1987
Germano Celant
The route taken by Max Neuhaus through art and the exploration of sound finds its coherence when conceived in strict relation to the changing fortunes of 'sensation' - meaning all sense experience, including hearing - in the forms such experience has taken on since the sixties, through the dissolution of the conceptual closure of the arts that had allowed for the separate functioning of sculpture and painting, dance and theater, music and architecture. The breakdown of this closure led to a language system in which the parts mix and blend, always referring to each other and interacting to create a new artistic topology. The fall of the centers produced an upheaval in which the activities and territories of the individual arts expanded and intermingled, establishing harmonic relations that instituted an 'open-weave network' without any privileged element to orient the experience and give it a single sense. Sculptors from Morris to De Maria and dancers from Rainer to Forti, painters like Johns and Rauschenberg and musicians like Tudor, Cage and Neuhaus all met in this continuous interweave, where the performer - whether actor orspectator - could participate in the dialectic between the arts. The release from any center opened an infinite, unprecedented discourse, valorizing the ephemeral and the invisible, agitating the monotonous flow of differences, bringing on the rediscovery of 'sensation' in all its diversity. Indeed, from then on, sensory participation has acquired a new dimension with respect to action and thought, according it greater power or at least a privileged place by comparison to the cognitive and practical fields.
The change can be confirmed today in the expenditure of aesthetic energies that human beings must invest to absorb everything that happens around them. The expansion of sensory information, pressing 360_ around the senses, designates the territory of the individual and the collectivity. Each person, directly or indirectly, lives a condition where the project of communicating revolves around a diffuse aesthetics, whose essential rapport with sensation and pleasure was demonstrated by Marcuse.
An aesthetics understood as the philosophy of pleasure tends to underline the relation of sensory participation between beings and objects. A critical rapport is established between the two, assuming diverse forms depending on the characteristics attributed to the subject. Hearing, and perception in general, never escape the individual's capacity for distinction. In 1966, with Listen, Max Neuhaus based his particular kind of music on a new relation of sensibility between sound and subject, engaging himself and his listeners in the search for an aesthetic dimension of the aural, based on a critical and pleasurable consideration of urban noises. He invited his listeners to the streets of Manhattan and set them free to take possession of their own hearing. The parameters of the operation were double: on one hand, it clearly demonstrated that the subject is the fulcrum for the existence of musical pleasure; on the other, it stressed that in the wake of musical events from Russolo to John Cage, music could acquire an anonymous, impersonal, socialized dimension, which demands only to be found and retraced. It's a dialogue between hearing and the already heard, where human beings find themselves at the center of an aural pleasure or pain (and Manhattan in its richness presents both extremes) in which it is necessary to orient oneself, to find references that are either proportional to one's own sensibility or that stretch toward the dissolution of one's identity as a subject. In this sense Neuhaus' work has from the very beginning been contrary to the neo-classical ideal of harmony, of conciliation of opposites and resolution of all conflicts. Rather it moves in the ambit of pleasure defined by the historic avant-gardes, the sphere of 'difference' and 'confrontation', where the subject exists but disappears, such that pleasure prevails over reason.
Since 1966 his activity, following certain situationist and minimalist trends, has been turned toward the search for occasions: unique contextual events permitting the realization of a sonority that extends its field to a public and intersubjective process, analogous to the process-nature of other activities. To speak of 'occasions' here means leaving behind the rigidly prescriptive territory of music and hunting for unknown and unpredictable situations where the sounds can rise up and come to life, proliferate and die. The occasion is a mental opening, outside the schemata of music's traditional horizons. This is like an artist who finds a ready-made and manipulates it, provoking an incandescence of meaning that makes the object crackle under the gaze. Neuhaus does the same when he draws sound and its surroundings out from obscurity and silence. He sharpens one's vision of an underground space no less than its aural perception; he provokes an opening in the circle of sensation. Thus 'occasion' does not mean casual chance, but the determined search for a target that presents itself to sight and hearing, as a sudden and unexpected clarity.
