8/12/2019 Art & Language With Red Krayola - Nine Gross and
Conspicuous Errors (1976)
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NINE GROSS AND CONSPICUOUS ERRORS
Red Krayola and Art & Language
24 minutes
Corrected Slogans was the first LP to be produced and was worked
on by Art &Language and Red Crayola founder member Mayo
Thompson between 1973 and itsrelease date in 1976. The albums
artwork, musical scores and other ephemera wereshown in the room
next door to the two videos And Now for Something
CompletelyDifferent and Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors (both
1976), which have a similarlyrical content to the album and which
both contain ironic posturing that thinly masksan awkward energy
brought about by the mixture of political anthems and rock androll.
Of the two videos, Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors best
represents thisexperimental vitality. Unrehearsed songs are
performed by groups of unsuspectingparticipants as well as the
knowing core collaborators Art & Languages Michael
Baldwin and Mel Ramsden, with Thompson on guitar and Jesse
Chamberlain ondrums. Activist slogans, such as we must ferociously
attack so calledinstitutionalized egalitarianism it is a
smokescreen, which attempts to replaceactivist content with liberal
structures, are chanted en masse and played out astheoretical
quotations and self-mocking mantras. At one point Ramsden sings
theline Marxs old chestnut the philosophers know how to interpret
the world, the pointis to change it is embedded in the nexus of
dialectics and Thompson makes adedication to Ludwig Wittgenstein,
who said you cannot be a philosopher and aCommunist at the same
time.
Through visible misunderstandings of each text or acts of
insincerity on the
performers behalf, theres an inevitable displacement of belief
in these videos,where each deliberately inauthentic voice strives
for a form of validity. Although themusical backing by The Red
Crayola is vital and exciting, the aim, through theunfeasibility of
the verbal performances and the lyrics or the conspicuous errors
appears to be to keep the gap between the performer and the text
open. This isenforced by philosophical ramblings about the
commodification of social relationsand remarks about language
serving a strong managerial role, and interspersed bysome expertly
amateur routines, with Ramsden, in particular, fluctuating
betweenself-conscious embarrassment indicating the confusion of the
situation and anoverconfidence about his own workmanlike
timekeeping. At one point he looksextremely proud of a fellow
player whos so lost she has no idea what line shesmeant to be
singing. Baldwin also appears ridiculous in his Travis Bickle
sunglasses,growling comedically into the microphone and whistling
pointlessly along withRamsden.
The karaoke event took place between 5pm and 6pm each day, and
tracks from thealbum Kangaroo? (1981), such as A Portrait of V. I.
Lenin in the Style of JacksonPollock were available to sing along
to. Another gross and conspicuous errorstarted to operate here, but
this time the question appeared to be, what kind ofhistorical
displacement occurs when we the spectators, as blind performers,
singthese 24-year-old lyrics? As before, we are complicit in our
own bad performance
and misreading of these essay-like texts and through a
historical distance provide anecessary misinterpretation of Art
& Languages work. This is an essential
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Conspicuous Errors (1976)
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component of the groups practice, and if they represent a
resistance to the categoryof Conceptual art, where a Duchampian
model is emptied of its transgressivepotential and rendered
congenial to the managers of interdisciplinarity, then maybethis
combination of music and politics is something to strive for. If
the originalintention of these irreconcilable forces was to stress
the grammar and the sense of
the text to the point of oblivion, then through the lens of
history this partnership atleast still appears alien and strange,
but for different reasons. When current bandsare mimicking the
urgency of outfits from the late 1970s, minus the
politicalawareness, and younger artists and curators are fixated on
radical models butlacking any real substance, theres another,
unwitting form of historical karaokeoperating. Perhaps what we need
right now are more deliberately irresponsible yetreal
collaborations of this sort.
