Introduction
Having attempted to draw a line between modernist and postmodern work, it would seem sensible to carve out a space for the conceptualists. As the name suggests, conceptualists are more interested in the idea behind a piece of work than the work itself. In this sense there does seem to be an affinity between this mode and the post-modern playfulness. I'm going to try and show how things may be a bit more complex than that and how some conceptual stuff can be very difficult indeed.
The charges levelled against conceptualism are many and various, the most common of which relate to its use of appropriated material- a sin that most other writers of poetry tend to find especially difficult as it offends their ideas of originality and authenticity. I want to look at individual works by two different conceptualists and consider the ways in which each can be said to be difficult. I also need an early disclaimer, I can't claim any kind of expertise in this area and my knowledge base is fairly limited so I'd be really keen to hear the views of others who have more knowledge and experience.
The difficult subjects of Vanessa Place.
'Statement of Facts' was published in 2008 and is an account of the crimes, arrest and trial of Mark Wayne Rathbun, better known as the "Belmont Shore Rapist". It consists of a series of statements relating to a number of the attacks for which Rathburn was convicted together with an account of his arrest and initial interviews, these are followed by a description of the expertise of expert witnesses and the nature of the arguments about DNA. The pdf of my copy is less than seventy pages, the language is clear and unambiguous, although following some of the logic of the arguments re DNA can be taxing, this shouldn't be a difficult read. I have found it impossible to get through the first twenty five pages which describe the attacks.
This isn't because of any sense of squeamishness on my part, like Place I've worked at the 'sharp end' of the criminal justice system so I'm not likely to be shocked or disturbed by accounts of man's inhumanity to man. These accounts of rape are 'difficult' more because they induce a greater degree of complicity in me, as a male reader, than accounts of other kinds of crime. There's also the flat and artless way that these accounts are compiled and then presented by Place as a poem that adds another disturbing dimension about voyeurism and appropriation. This also puts up more barriers to me being able to read all the accounts, on the first couple of occasions I was able to get through three or four of the accounts and then put the book down, on subsequent attempts I've managed to get through the first eight or nine pages and then (with a large sigh of relief) I've skipped through to the account of the arrest and police interviews.
Place describes herself as a conceptualist and her work as poetry, in the two or three interviews that I've read she comes across as combative and keenly aware of what she's about. She works as a defence lawyer in Los Angeles and has clearly plundered this experience to explore the nature and function of language in the public sphere. For what it's worth, I find some of her more 'mannered' pieces (those that have been manipulated with) much less effective- 'The marble flesh the gold peacock the elect chair the blue curl' published in issue 4 of the Cambridge Literary Review struck me as being really rather precious and needlessly contrived. 'Statement of Facts' escapes this charge because it refuses to mess around with the raw material and completely negates the authorial voice.
It could be argued that sex crimes are 'easy' because they are about the degradation of one human being by another and that the sexual dimension creates all kinds of challenges for most of us. To which the obvious response is that Place is flagging up that particularly disturbing aspect of rape and throwing it back at us in a way that challenges the reader (me, anyway) in quite fundamental ways. Of course, Place isn't the only writer to play on this queasiness, Roberto Bolano does more or less the same thing for over 100 pages in '2066' although the reader knows that these accounts are fictionalised.
A further concern in 'Statement of Facts' is the nature of evidence and the ways in which seemingly unimpeachible evidence can be called into question, there's also questions being asked about our faith in science and our need to see the bad guy punished - Rathburn was sentenced to over a thousand years in jail.
