Object – illusion. An essay on false proficiency
by Dagfinn Koch
Having Joseph Beuys in mind, Malin would be appropriate for the free candidate study at the Norwegian Acadamy of Music, but of course without learning anything about writing music. It’s the thoughts/theories/concepts about music that’s important. Not how it’s made, and certainly in no way what others have done before.
Her aesthetics can be described as happy go lucky-fatalistic deconstrutivism. She thinks, as Derrida did, that there is no core or a «truth». Reality is and becomes a language game. In this respect she is a neopostmodernist. To interpret (hermeneutical) references to Morton Feldmann or Phillip Glass into this, is typical academic arrogance gone astray. Experience (phenomenology) does not fit within the concept either. Emotion is merely lack of reflection. The composer IS the creator, the object and the observer all in one. The audience has no function within this form of non-expression. Expressions are intrusive and manipulative. It’s a kind of emotional fascism. To ascribe something meaning is a true self-deception to avoid thinking of death. Historicism is reflected in the use of the outdated archaic symphony medium. I – as her modest assistant – have made some corrections to the range of the instruments, and suggested some instrumentation alterings that helps highlighting the structures she desires; without interfering with the original concept with my otherwise destroying «cleverness», warring against the conceptual art project. I realize that I’m obsolete. She has entered the dynamic characters and crescendos and dimenuendos where they in her opinion are visually appropriate. There is no articulation marks. As she says in the score:
«Articulation signs are excluded because, as an ethical hedonistic altruistic misanthropical humanist, I believe that every human has the right and freedom to articulate him- or herself.»
I questioned whether she wanted any ornamentation. She replied that such will come when she learns what it is (a somewhat inconsistent statement in my opinion, considering that the idea of artistic skills are repressive strategy stemming from guilds). What I think she means is: When she invents ornamentation, she can decide on it. It is important within conceptual art to let the story begin with ones own birth. My wheel is the first wheel. If someone has made a wheel before one’s own birth, it is irrelevant. It is the very individual process that leads to one’s own wheel that is essential. It is quite clear that the Norwegian Association of Composers must approach this talent.