I don’t know exactly what question I am grasping at but here we go.
I’ve been watching a lot of movies and especially foreign movies. I think about older showings (or sometimes here in Japan for foreign movies) where you’re handed a pamplet roughly explaining the movie. Or how sometimes a painting will come with an artist’s statement. Or video games come with boxes and manuals.
These are obviously fine and good and important parts of the work or experience. And this is lost in streaming and downloads and digital distribution. Or looking through the physical case as you listen to music.
Hideo Kojima obviously uses the CD case in MGS and MG2.
I think anything a creator says afterwards or years later is horseshit or just as valid as any criticism but of no elevation of the original work. But released along side or indeed part of the work is different. And I am worried I’m missing that in this day or that additional piece outside the actual media would enhance the enjoyment all the more. A lot of the recent ska releases have gotten an at release interview or article on Brooklyn Vegan and they have always improved the album in question. Added context.
Which I guess is what I am getting at, wanting context.
And a completely different asside I am worried millions of people are getting context from horrible youtube 2 hour videos talking out of their ass. Mistaking criticism for context.
Thanks for reading! Let me know Your Thoughts down below. Tip your bartender, plant a garden, call your loved ones.
i really enjoyed reading the thank yous on like old punk and noise cds because they’d always thank other bands that inspired them and it was a really good way to get into more music. i think its great when artists are open about their processes and inspirations, if they wanna be
htrk is one of my fav currently touring / recording musical acts rn and they have these lists of references on their website… reading dennis cooper and watching wong kar-wai films etc.
I do miss the feel of physical media but also artists have easier ways to communicate w their users now. Like, a website or wiki or social media post are all kinda of adjunct media.
I think one of the reasons “the hype machine” works is because of this. Like, you’re not guaranteed “adjacent content” in any specific expected way besides the hype. And a lot of the good ones include a lot of manual style content.
I’m usually the one advocating for wishing games were more like music but I think this is one of those times where movies are more apt.
I love nice packaging but give me special features like that Atari collection. Throw a making of documentary on the disc. Give me a playable proof of concept beta build.
I agree, I find that it’s a lot easier/more interesting for me to engage with something unfamiliar/seemingly boring when I have the “in” in the form of a way of thinking about it that connects it to a broader lineage/conversation outside of itself.
Artist statements for me are definitely helpful in explicitly offering contexts or positionings for something that maybe wouldn’t come to mind by reading the object itself, even if that’s just a reminder that there are humans w/ weird personal hang-ups involved in the decisions behind the final object. Like getting into celebs for the gossip, rap beefs, etc…
OBviously critcism draws these connections too but I do think artist statements can be a valuable way to explicitly insist that people address certain elements or influences or whatever. Even if the response from the audience is “they don’t understand their own art” or w/e
i like reading what people have to say specifically bc i dont think it’s possible to explain a work even if that’s what you were trying to do - so every explanation is more like a complicating texture, or else a new object in itself that maybe acts as an odd mirror to this other thing.
i think it gets a bad rep thru being associated with like the institutional needs of making things legible to managers and funding bodies, and unfortunately those requirements seep into the groundwater of the rest of the culture. donald duck’s quack attack is a multidisciplinary work exploring the poetics of space and the dynamics of late capitalist production in a participatory context while also situating itself within existing community traditions of fan labour etc. i sort of hate the false choice this helps produce between like a mute and quietist aestheticism and a “discursive” tradition which is in fact speaking to nobody, trying to convince, delight or irritate nobody. ideas can be sensual and exciting!! a lot of my favourite art criticism was written by artists as asides, diaries or letters or prefaces or liner notes, which can be useful specifically through not having to be standalone or even correct just bc they’re meant more as a kind of secondary elaboration, as curlicues that branch off the main point and into their own space, trying to understand their own enthusiasm. also it sort of feels like an expectation now that critics should be secular, that they should have a certain practiced weary distance from the idea that there’s any one right way or ideology to making art… which is fine but boring, so i think it’s good to have soapboxes specifically for the committed to a bit
just put some snappy comment in the intro or credits, and i am likely to think about what deeper meaning it has, and how i cannot see the connecting dot(s) if it is a very outlandish quote.
It’s like a pattern-matching brain that just can’t help itself but parse it like that.
I agree with rudie that context is a good additive to an aesthetic experience. One reason I like Ryan Holmberg’s translations of manga, beyond his good selective taste, is that he devotes most of his energy to writing detailed essays about the artist, their contemporaries, and the world events that they’re responding to. The best part about things like this is that they don’t really close the loop of your experience with the art. Instead, they open your mind up to continue exploring other artists that are mentioned and spark curiosity about the details of history.
