24 Mar 2008

Tony Conrad - Dream Music/ Early Minimalism

"Repetition itself creates bliss. There are many ethnographic examples: obsessive rhythms, incantatory music, litanies, rites, and Buddhist nembutsu, etc.; to repeat excessively is to enter into loss, into the zero of the signified. But: in order for repetition to be erotic, it must be formal, literal, and in our culture this flaunted (excessive) repetition reverts to eccentricity, thrust toward various marginal regions of music."
Roland Barthes (as quoted by Tony Conrad)

Read Conrad's essay "Preparing for the Propaganda War in the Time of Global Culture: Trance, Form, and Persuasion in the Renovation of Western Music" here

Tony Conrad with Faust - The Pyre of Angus was in Kathmandu (mp3) (reissue on Table of the Elements)

21 Mar 2008

The Grandeur of Reason - conference

Looks like universalism is back en vogue; a post-9/11 effect? Anyway, the perfect location for this topic and an interesting choice of keynote speakers: Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben, John Milbank, Stanley Hauerwas, David Schindler...

The Grandeur of Reason
Religion, Tradition, Universalism

Rome, 1-4 september 2008

Conference organised by 'The Centre of Theology and Philosophy' of Nottingham University

Conference website