to a buck when new music was over $8 everywhere else. I developed a procedure and tools for washing and cleaning and sleeving them. We'd prowl used record shops we passed when travelling. We scored some really great music we would not have bought at new prices in immigrant cities like Omaha, Sioux City, Kansas City, Colorado Springs, Milwaukee, Chicago, Hartford, Portland, Boston, Brockton, New Bedford, Fall River and Providence.

"Alternative radio" was not a real thing except near universities. We made careful collections on reel-to-reel tape to accompany our lives and our parties. Those were mixtures of jazz, regional pop, and evolving hip hop. We moved to cassettes and then home-burned cds, with elaborate box art and labels. Often they need to be re-burned after a few years of play, so I archive the files together.

There are a couple points here. One is the slow fade of this audio model. A few years ago I sold 3 large boxes of vinyl. We have many more albums and maybe we'll digitize some, but we don't really play the vinyl. The CD model is becoming less durable for music sales. The time may come when consumer music will not be sold on physical media.

We may all lament a second paradigm shift, which is the broadcast audio medium itself. Broadcast radio - AM and FM - remains a significant advertising medium. It may be heard mostly in commuting cars, offices and other work places. Commercial music programming tends not to be adventurous, and talk tends to dominate radio. Internet "stations," trying to displace home audio, offer a variety of music and personalized programming free with ads and by subscription. The MTV effect is a thing of the past, and exposure and promotion of consumer music is becoming increasingly fraught.

All things said, I think we're still ahead of European radio for popular music programming. Our broadcast paradigm is entirely different.

13 September 2017

Historical Pageants

I've been thinking about historical pageantry this week - with new beginnings, lots of hope, lots of promise as the season turns to the new academic year.

As a culture we stage re-enactments and re-creations of past events as commemoration of our historical roots. Crowds today flock to "King Richard's Fair" and such fanciful re-creations of the late 1100s in England for novel entertainment. But there also are serious hobbyist re-enactors who focus on authenticity of Revolutionary War and Civil War battles, down to study of an historical person. Over the years, commemorative mock battles have been features of various festival occasions around the world.

The post-Civil War period in America was a muscular and optimistic commercial era. The west was being populated, the expansion was being consolidated and Americans needed to celebrate their achievements. Periodic grand pageantry was the answer for the times, as was seen in Victorian England and Europe.

In 1800 the US was 17 years old, contained east and south of the Ohio River, plus Ohio newly added. The total citizen population of 5.3 million included 1 million slaves. A century passed and by 1900 there were over 76 million Americans spread from coast to coast. The cities in America mounted big commemorative events, celebrating their founders and founding.

In 1900 learning and knowledge meant experience with classical sources. In secondary school the classics were enforced study for a disciplined mind. Latin was a graduation requirement, not just for Catholics. Learning was dominated by reading and recitation. Memorization was highly valued. The Victorian love of symbolism and metaphor pervaded literature. It all was a formula for pageantry and grand symbolic gestures, usually with Greek or Roman themes. Some high schools had exercises with costumes and ceremonies conducted in Latin, typically celebrating virtue and honor.

Communities also established periodic festivals celebrating their own founding in the national expansion of the 1800s. Wrapped in community boosterism and celebrating growth, they featured pageant re-enactments, commercial preening, and always a parade or "procession." These were - and many continue to be - offered on a long cycle of once in five or ten years. The celebrations commemorate early settlers and public figures in the town and region, their hardships and their notable achievements, in many cases not a century past in the 1950s.

Older sections of the country had their own celebrations. Hathitrust listing of historical New England founding festival pageants includes six in Massachusetts 1897-1916, others in Vermont and Connecticut. By that time those states were approaching 250 years old.

There are contemporary re-enactor groups today that focus on particular wars and battles. Participants may research specific historical characters and authenticity is highly valued. These differ greatly from the community boosterism of the founding pageants.

I have a particular pageant memory from the early 1950s in Kansas of seeing my father, as one of Coronado's soldiers in a skirmish with Indians, had fallen from a horse on the football field. He was a farm boy, although not a horseman. The horse was spooked by the shiny cuirass and clamshell helmet he wore - it looked like a foreign creature on his back. My father was unhurt, but it stopped the battle for a time. The field was full of faux-Indians and make-believe conquistadors. The grandstands were full of everybody else in several towns around.

We have many distractions today, with multiple broadcast media, streamed movies and serialized entertainment, social media and other online resources. It's a far different entertainment environment than the early 20th Century. The sense of community is challenged as people select a home for other reasons. The broad range of media makes organizing perspectives difficult, and the pace of living makes broad participation problematic.

Historic celebrations today tend to be much more nuanced in interpreting events through modern American thought. Treatment of Indians and non-Caucasians is particularly difficult for some historical narratives. With a few years of retrospection, it does not appear that the turn to the 21st Century exhibited quite the robust pageantry and assertiveness as the beginning of the 20th.

Arthur Dirks

04 Sept 2013

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