Zoe: Based on my understanding of Warhol through his book 'A TO B AND BACK AGAIN', the man's compulsive recording of sounds that are 'in themselves' of no particular interest to an audience ( ie neither intrinsically exotic, rare or top secret ) was akin to his compulsive bulk purchasing of 'ordinary' Jockey Y-fronts, the boxes of which he wouldn't even open. His film EMPIRE STATE, the reels of which could be shown in any order, for as long as you like ( and you're not expected neccessarily to sit and watch it ) is also similar in that it takes the ordinary and through the very act of its re-presentation by WARHOL becomes interesting. Duchamp of course had done this with ready-mades and what-not, but Warhol took it a stage further by saying not simply 'this is art because I say so' but rather 'this is art because I, ANDY WARHOL, say so', instantly giving it his brand signature without even the use of his trusty marker pen.
Put crudely, Warhol fans will listen to, watch, collect and admire any 'old shit' that this guy churned out, recorded or collected, simply because he created a party of ONE that no-one could quite get in to, thus creating one of THE 20th century myths/icons in himself. And that of course was his whole point and life's work. Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot him in 1968, may have missed the point but perhaps she hit upon something too, because she did something OUT OF THE ORDINARY and he was a purveyor of the ordinary. I would not say though that he was a particular FAN of the ordinary, I just think he had an insatiable urge to say LOOK, LISTEN, LOOK AT ALL THIS STUFF ! And so busy was he doing that, that he never had time to review or archive it all. That's for us to do. Similarly, I saw a short film of Jonas Mekas' at a festival. It was just a home movie of his. But it featured Jackie O and Warhol, albeit fleetingly. I have no doubt that this film would not have been shown otherwise. So what is it that makes Warhol's audio tapes interesting ? The company he kept and the fact that he actually DID it, as he was talking about doing it. Oh, and yes, I do think he was scared of death, but maybe more accurately disappointed. From his book, the complete chapter on 'Death' is simply this: A: I'm so sorry to hear about it. I just thought that things were magic and that it would never happen. ........................................................................ Do read Valerie Solanas' SCUM manifesto, it's great -http://www.ai.mit.edu/~shivers/rants/scum.html ) _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. ------------------------------------------------- a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] info: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and write "info ambit" in the message body -------------------------------------------------