The occasion denies the interchangeability of situations. Neuhaus projects and adapts himself in relation to the unrepeatability of each space and time, just as it is found or offered. Invited by the Albright-Knox Gallery of Buffalo in 1967, he took as the basis of his work Drive-in Music (V2, Drive in Music) the virtual 'corridor' beginning at the entrance of the museum and developing over approximately one-half mile along Lincoln Parkway. The work consisted of anumber of radio transmitters placed along the entire stretch of road and heard by drivers and their passengers over the car's radio, who could change their perception by altering the speed of their vehicles. The subject here is a passage: either of sound emerging from nowhere, or of an aural tunnel causing a sonic architecture to appear as an extension from the real building (the museum), or of the driver/passengers who effect an interchange, or of the celebration of a circumstance or an occasion, which passes and disappears.
The occasional sound is seductive because it is connected to a perceptual surprise - in the literal sense of something that grips you suddenly, without warning - and a temporary intoxication. It is almost a subtle nervous jolt coursing through the body, an overload of perception that runs from the ear to the nervous system. The pleasure or trauma of shock or discovery and the exceptional qualities this implies were sought by Neuhaus in his 'underwater works', a series begun in 1971. Here the upsurge of the exceptional in the linear process of silence and sound was confided to the listeners, who were invited to immerse themselves and actually swim in a pool brimful with water, at New York University. Discovered through the immersion in the pool, the unexpected character of the sound from Water Whistle (V2, Water Whistle) broke through the everyday context with a marvelous event, something seductive and magical: 'The whistle completely surrounded you with sound. Because of the way the forehead transmits sound waves to the ears underwater, you almost felt as if the sources were inside you. It was an all-encompassing sensation'1. The aural structure was based on a grid of sound sources around a limited perimeter, each swimmer being invited to seek out his or her own sonic pattern without any pre-established schema. Such a sound quest thrives on the occasion provided by the architectonic territory - the pool - as well as on the occasion and chances of the swimmer's movements.
All Neuhaus' work is as elaborately formed as it is extremely occasional, because it presupposes the reality and diversity of beings and things: 'Underwater listening isn't supposed to be stationary and yet it's not athletic. Swimming temperature is lower than listening temperature, so the pool had to warmer than normal. There was the effort of getting undressed and putting on a bathing suit, which is a nuisance, though a clear sign that you weren't going to a concert'2.
The definition of Neuhaus' work seems to satisfy the demand for an art that is less culturally solemn and less haloed by tradition, an art that has the expository and spectacular dimensions of a culture of channel-hopping or 'zapping' which makes it so easy to enter or exit a source of information, in an all-pervading and yet democratic process. Such an art is founded on a dialogue that leaves the listener free to move or have adventures within a terrain, but also to exit or dissolve it. One can plunge into it or emerge from it, open a dialogue with it or remain outside. What counts, then, is movement, coming and going, which creates the experience and the consciousness of sound. Thus for Neuhaus the work is passing through sound to dissolve it or empty it of all metaphysical significance, in the attempt to bring art to the dimension of a real language that speaks with us and through us.
But if this art issues forth from architecture or from the city, it appears unexpectedly, in such a way as to make the passerby's senses gravitate toward its existence. In 1977 Neuhaus constructed his first permanent piece of sonic architecture. In the middle of Times Square in New York, he built a sound volume defined by sonic walls bordering the ventilation grillwork of the subway. Although immaterial, the construction aimed at permanence, seeking to create an aural space cut out from the noise generated by the traffic. With its constructive idea, the work is meant to face and overcome the challenge posed by the destructive aspect of the city. It fights on the same terrain but produces 'difference', cutting through the chaotic transmission of urban sounds with a carefully designed and elaborated sound that can be received by any city dweller. More than a decor, Neuhaus' work is a ceremony. The complex of sounds does not resonate distinctly in the ear, it does not shine or excel, press up or jump free, in order to mark a distinction from other sounds. Instead these sounds simply exist, they adapt and relate to the others, they are only an occasion for listening. In fact they are deduced from the environment, built through the use of a computer-controlled sound palette, an instrument that Neuhaus employs to model the physical structure of real sound, to modify and develop it such that his sound is finally different from the real one. Thus the computer is not used to generate new sounds, but to mould reality, which nonetheless remains similar to itself.