I'll give one example from each section, the first is part of one of the rape accounts:
On May 11, 2002, Margaret G. was seventy-one years old, living alone in a mobile home park on Oak Street, in Los Alamitos. The night before, Margaret G. fell asleep on the couch, woke at 12:35 a.m., and went to bed. She woke again because she felt someone on her back, a gloved hand over her mouth, choking her and yanking back her head, repeating, "Don't scream. I don't want to hurt you." (RT 958-961) The man removed his hands from Margaret G.'s mouth, took off her shorty pajama bottoms, and poured something cold down Margaret G.'s back and into the buttocks area. He then entered her vagina. Margaret G. told the man he was killing her, that she needed water. She reached for a bottle of water on the night stand, took a drink, and dropped the bottle on the floor. Margaret G. couldn't catch her breath; she repeated the man was killing her and she needed more water; he got up and took Margaret G. to the kitchen, walking behind her. After Margaret G. drank a glass of water, the man drank from the same glass, and took Margaret G. and what was left of the water back to the bedroom, setting the glass on the headboard.
The man next took Margaret G. to the bathroom and stood her on one leg while stretching the other on the counter; he put a washcloth over the nightlight, then entered her vagina, pulled out and took her back to bed. (RT 962-963) There, the man piled pillows behind Margaret G. and put his penis into her vagina for a third time as he sucked on her breast. Margaret G. testified she kept whining, "you're killing me," and asked how long he was going to stay. The man took Margaret G. by the arm back to the bathroom, and told her to give him ten minutes, to take a shower, and he would be gone. When Margaret G. left the bathroom, she noticed the front door was deadlocked, indicating her attacker had used the back door. After finding her telephone disconnected, Margaret G. retrieved a second telephone, and called police. (RT 963-964)
This is from the accounts of police interviews with Rathburn:
"When asked about the assault on Vicky Sue B., appellant remembered her as being "tenacious," saying as much as he attacked her, she attacked him. Appellant denied being scratched or bitten. Appellant was asked if he remembered breaking a pot en route to the back of her home: appellant said he did, when asked if he remembered kicking the pot, appellant said no, when asked how he broke it, appellant said, "it just happened to be there," when Collette asked if he had knocked it over, appellant said, "yeah." Appellant also said he entered through the bathroom window, having picked up a pair of latex gloves from some trash bins behind a nearby grocery store. Appellant said Vicky Sue B. struggled with him, locking him out of her bathroom, that he tried to reach her through the bathroom window from the outside, and that when they fought, Vicky Sue B. bit his finger through the glove. Appellant showed Kriskovic a quarter-inch horizontal cut on his right index finger about a quarter of an inch above his knuckle; on the other side of his hand, appellant had a small blood bruise. Appellant told Kriskovic that Vicky Sue B. had a very old dog, "close to death." Appellant said he had been staying with a friend who lived on Campo Walk in Long Beach, and was helping the friend move to Oxnard when he was arrested. (RT 1235-1237, 1311-1317, 1325)"
Place has said in interview that 'Statement' was published so that the reader can make of it what they will and I think in this particular insatnce this lack of artifice and/or creative intent is absolutely correct. Others have commented on Place's strong interest in relationship between language, language practices and the functioning of the state but I think here Place has removed her own perspective from the material and left the reader to his or her own devices.
