The Four Horsemen Project

7 comments on “The Four Horsemen Project”

1. August says:
   February 22nd, 2007 at 4:41 am

   Oh man, I wish her all the best, but I gotta say that I absolutely despise the Four Horsemen’s work. I took a writer course where sound poetry, and particularly their sound poetry, was held up as the pinnacle of what could be achieved in the entire realm of poetry, and I really couldn’t imagine a worse fate the most venerable art.

   Sound poetry has always struck me as getting only half the point of poetry; sound yes, but a specific type of sound for specific reasons, poetry as the ultimate form of the word, not the voice. I am not an enemy of experimentation (far from it), but I am an enemy of art without boundaries. Without boundaries there is no frame of reference to either work within or against; there’s nothing but the formless mess of the artist’s ego. Without boundaries the only thing an artist’s ego is capable of saying is “look at me”, no matter how much it believes itself to be saying something other, and that’s not something I’m much interested in hearing. It’s the same message I get every day from mass media, different in form and degree, yes, but not in kind.

2. August says:
   February 22nd, 2007 at 4:42 am

   I took a “writing” course, I meant to say. Posting at nearly 5 in the morning has it’s drawbacks.

3. Paul says:
   February 22nd, 2007 at 7:32 am

   Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa abra abra abradabra aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahaha BOOM!

4. George says:
   February 22nd, 2007 at 9:02 am

   For the record, I’ve always loved TFH’s performance art. It’s so wild and energetic.

5. kevin says:
   February 22nd, 2007 at 3:59 pm

   George, I’m curious as to why you refer to their work as performance art and not sound poetry? Or
   even performance poetry? My understanding of performance art (or time based art as it is often referred to these days) is that comes out of a different tradition.

   And August, I’m curious about this notion of being “an enemy of art without boundaries”. Just what are these boundaries and, more importantly, who gets to set them?

6. Julie Wilson says:
   February 22nd, 2007 at 9:28 pm

   Kate rocks. I’m only disappointed that she won’t be on stage performing as well. But I’m looking forward to the collective’s interpretation of TFH. I love sound poetry. It’s fun and vibrant and knocks out your knees when you least expect it. Straight to the vein.

7. August says:
   February 23rd, 2007 at 12:31 am

   Well, “enemy of art without boundaries” sounds like a big scary proscriptive thing, but it’s not, really. It’s about setting limits on yourself as an artist. It’s about saying that in this piece of art I will do X, but I will not do Y, because even though doing both X and Y will be easier, only doing one will allow me to create stronger art. It doesn’t have to mean using the sonnet form or something (although to be honest, most free-verse poetry sucks), but it does mean imposing some kind of structure on your work, no matter how arbitrary. It may simply be because I’m not the right audience for it, and am not a good listener of it, but I can’t see any kind of underlying structure at all; even the musician in me (I’m a drummer) doesn’t really see where they are going with the rhythms. It’s just a formless mess. Without some sort of structure it’s meaningless; even dadaists displayed structure, whether they recognized it or not. The Four Horsemen are, imho, a bunch of guys who make noises. Which I suppose is fine, but I don’t see much behind it, and therefor I have a hard time respecting it. I have always believed that it is possible to say that art is good and still not like, because it is possible to “read” the work and find something anything really, in it to connect with; the Four Horsemen don’t offer me that, not even in their pseudo-musicality.

   So: I believe in boundaries. Good art comes, in part, from the artist placing restrictions on his or her art, and the audience being able to, in not interpret the work or identify it’s specific structure/compotents, to at least recognize the presence of structure.

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