Sound continued to radiate forth, from the garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1978 and in the stairway of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1979. In both works the sonic pattern acquired volume, quality and intensity of timbre according to the position of the listener in the garden or on the various levels of the stairway. At times the integration of sound and place reached a point of maximum identity between space and volume, level and surface, such that a continuous sound texture could construct a wall or define a passageway. In other cases, the anti-metaphysical approach leads to a sound that is 'fitting' to the social dimension, a design that results in a 'true' sound, one that serves society, adjusting to it and becoming a usable innovation, beyond its aesthetic and sensory quality. Still in 1979, Neuhaus adjusted the alarm clock to the sensibility of the sleeper who wants to wake up at a certain time. He designed a sound that does not disturb sleep, but whose disappearance and subliminal absence strike the sleeper and bring about awakening. What counts here is not the form or presence of the sound, but its efficacy.
This work is not a decor, but a ceremony (from carimonia, which in turn comes from careo = to lack, be deprived). It is a way of differing from the tradition. Not fullness of sound, then, but lack or movement in the interval between fullness and emptiness. The first in the series of Time Pieces, realized in 1983 on the occasion of the Whitney Biennial in New York, operated precisely on the discovery of the sound work in its absence. Constructed in a sunken plaza in front of the Whitney Museum, the piece consisted of a subtle 'crescendo' of live urban sounds and noises, filtered once again through the computer-controlled sound palette: moving automobiles, horns, squealing brakes, motors revving up and accelerating, in short an ensemble of sonic information from Madison Avenue, the street that fronts the museum. The crescendo dispersed into the real sounds, but when it disappeared it revealed its presence, offering new occasions to perceive the city.
Neuhaus' aural ceremonies designate a ritual of sound, a vision of the outside as a mode of being, able to produce spaces and moments that can be integrated into the fabric of city life, but that are completely different from it, wholly other. In 1988, at the Parc de la Villette in Paris, Neuhaus proposed 'a sound to create a silence. La Villette is noisy. The periph_rique, Paris' beltway, runs nearby, so this time the piece would have to be quite loud before it shuts off. But I want to timbre it to soften it as volume grows, which means that, in a way, the sound will be getting louder and quieter at the same time'. Of course the capacity for an encounter/confrontation consists in an ability to harmonize with the opportunities offered by the environment. This sometimes means moving in relation to the rhythms of bureaucratic ceremony, as in the case of the proposal for a sonic redefinition of two hundred meters of the Montparnasse-Bienvenue station of the Paris Metro, based on a dialogue from 1973 to 1987 with the R_gie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP). Another such case: the 1978-1989 project for new siren sounds for police cars.
If one intertwines the ceremony undergone by Neuhaus and theceremony undergone by the members of the public who circulate within the aural installations, it can then be confirmed that both operations are instruments of initiation, an almost hermeneutic proposal in which the author and the listeners are called upon to modify or transform themselves. With his work on sound, Neuhaus attempts a transition from one condition to another, excluding competition or imposition in favor of a perceptual opening for himself and others. The artist is both initiated and initiator, and both lose and rediscover themselves in the process. Thus the installations often take the form of a tunnel or of ascending levels, like Sound Line (1988) at the Magasin de Grenoble, which consisted in the creation of a 2 x 60 meter sonic space, crossed by natural sounds so as almost to form part of the forest; or like the permanent work Three to One (1992) inaugurated at Documenta IX in Kassel, where the empty interior of an office building with its system of stairways was filled with three different tonalities of sound. The strict determination of the sonic spaces and of their diverse perceptions introduces another level of reading, giving the impetus to an aural mentality that renders all the determinations fluid, ambiguous and uncertain. Thus Neuhaus succeeds in uniting a definite rule with the most pragmatic and sensory interpretation. Intertwining the absolute and the indeterminate, he constructs a veritable labyrinth, rich and suggestive, where everyone can lose themselves, let themselves be charmed, and open their own path to initiation. It is an intermediate sound which you pass through, to hear and sense yourself.
