Will the somnabulist critic survive critical noise? "...there are periods during which a language is being established, its potentialities explored; and these are on the whole periods of stability marked by a certain primordial peace guaranteed by the quasi-automatic nature of what is happening. On the other hand there are periods of destruction and discovery, with all the accompanying risks that have to be taken in responding to new and unfamiliar demands. In the first period there is not much critical writing apart from a few turgid polemical pieces of no more than passing interest; but in the second there are passionate discussions of fundamental problems raised by the weakening of automatic responses, the impoverishment of means of expression and a diminishing power of communication." �Pierre Boulez, from The Composer as Critic, 1954 "I sincerely believe that the best criticism is the amusing and poetical variety, and not the cold and algebraical, which, under the pretext of explaining everthing, exhibits neither hate nor love and deliberately divests itself of 'temperament' of any kind. A picture is the artist's reflection of nature, and the best criticism will be the reflection of that picture in an intelligent and sensitive mind. Thus the best account of a picture may take the form of an elegy or a sonnet. Only this kind of criticism is meant for volumes of poetry and for poetically minded readers." �Charles Baudelaire, from SALON, 1846 "The critic is a writer, but a writer postphoned; like the writer, he wants to be believed less because of what he writes than because of his decision to write it; but unlike the writer, he cannot sign that desire; he remains condemned to error--to truth." �Roland Barthes, from Critical Essays, 1972 If the industry of the critics could only match the explosiveness of the experimental underground, or if the critical impulse could be simultaneous with the workings of creativity, there would be a remote chance that the experimental & obscure may have an opportunity to survive beyond itself & its maker. History is the critic's impermeable fortress. Locked inside is an endless archeology of cultural info & theory subject to an infinite & chaotic interpretation. It is a history of contradictory information, progressive & retrograde motion, & aesthetic deconstruction. The myth of the critic as a spectator is interrupted. There is no conceivable way a critic can make sense of art & music which is located purposefully outside the rational/functional logic of critical theory without becoming an active participant in the PROCESS itself. Fully activated the critic becomes the artist, & replaces the addiction for artist-made commodities with conducting a permanent & egoless study of artists & their culture. Instead of twice removed & off-handed comments of a book/tape/performance/idea buried in the critic's usual frustrated prose, instead of a feeble & uncommitted pass at labelling & naming the artistic blurring of boundaries, the critic becomes the subject of understanding. Criticism & commentary on experimental work should itself radically reconstruct its research, its dialectic, its parasitic nature. The irony of 20th century culture is that while such a tremendous energy was projected into blurring the boundaries, almost no attention has been given to matrixing art with its critics. Rarely does the critic have a chance to be on the inside, to lose imagined objectivity & become participant to ritualized interaction. In fact a critic's imposed disassociation is mistaken for objectivity, a passive aloofness akin to sleep-walking on a bed of hot-coals, that while the embers below are burning, the somnabulist critic can feel nothing. ------------------------------------------ � For instance critics of music & sound should consider audio journalism, collaging samples & dialogue & generating further representations of the original. This clearly side-steps critical jargon & posturing, & utilizes the critic as a dj of information. Print culture can be similarly sustained. The critic can pose as the author & plagiarize freely the work at hand. The idea here is that relying on critical language & even language in general reduces the original to contemporary cliche. There is little difference between it & gossip. Sound is the most informative way to tell about sound, etc. � The experimental critic will excavate, archive, meet, reproduce, interact, extend, challenge, provoke, rescue, question, invent, impersonate, humanize the artist.