Description
Book SynopsisSeth Kim-Cohen is Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA.
Trade ReviewAs an entreaty to sound artists and gallerists to think discursively about the artistic production of ambience, Kim-Cohen’s
Against Ambience is a necessary and timely intervention. It should be read by anyone with a serious investment in the creation or presentation of ‘sound art’ or ‘environmental’ art installations. As aesthetic theory, the essay is at once discursively productive, cognitively stimulating, well organized, linguistically playful without indulgence, and frequently razor-sharp in its dissection of concepts ... The art world could use more ethical appeals such as Kim-Cohen’s, and his clarion call in
Against Ambience justly deserves amplification. * Twentieth-Century Music *
This fantastic new collection of essays confirms that Seth Kim-Cohen writes about sound and unsound, sense and nonsense, like no one else. Kim-Cohen
polarizes—not just his readers, but his subjects and, inevitably, himself. The Big One-Thing is always cracked in two. Easy magic can’t get a break. But make no mistake. Kim-Cohen is a lover of intensities: litany becomes a hard bright joy, pleasure heaves its darkness into view. That love of intensity— faith, really—is what lets him break down the ‘superjoke’ of rock ’n roll without spoiling its punchline. An astonishing feat. We could all take a page. * Seth Brodsky, Assistant Professor of Music and the Humanities, The University of Chicago, USA *
Against Ambience and Other Essays is like one of those bombs the anarchists dreamed of back at the birth of modernism: exploding whole worlds with a single throw. In their case, some wood panelling was splintered, tuxedoes were spoiled, and a few (usually the wrong) people injured. But Kim-Cohen here, once again, pulls off the more utopian dream—and with aplomb. * Craig Dworkin, Professor of English at the University of Utah, USA *
[
Against Ambience and Other Essays is] a polemical air horn that might just wake celebrants of ambient art from their nostalgic dream of decontextualized sensory immersion. * Lytle Shaw, Professor of English, New York University, USA *
Table of ContentsPreface Against Ambience Shallow Listenings: Sounds, Silences, Scenes, & Sites Nothing That Is Not There And The Nothing That Is: Doug Aitken’s
Sonic Pavilion I Have Something To Say, But I’m Not Saying It That Jabbering Which Thinks It Sees: Robert Morris Sites His Sources Sound Today (Is No Longer A Function Of The Ear)
or, Why Do I So Dislike
Glee?
The Conceptual Garage: Rock and Roll, Expanded No Depth: A Call for Shallow Listening Burden Bangs Joy Rock and Roll Lecture No. 1
Anxious, Dismal, Giddy, Aggressive: Seth Kim-Cohen Interviewed by Mark Peter Wright for Ear Room Index