For many years the phenomenological description of the entire process, based on an osmosis between the real world and the sonic one, relied only on the preliminary sketches and on an account of the listener's experience. But around 1974, Neuhaus made the decision to confide a 'de-monstration' of the work to drawing. The hypothesis was that of attempting an exhibition or visual explication of the interpretation, from one language to another. The action of making visible, which has a hermeneutic aim, has also become a proof of an 'already activated' operativity or effectiveness; it is the a posteriori assertion of an experience. Indeed, operating on the discovery of a sonic theme or an aural contextuality which always has to be found in situ because it always depends on the place or the environment, Neuhaus cannot design - and therefore cannot draw - a priori. The drawings are a non-verbal materialization of an aural installation which has already taken place, or which in other cases has been thoroughly explored but not realized. In contrast to the direct sensation of the work, these drawings go beyond immediate perception, reintroducing the metaphysical aspect.
But the drawings are of different natures. The rougher, hand-worked variety serve to 'announce' the aural installation or construction, in the sense that they define a potential topography for the sound-paths; they are aformal jottings, almost sketches or notes, which record developments in technique without actually defining the piece. The most detailed and constructed drawings, however, are those constructed a posteriori, after the work has been put into place. Instead of being turned toward the technical and operative dimension, the interpretative effort is here directed to the communicative dimension. It operates through a complex semanticization of signs, which are distinguished by the colors, the tracing in lead pencil, the trajectories and undulations of the lines, setting up a visual exchange between image, sound and architecture.
Being an instrument for the 'disclosure' of the project, thedrawings emphasize the two primary components or mainstays of Neuhaus' approach: architecture and the experience of sound. The first is conveyed through the medium of a traditional technical drawing, an architectural study, and serves to introduce the context in a cold and impersonal manner. The second, on the contrary, is often 'narrated', translated into words, written in Neuhaus' own hand. Halfway between the two is the sound or the sonic topography. This constitutes the essence of the work, but translated into drawing; it is made manifest with color, from black pencil to yellow, blue and red pastels, the primary colors. In the drawing Times Square (V3#7), the sonic construction, forming a block, is defined by the solar sign of yellow, while the reverberation, which touches the urban structure, becomes red. In this sense, color functions as an architectonic code, serving to construct the unreal city (the one in color) in its distinction from the real city (sketched in black).
Sometimes the drawing is a landscape, excluding architecture and plunging into the green of parks. It traces trees and meadows, to define and unveil a sequence of clicks, as in the drawings from the work in Documenta 6 (V3#6) and in River Grove in Aspen, Colorado (V3#22), which create a second forest of sound. Elsewhere, when the space is an art gallery, as in the drawing from the work in the Bell Gallery at Brown University, Rhode Island (V3#13), the walls are markedly empty, to evidence the absence whereby the sound/void cuts into the walls and forms a moving sonic band. Faced with the need to disclose the complexity of the three sound sources in the work for the Basel Kunsthalle, the drawing (V3#16) operates by a plenitude of color: the noises coming from above through the skylight, like water, are indicated in blue, while those from the heating unit are in red, and those from the unjointed flooring are yellow. Neuhaus filters all these and adds another level of sound, whereby the aural reality of the museum space 'resounds' by itself.
The drawings concern a rediscovered sound; they are Proustian pages of sonorous memory. They redirect to the eye what was or will be for the ears. They aspire to bring back an intoxication of which there is no record, except in the account of its author. They are paper leaves plucked from history, with the aim of constructing a topography of events and tales, sometimes absolute and rational, sometimes romantic and programmatic, speaking of the decline of the great cities and the evanescence of all things. They take on the significance of a voyage in the style of Walter Benjamin or Thomas Mann, where words are replaced by sound. Following their lines and perceiving their masses of color, one is pulled into a vortex of events forming a sonic constellation,indispensable for understanding the history of an interweaving of contemporary music and the plastic arts.
1, 2) Max Neuhaus, quoted by Carter Ratcliff, 'Aural Spaces', in Art in
America, New York, October 1987