1966
File:18 maggio 1997 20:40
The impetus for the title was twofold. The simple clear
meaning of the word, to pay attention aurally, and its clean
visual shape - LISTEN - when capitalized. It was also its
imperative meaning -- partly I must admit, as a private joke
between myself and my then current lover, a French-Bulgarian
girl, who used to shout it before she began to throw things at
me when she was angry.
It was my first independent work as an artist. As a
percussionist I had been directly involved in the gradual
insertion of everyday sound into the concert hall, from Russolo
through Edgard Varese and finally to John Cage where live street
sounds were brought directly into the hall. I saw these
activities as a way of giving aesthetic credence to these sounds
-- something I was all for. I began to question the
effectiveness of the method, though. Most members of the
audience seemed more impressed with the scandal than the sounds,
and few were able to carry the experience over to a new
perspective on the sounds of their daily lives.
I became interested in going a step further. Why limit
listening to the concert hall ? Instead of bringing these
sounds into the hall, why not simply take the audience outside -
a demonstration in situ ?
The first performance was for a small group of invited friends.
I asked them to meet me on the corner of Avenue D and West 14th
Street in Manhattan. I rubber stamped LISTEN on each person's
hand and began walking with them down 14th Street towards the
East River. At that point the street bisects a power plant and,
as I had noticed previously, one hears some spectacularly
massive rumbling. We continued, crossing the highway and
walking along the sound of its tire wash, down river for a few
blocks, re-crossing over a pedestrian bridge, passing through
the Puerto Rican street life of the lower east side to my
studio, where I performed some percussion pieces for them.
After a while I began to do these works as "Lecture
Demonstrations"; the rubber stamp was the lecture and the walk
the demonstration. I would ask the audience at a concert or
lecture to collect outside the hall, stamp their hands and lead
them through their everyday environment. Saying nothing, I would
simply concentrate on listening, and start walking. At first,
they would be a little embarrassed, of course, but the focus was
generally contagious. The group would proceed silently and by
the time we returned to the hall many had found a new way to
listen for themselves.
Of course, there were a few "mishaps". I remember one in
particular at a university somewhere in Iowa, The faculty must
have thought I was actually going to give a talk. They were
nonplussed when I told the students to leave the hall, but not
quick-witted enough to figure out a way of contradicting the
day's "guest lecturer", fortunately. The students were more
than happy to escape and take a walk. Several hundred of us
formed a silent parade through the streets of this small town --
it must have been Ames. The faculty was so enraged that, to a
man, they boycotted the elaborate lunch they had prepared for me
after the lecture.
A number of years later, when Murray Schafer's soundscape
project became known, I am sure these academics didn't have any
problem accepting similar ideas. The reality, though -not being
safely contained between the covers of a book-- was quite
another matter.
I suppose the real definition of this series of pieces is the
use of the word LISTEN to refocus people's aural perspective. I
began to think of other ways of using it . (The Iowa experience
had blacklisted me as a university lecturer.)
The largest version of the work (1 million people) was certainly
an opinion editorial, which I wrote for the New York Times in
1974, condemning the silly bureaucrats of the Department of Air
Resources for making too much noise.
Unable to do their real job of cleaning up the air that New
Yorkers breathed they naively applied their energies to
"cleaning up" the sound of the city. To keep their pot boiling,
they published a pamphlet entitled "Noise Pollution Makes You
Sick". I countered with "Noise Propaganda Makes Noise", the
basic point being that by arbitrarily condemning most man-made
sounds as noise, they were making noise where it never existed
before. The most tragic result of their meddling is the people
one has seen blasting their ears out (quite literally) with
walkmen while riding the subway, convinced that they are
protecting their ears from the subway sounds which are, in fact,
not nearly as loud as the ones from their walkmen.
There were other manifestations of the idea. I organized
"field-trips" to places which were generally inaccessible and
had sounds which could never be captured on a recording. I also
did some versions as publications. One of these was a poster
with a view looking up from under the Brooklyn Bridge, with the
word LISTEN stamped in large letters on the underside of the
bridge. It came from a long fascination of mine with sounds of
traffic moving across that bridge -- the rich sound texture
formed from hundreds of tires rolling over the open grating of
the roadbed -- each with a different speed and tread.
The developers of the South Street seaport project, which is
near the bridge, always felt that the its sound would limit real
estate values in the area. In the late eighties they succeeded
in convincing the city to pave over the open grating with
asphalt. Afterwards, they discovered that this tremendous added
weight caused serious structural problems in
the bridge. There is still a sound, but it is not as interesting
as it was.
The last work in the series was a do-it-yourself version. I
published a postcard in the form of a decal with the word
outlined in open letters, to be placed in locations selected by
its recipients.
Max Neuhaus 1988,1990
First published in "Sound by Artists", Art Metropole, Toronto,
1990. (edited without my knowledge) and "
Bibliography / Books / 2004 - Do It. Edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist
1990- Max Neuhaus, Elusive Sources And "Like" Spaces. Giorgio Persano Turin, Italy. Catalog
Bibliography / 1995 - Max Neuhaus Evoking the Aural. Villa Arson, Ministère de la Culture and Centre National des Arts Plastiques. Nice. Catalog