Kevin Logan

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Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling

stones gets me no satisfaction.

Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction

Kevin Logan

2

In Greek mythology King Sisyphus was made to roll a huge boulder up a

steep hill. Before he could reach the top however, the massive stone would

always roll back down, forcing him to begin again.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.1

The Sisyphean task is both performative and performance-like. Performative

in that it does-something-in-the-world 2, and performance-like in that it is an

action available as spectacle or audition. What is the sound of one rock (n)

rolling?

Repetition refers to the action of producing something over again. Repetition,

although not a necessity of my practice, is however a re-occurring theme.

Recording, re-staging, re-mediating and re-presenting a performed act.

Whether this be mechanical (the end being connected to the beginning) or

procedural (through re-enactment), it is nonetheless a re-petition, an appeal

again for consideration to heed-the-deed, again and again.

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition is relocation. It is an event with substance and form. A particular

form of repetition is to give a text or a work another locale. What does the same

mean in a new environment?

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition, as a strategy, is not the multiplication of the same, or the orthodox

fidelity to an event, but the marking of difference. A re-occurring theme of my

practice is repetition.

1 From Worstward Ho by Samuel Beckett. Written in 1983. 2 [P]erformative works enact and make evident, rather than represent or express.

(Neumark, N., Gibson, R. & Van Leeuwen, T., 2010. Voice: vocal aesthetics in digital arts and media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Kevin Logan

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Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition is subjectivity. Subjectivity is the constant re-iteration through

embodied performance. According to Judith Butler, performativity is an on-

going and never-ending process grounded in the compulsion to repeat" 3.

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition promises a climax but continually disappoints. In an environment

where the linear striving towards a goal obfuscates the re-current nature of a

boom-slum-boom socio-political system, the refusal to culminate, the

wallowing in process rather than product gratification, tends to irritate, chafe

and inflame.

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition when seen/heard as a non-productive supplement engages with

the absurd, and as such with the possibility of comedic intervention as an

oppositional gesture. Doing, saying, hearing something over-and-over again is

a mainstay of comedy, "I heard that! Pardon?" 4

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition ensures that each utterance is a new utterance, coloured, if only a

teeny-weeny, teensy-weensy, itsy-bitsy, little-bitty amount, by now-ness.

Subjecting the humdrum to a cyclical procedure aesthetizes the most low-key

and subtle of deeds. And, in a foldback double-gesture, repetition makes

quotidian of the most fantastical. Just as a belch, recorded and looped,

becomes a rhythmic beat, causing heads to bob, hands to clap, fingers to

snap and feet to tap. So too, the most miraculous Siren song heard time-after-

time, becomes banal.

3 Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. (p.145) 4 Catchphrase of a character in the TV comedy I Didn't Know You Cared set in a working class household in a Yorkshire mining village. BBC (1975-79).

Kevin Logan

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Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition dovetails with everydayness, re-routing the routine. The everyday

is that which has become exceedingly familiar and unexceptional as a result

of repeated exposure. The infra-ordinary is just that because its constant

regurgitation rebuffs significance5. A re-occurring theme of my practice is

repetition.

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition, when used as an actual methodology or conceptual trope

generates new forms. It is a constraint that channels, condensing into a

critique of everydayness, going hand-in-hand with a disregard for the

monumental and momentous. An endless tautology that is limited by time,

whilst continuously re-enacted in time. A re-occurring theme of my practice is

repetition.

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition is an auto-appropriator. Continuously cross-examining itself as it

does and re-does, whether in actuality or via a technological re-staging.

Central to my practice is the opposition of the particular and the general, what

becomes of the singular when it is re-articulated? These infra-deeds strive to

develop a grammar of everyday practices as an exploration of the sonic.

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetitions rotator motion, acts dialectically, both like a centrifugal governor

reducing changes and maintaining control; and as a loop gain, adding

instability, disturbance and noise. It is elliptic, providing wobble to the

positive/negative feedback of the self-regulating system that is reflexive praxis.

And, a re-occurring theme of my practice is repetition.

5 The infra-ordinary is a term coined by George Perec.

Kevin Logan

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Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition and everydayness collude not as a strategy, but as a tactic of

resistance, an anti- or infra-disciplinary practice, evading the satisfaction of

the beginning-middle-end, the commodification of outcome, the notable, the

atypical, the re-markable6. The quoting of the quotidian might exasperate, but

[o]ne must imagine Sisyphus happy7.

There was an old man named Michael Finnegan,

He kicked up an awful din-egan,

Because they said he could not sing-egan,

Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again.8

6 I refer here to Michel De Certeau's distinction between tactics and strategies, in which he states that, "[t]he place of a tactic belongs to the other...because it does not have a place, a tactic depends on time...It must constantly manipulate events in order to turn them into opportunities'. 7 Last line in the essay The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus, 1942. 8 Traditional repetitive childrens song, origin unknown.