The section on DNA contains the professional profiles of the various expert witnesses ( DNA evidence provided a majort part of the case against Rathburn) and outlines the case that both sides made:
"Retesting the Barbara B. sample, Fedor determined the DNA profile from the sperm cells taken from the right buttocks swab matched appellant's; the chance of a coincidental match was one in eight hundred forty-four septillion. Barbara B.'s right and left breast swabs also included appellant's profile, with the same one in eight hundred forty-four septillion chance of a coincidental match. Appellant's random match probability on Barbara B.'s external genital swab was one in seven trillion. Fedor assumed two contributors to the mix. (RT 1471-1475, 1491, 1503, 1605-1607-1608) The Marion J. breast swab was a mixture; appellant's random match probability was one in nine septillion. The Marion J. external genital sample did not test positive for male DNA, and there was foreign female DNA in the sample: at theVWA marker, Marion J. was a 14, 18, and the mixture shows a 14, 18 and a 16, 23. At D21S11, Marion J. was 29, 32.2; there was also 31.2 and 30. Sometimes, with some ethnicities, the Y chromosome does not amplify properly. (RT 1475-1477, 1597-1601) Appellant's random match probability for a portion of the prepared DNA from the fecal material taken from Carol R.'s window was one in eight hundred forty five septillion, and his match for another portion one in eight hundred forty-four septillion. (RT 1477-1479, 1491-1492, 1502-1503, 1514- 1515) The Esther R. nipple swab was a mixture, Esther R.'s DNA was subtracted, and the remaining profile matched to appellant with a one in nine septillion probability ratio. At VWA on Esther R.'s external genital swab, there was a 23 marker which belonged to neither appellant (14, 16) nor Esther R. (14, 15): the sample does not contain sperm, and the male components appear in the mixture to a lesser degree than the female: Fedor could not determine whether the male donor left the 23 allele, or how many people contributed to the mixture. Fedor still matched appellant to the external genital swab sample at a probability of one in nine septillion. (RT 1479-1482) In both the Marion J. and Esther R. genital swabs, there were unaccounted-for 16, 23 alleles at VWA. (RT 1601-1603)"
As can be seen, this is fairly complex scientific stuff and the obvious concern is the ability of jurors (who are neither scientists nor lawyers) to absorb this kind of evidence and make sense of it. Place also includes elements of the defence's rebuttal:
"None of the testing laboratories performed accurate calculations in appellant's case: the match definition used by SERI was not sufficiently precise to allow an unambiguous definition of what constitutes inclusion. OCSD has the same problem, as demonstrated by samples where analysts use "novel"match criteria, applied inconsistently in the statistical analysis. For example, in the Betty W. case, the VWA locus did not have a recognizable allele that appellant has; the normal genetic definition of a match is that all of a person's alleles, i.e., his entire genetic profile, must be present in the evidence sample. The OCSD analyst continued to include appellant as a possible contributor even though one of his alleles was not present; the statistical modification the laboratory then used was improper because it did not modify the equation for all genetic markers. If a more flexible definition for a match is to be used, it must be used at all loci, not just those needed to match a particular defendant. Additionally, the x factor equation used did not account for all possible types which the laboratory might call inclusions: if the sample was 15, 16, and appellant was 14, 16, and was not excluded though the 14 allele could not be reliably counted, a consistent statistical approach would be to also include 15, 14, or 15, x in the overall calculation. Failing to do this renders the match statistic too rare. (RT 1993-1998) Allelic overlap is expected in mixtures because human beings share a great deal of genetic information, and some alleles tested are quite common. The LASD laboratory did not generate statistics for the mixed samples, which is inappropriate in a court case. Simply indicating there are two genetic samples and that a defendant can't be excluded as a possible donor is not helpful unless there is some indication how many other people might be excluded. The existence of a single source sample does not affect the statistical inadequacy because each sample must be analyzed separately: single source samples don't ameliorate mixed sample issues. Dr. Mueller did not recall the LASD laboratory having a written protocol to the effect that statistics should only be calculated for single source samples. Some other laboratories will extract a minor donor profile and assign a statistical significance, though there is a laboratory in Connecticut which refuses to do such calculations because they cannot be done reliably. (RT 1998-2000)"
So, Place has 'produced' a poem which is doubly difficult, being both disturbing and scientifically complex, and which is given to us 'raw'. There are some obvious caveats here about why these particular bits of material were chosen and why they are presented in this particular way but the material itself has not been in any way modified. 'Statement of Facts' is a powerful poem which forces us to question our own response to 'documentary' material and the nature and reliability of evidence. There's also for me the way that language functions (and often lies) in response to our attempts to make sense of things and I'm grateful to Place for bringing this to my attention.
