Iggy Pop hacks at his chest with a broken glass bottle, he explains that he did this due to “shame”.
HANATARASH
Stills and sound from the infamous Hanatarash performance in which Yamantaka Eye puts multiple lives at risk when ploughing through the venue with a bulldozer.
CRASH WORSHIP
live in Bremen, 1996, Crash Worship perform with huge industrial objects In a circle, in the middle of the venue.
JUSTICE YELDHAM
Collection of clips and images of Justice Yeldham performing. Yeldham connects contact microphones to a huge pane of glass, blowing, chewing and stabbing himself to create sound, manipulating the sound with effects pedals wrapped around his waist.
Within the anarchic spirit of the Neo-Dada movement in the 1950s came Fluxus and with Fluxus came the concept of Danger music. Danger music is inherently faithful to the goals of the Fluxus school – to destroy the boundary between art and life, to “purge the world of bourgeoisie sickness….” and underscore a revolutionary mode of thinking. Danger music was coined by Paul Nouge’s in his work ‘Music is dangerous’ and then continued by Nam June Paik’s “Danger music for Dick Higgins”
How would artists aim to accomplish this with music? Danger music “is based on the concept that some pieces of music can or will harm either the listener or the performer, understanding that the piece in question may or may not be performed.” With this in mind, throwing CBU-24 bomb at an audience could become an anti-war statement about the Vietnam war (Phil Corner’s “One antipersonnel-type CBU bomb will be thrown into the audience”) or eating, screaming and stabbing one’s gums with a three-foot pane of glass could become a disturbing commentary on self-hatred (Justice Yeldham)
I find these ideas and the teachings of the fluxus school to be incredibly stimulating. The abrasiveness in its simplicity feels guttural. A lot of the compositional ideas have so much personality, humour as well as being, occasionally, disturbingly absurd.
Nouge argues that all music is dangerous in that it challenges the listener, stating that music can cause wars – it is believed that Hitler invaded Poland using a marching band playing the Polish National Anthem and received cheers instead of gunfire. I find the idea that sound and music has an underlying psychological power, sinister or not, that goes unnoticed by most incredibly interesting.
