The underground treasure trove of “avant-garde artifacts” is back on the Internet, a source of light even in days of darkness.
UbuWeb, its creators write, is a “pirate shadow library,” “filled with the detritus and ephemera of great artists better known for other things—the music of Jean Dubuffet, the poetry of Dan Graham, the hip-hop of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the punk rock of Martin Kippenberger, the films of John Lennon, the radio plays of Ulrike Meinhof, the symphonies of Hanne Darboven, the country music of Julian Schnabel…”
And they have a message for this moment:
A year ago, we decided to shutter UbuWeb. Not really shutter it, per se, but instead to consider it complete. After nearly 30 years, it felt right. But now, with the political changes in America and elsewhere around the world, we have decided to restart our archiving and regrow Ubu. In a moment when our collective memory is being systematically eradicated, archiving reemerges as a strong form of resistance, a way of preserving crucial, subversive, and marginalized forms of expression. We encourage you to do the same. All rivers lead to the same ocean: find your form of resistance, no matter how small, and go hard. It’s now or never. Together we can prevent the annihilation of the memory of the world.
I’m curious what they’ll add to UbuWeb in its new “incomplete” state, and where the currents of this resistance will take us.
Meanwhile, here are just a few ideas of what to peruse. I mean, it’s almost contrary to the spirit of UbuWeb to even point at specific links. The pencil-drop liberation of perusing this library of dubious legal status is the whole beauty of the thing, a return to a time on the Internet when you read enormous lists of links of everything instead of relying on an algorithmic friend to summarize for you, like a plagiarized copy of someone else’s Cliff Notes.
But I can’t resist. Because then I can say, you know, you can listen to scratchy recordings of agitprop from the Spanish Civil War, 1931-1939.
There’s a 2010-issued compilation of Women in Electronic Music, tracing the period 1938-1982, from Clara Rockmore to Maggi Payne and Maryanne Amacher.
Come fly with me / let’s take off to Peru…vian audio compositions. (Amarillo! Roja. Roja. Verde.) GRABAR Y COAGULAR: A History of Audio Pieces by Peruvian Artists (1972-2018)
There’s 40 Years of Polish Experimental Radio from Studio Warsaw.
Joan La Barbara has 73 poems for you. And Dial-a-Poem lives on – that’s itself a fantastic story; here it is on Ubu’s website captured from a cassette of a dial-up set of poems. And in the midst of the moral panic over TikTok, travel back to a time when NYC parents were worried about kids dialing up lewdness via the phone – poets! Don’t trust them! They’ll corrupt your kids over the telephone wires!
Amirkhanian introduces a program of poetry from the Dial-A-Poem exhibits organized by John Giorno at the Museum of Modern Art and other spaces. These poems were originally available to the general public via a special telephone number from the The Architectural League of New York. However due to some of the adult content contained in certain pieces the project was threatened with lawsuit’s from concerned, conservative parents and the telephone number was eventually disconnected. John Giorno then turned to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City as a venue for his collaborative project. However the radical political content of many of the works caused a great deal of concern and despite strong support from the then current director, the show was eventually pulled. The show then moved to a number of different venues and many of the poems have since been published as an audio recording. Poems heard on this program include works by John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Emmett Williams, Ed Sanders, Taylor Mead, Jim Carroll, Aram Saroyan, Anne Waldman, Bobby Seale, and many others.
Poets! Don’t trust them! They’ll corrupt your kids over the telephone wires!
Talk about “Blame Canada!” What’s more threatening to blue-blooded US American values than a bunch of Canadians with erotic poetry? Or at least it has something about eroticism in the title and a bunch of talking. If this doesn’t turn our kids gay, it’ll probably turn them Canadian, and you know, that could be even worse.
The Warner Brothers are not welcome here, but The Residents are stolen so you can listen to their stolen riff. Marina Rosenfeld’s Emotional Orchestra is restored in its participatory outcome, “a 2-day workshop involving London based musicians and non-musicians, participants performed Rosenfeld’s animated improvisational score using an array of bowable instruments, including violins, cello, electric guitars, percussion and harp.” Or meet up with the wonderful Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner, who remains today one of the Reasons I Go On The Internet. My friend Todd Colby is full of cake. Timothy Leary is full of independent thought. Delia Derbyshire is on a quest. Maya Deren is recording Haitian songs with a wire recorder.
I mostly missed Fluxus, but Fluxus is gathering on the internet just for you. Then again maybe you prefer Flatus to Fluxus (Bartolome Ferrando, Fatima Miranda, Llorenç Barber, which I just queued up here over top of the Rosenfeld thing and it sounds great). Or maybe Tellus is better than Flatus or Fluxus – you know, the cassette-tape zine.
It’s May 1979, and Laurie Spiegel has something to say about this whole computer music thing that’s happening:
Computer music pioneer Laurie Spiegel discusses her compositional tools and processes with host Jude Quintieré (WBAI). Having recently completed a number of works using the GROOVE system at Bell Labs, Spiegel describes the flexibility of her programs, and her approach to sequencing and real-time manipulation of synthesized sounds. The composer further elaborates on the evolution of her personal interests, especially in regard to her use of specific pitch and rhythmic materials drawn from her experience as a banjo and lute player. Compositions heard in their entirety include Patchwork, Waves, The Orient Express and Expanding Universe.
And do click on things you don’t recognize. How else will we collectively learn about “The Song of the Disembraining” from Pataphysics, Useless Science (2000)? (No idea. Someone on CDM probably knows, though.)
There’s an entire page of electronic music resources.
And David Lynch’s voice is still alive – the air is on fire.
Long live the resistance. All of it. Til the river meets the sea.