THE APPROACH­ING OF THE DIS­CO VOID — REPEAT­ED AND OTH­ER WORKS

1. Exper­i­men­tal folk/​blues gui­tarist John Fahey was the first inter­na­tion­al musi­cian to record in Tas­ma­nia while he toured there in 1980. His record com­pa­ny agreed to a live record­ing to off­set tour­ing costs for the local pro­mot­er. Along­side vari­a­tions on Waltz­ing Matil­da, Fahey’s set and the sub­se­quent record­ing, fea­ture an out­landish ver­sion of The Approach­ing of the Dis­co Void, a sad — at times angry — ele­gy for folk and feel­ing in the age of elec­tron­ic music and increas­ing reg­u­la­tion. The track includes a pro­longed inter­lude for impro­vi­sa­tion, where Fahey approach­es a precipice of sorts, tee­ter­ing on the edge of com­pre­hen­sion and leg­i­bil­i­ty, before return­ing to the order and safe­ty of pre­scribed notation.

Mar­co Fusina­to paid a pro­fes­sion­al ses­sion musi­cian to per­verse­ly attempt two iden­ti­cal record­ings of Fahey’s track, based on the pub­lished nota­tion and a record­ing by Fahey. He has then syn­chro­nised the two chan­nels, effec­tive­ly dou­bling the track. Can you play the same thing twice in exact­ly the same way? Evi­dent­ly not, even if you try, and of course, as a mas­ter of improv, Fahey pur­pose­ly didn’t. Although the two ver­sions do resem­ble each oth­er, we can clear­ly see and hear the difference.

But anoth­er, stranger thing occurs in dou­bling the track. While Fusina­to may have set out to ren­der the unavoid­able dif­fer­ence, he has also cap­tured the ampli­tude, the exu­ber­ance, the excess in rela­tion to nota­tion which char­ac­teris­es impro­vi­sa­tion or the freed will in play­ing music; the gap between notes, the vary­ing play­ing speeds, the dif­fer­ent posi­tions and pres­sure of fin­gers in the same chord, the note not played, played less: these estab­lish a com­plex har­mon­ic between the ver­sions, a ghost­ly inter­text, which is the pre­cise mea­sure of impro­vi­sa­tion, i.e. a record­ing of the devi­a­tion from some norm which per­haps nev­er exist­ed, like some pla­ton­ic ideal….vapour derived from ether.

These vari­a­tions could be extrap­o­lat­ed to the unseen influ­ences act­ing upon any per­for­mance. There is a long list of such things in Fahey’s career to make him the per­fect exam­ple; booze, depres­sion, vagrancy. What­ev­er we seek in the artist’s deci­sion to play (or paint) in this or that way, on this or that night, could be curi­ous­ly mea­sured in Fusinato’s dra­mat­i­cal­ly staged rep­e­ti­tion. But the results are not alto­geth­er crit­i­cal (since the new track is strange­ly haunt­ing, even more beau­ti­ful) though incon­sis­tent with Fahey’s sup­posed rad­i­cal genius, which one pre­sumes to have been fil­tered out dur­ing the pro­gram­mat­ic re-record­ing. Real­ly, what bears repeat­ing? Which epochal ideas can with­stand the repetition.……?

2. A Beuys’ mul­ti­ple, that sin­gle red rose in a gra­dat­ed glass beaker (Rose for Direct Democ­ra­cy from 1973), used by Beuys in his pub­lic lec­tures, which Fusina­to has had allur­ing­ly shot in the stu­dio by a com­mer­cial pho­tog­ra­ph­er a dozen times to test its resilience to cloy­ing sen­ti­ment and romance around Beuys’ avant-garde zeal? Or…

3. The Group of Six ban­ners protest­ing dic­ta­tor­ship in 70s Zagreb, THIS IS NOT MY WORLD, redesigned by dif­fer­ent graph­ic design­ers; this, the first in a series designed by a graph­ic artist for avant black-met­al band sunn o)))?

In each of these three revised con­tem­po­rary ver­sions of his­tor­i­cal pro­pos­als for social change, Fusina­to seeks the ger­mi­nal remains as once upon a time pro­posed, and as may or may not have per­co­lat­ed through con­tem­po­rary and often local phe­nom­e­na; and has drawn them into his elab­o­rate process which includes cov­er ver­sions, record­ing process­es, nu music, graph­ic design, adver­tis­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy. As he’s said before ​“it’s about tak­ing a posi­tion [on these things] and ques­tion­ing”. Do they bear repeat­ing? An answer might lie in these remote vestiges.

Stu­art Koop 2006