Inflamed Invisible – Collected Writings on Art and Sound, 1976–2018. David Toop. Goldsmiths Press; Sonics Series

Posted in art, books, music, Theory, writing on June 15th, 2021
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A rich collection of essays tracing the relationship between art and sound.

In the 1970s David Toop became preoccupied with the possibility that music was no longer bounded by formalities of audience: the clapping, the booing, the short attention span, the demand for instant gratification. Considering sound and listening as foundational practices in themselves leads music into a thrilling new territory: stretched time, wilderness, video monitors, singing sculptures, weather, meditations, vibration and the interior resonance of objects, interspecies communications, instructional texts, silent actions, and performance art.

Toop sought to document the originality and unfamiliarity of this work from his perspective as a practitioner and writer. The challenge was to do so without being drawn back into the domain of music while still acknowledging the vitality and hybridity of twentieth-century musics as they moved toward art galleries, museums, and site-specificity. Toop focused on practitioners, whose stories are as compelling as the theoretical and abstract implications of their works.

Inflamed Invisible collects more than four decades of David Toop’s essays, reviews, interviews, and experimental texts, drawing us into the company of artists and their concerns, not forgetting the quieter, unsung voices. The volume is an offering, an exploration of strata of sound that are the crossing points of sensory, intellectual, and philosophical preoccupations, layers through which objects, thoughts and air itself come alive as the inflamed invisible.

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The Body Event: Language is a Flawed Medium @ Pro qm. 3-18.09.2010

Posted in Uncategorized on August 30th, 2010
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The Body Event: Language is a Flawed Medium
David Toop and John Latham
September 3 – 18, 2010

September 5, 8pm: “John Latham Films 1960 – 1971”, film presentation with an
introduction by Antony Hudek

Pro qm, Almstadtstr. 48-50, 10119 Berlin
Fri. / Sat. 11- 8 pm
Sunday 5.9 2-10 pm

In the context of “Unter dem Motto 2010”, Pro qm presents an exhibition and
event about the work of the British artist John Latham. “The Body Event:
Language is a Flawed Medium” is the third iteration of David Toop’s sound
work for computer and voice made with John Latham in 2004, two years before
the artist’s death. The sound work will be presented together with a
selection of documents and books.

On Sunday, September 5th, 8pm, a program of films by John Latham will be
screened and introduced by Antony Hudek (co-editor with Athanasios Velios of
“The Portable John Latham”). The films are part of a newly-issued DVD of
John Latham’s films co-published by LUX and Lisson Gallery, which
includes all the artist’s completed films as well as previously un-seen
performance documentations. The exhibition and event is co-organized with
Occasional Papers, London.

“The Body Event” was first presented at John Latham’s exhibition “God is
Great” at Lisson Gallery, London, in 2005. In 2009, the composition was
re-configured at Flat Time House, the artist’s former home in Peckham, South
London. Musician, writer and curator David Toop has followed John Latham’s
practice closely, from his first encounter with the artist’s work in 1968 to
becoming a member of Artist Placement Group in the 1970s and a privileged
interlocutor in Latham’s later years. Toop recently curated with Tony
Herrington an exhibition at Flat Time House entitled “Blow Up: Exploding
Sound and Noise (London to Brighton 1959-1969)”, and will be performing the
premiere of his score based on Latham’s theories, “FLAT TIME/sounding”, at
Whitechapel Gallery, London, on 5 September 2010.

John Latham (1921-2006) was one of the most significant British artists of
the second half of the twentieth-century – a pioneer in the fields of
experimental film, painting, sculpture, and performance. Most importantly in
his own eyes was the concept of Event Structures and Flat Time Theory, which
he saw as revolutionizing not merely art but science, philosophy and
governance.

photo: Walia; courtesy ‘Contemporary British Artists’, Bergstrom+Boyle Books
London, 1979

Occasional Papers