Kenneth Goldsmith and the 'too much text' problem
Some time in November 2010 the essential Wood s Lot pointed me in the direction of UbuWebb which I'd visited before but never really looked at the content. Whilst looking around I came across a number of Goldsmith's texts and suddenly the lights went on. By this I mean that the idea behind these pieces became immediately clear to me and the work seemed entirely appropriate to these complex and difficult times. I'm particularly struck by 'Traffic', 'Weather' and 'Sports' which are verbatim reproductions of radio reports in chronological sequence. 'Traffic' consists of 81 pages of transcripts of bulletins from New York and is difficult to read because it is both mundane and incredibly boring, unless you've got a specialist interest in urban traffic flows;
"We have a breakdown on the East Side of town. Northbound the FDR Drive, it's slow from 63rd to 116th because of a disabled vehicle blocking out the center lane, then it's slow to the Triboro. And southbound, a heavy ride from the 60's to Houston Street. Here's what you need to know about the bridges and tunnels: Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn-bound, a couple of disabled vehicles slowing things down, then you're loaded up Manhattan-bound. And at the Manhattan Bridge, you're tied up in both directions. Williamsburg Bridge no access off of the westbound BQE, the ramp is closed, police department activity, delays now back to Meeker-Morgan. 59th Street Bridge, it's in view on the 1010 WINS Jam Cam. Manhattan-bound upper deck is slow and Queens-bound, it's the lower deck to avoid. Queens-Midtown Tunnel still thirty minutes into the toll Manhattan-bound. GW Bridge, Lincoln and Holland Tunnels in fine shape. And in the Bronx, Bronx River Parkway northbound at 233rd Street there's a crash. Alternate side of the street parking rules back in effect."
I've never been a fan of conceptual poetry (or art) but this combination of artlessness and plagiarism is strikingly different from most other conceptual stuff in that it isn't trying to do anything clever or cute but to reflect and re-frame central aspects of the information age. Whilst this kind of appropriation isn't at all new (Sloterdjik quoted a German who was making the same kind of point in 1927) but nobody has done with the same kind of relentless determination as Goldsmith and it is this relentlessness that makes Goldsmith as challenging and as 'difficult' as Place.
Incidentally 'Sports' is more eventful but less accessible to British readers because we don't understnad the terms used in baseball:
" That's what happened. He didn't have an angle either, but he had Fasano. Fasano was only half way down the line. So bases loaded, one out, here's Melky Cabrera and the breaking ball is low. They threw a breaking ball for a strike and then Fasano hit the ground ball. They came back to the breaking ball, but he missed. Melky's at .288, 7 homers and 38 RBIs. The ball game's tied at one, we're in the top of the second, but the Yanks are threatening with bases loaded, one out. Now the left-handed Lester deals a strike on the outside corner, the count one and one."
Before 'writing' the above trilogy, Goldsmith transcribed everything he said for a week and published this as 'Soliloquy' and also noted every movement his body made for a day for 'Fidget'.
I referred earlier to these texts as being artless, by this I mean that they aren't invested with any kind of aesthetic value by Goldsmith but there is a longish tradition of this kind of thing in the art world. Goldsmith trained as a sculptor and is clearly influenced by Warhol and probably by Jasper John's 'Flag' series. Both of these invited us to consider the mundane or the obvious in different ways by presenting them as art. Goldsmith invites the reader to think again about what is often aural wallpaper in our everyday lives.
Boredom is also an important element in Goldsmith's work, as if the intention is to jolt us out of the twelve second attention span that mass media currently caters to. This is not to say that nothing happens, the weather changes, traffic jams move around, teams win and lose (even the the terms used in American sports are incomprehensible to us Europeans). Following these changes through is involving and I have found myself trying to visualise the effects of what is being reported. 'Weather' is taken from a New York radio station and consists of all the bulletins that were broadcast in 2003. In March of that year the US and its cronies invaded Iraq and the station broadcast forecasts for the battle zone as well as New York. These lasted for three weeks and are included in Goldsmith's text.
Godlsmith has said that he'd far rather talk about one of his texts than read it and I think this is the difference between him and Place- who hasn't quite abandoned the idea of the content being as relevant as the thought behind it.