ARCHE — Prismatica

Welcome Note

Sometimes we need a reset; a time of revitalization after a period of storm and stress. This is true of any vocation, not least editing a literary journal. Atop the regular wear and tear of publishing quarterly issues, all three of us support Prismatica through our regular jobs, which often interferes with the time and energy we can devote to ENPRI. When you account for relationships, health issues, and global entanglements, that time becomes even thinner.

And yet, we persist. In fact, we more than persist: we evolve. In spite of ourselves, we want ENPRI to become more than a mere literary journal; we want it to be a community of engagement. To that end, we happily announce the (re)launch of our weekly newsletter, ARCHE, as well as an official ENPRI Discord server! The link to join the Discord can be found here and on the Collective page (information below).

We have made it this far because of our passion, yes, but also because of your passion. We thank you for your commitment and hope you will remain with us as we build a space for engagement, collaboration, and exploration. There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours. Let us make it mean something.

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Composer of the Week

Born 1942

Meredith Monk

Of all living composers, Meredith Monk ranks among the greatest, sitting next to giants like John Williams, Terry Riley, and Eric Whitacre. This is no easy feat, and it is made all the more astounding when we consider Monk's style is far from the accessible listening of her contemporaries, especially compared to the minimalist rhythms of Riley and the populisms of Williams and Whitacre. What makes Monk so enduring?

There is, of course, the fact of her inclusion in one of the most popular films of the 90s: The Big Lebowski (listen: Walking Song). But plenty of musicians have featured in films and fade into obscurity after the initial fame of the movie. Moreover, while films can catapult composers into stardom (see: John Williams and Hans Zimmer), these usually involve films which rely on soundtracks to elevate their aesthetic. It is hard to imagine The Big Lebowski as a soundtrack film in the same way Star Wars or Interstellar are soundtrack movies (lest we forget, the Coen brothers create a specific type of film which does not have the same populist appeal as those which feature composers like Williams or Zimmer; not to their discredit, of course). This is evinced by the fact that Monk is not primarily known as a film composer; her music has merely been included in films.

Perhaps we can attribute her legacy to the fact that her music, while certainly not as approachable as Williams, retains a certain harmonic language which is not dissimilar from other minimalist and ambient composers (e.g., Brian Eno or Max Richter); indeed, many of her pieces fall neatly into the ambient space which has become increasingly popular in the last two decades. But while ambient artists like Eno rely on soundscapes, Monk's music, more often than not, supplants the ambience by focusing on the emergence of the voice as instrument. Music for Airports sits quietly beneath the vocal incantations of a tortured spirit.

Perhaps that is the key to her enduring status, however; not that her music is quintessentially ambient, or that it appropriates its success from popular media, but that it is, at its core, universal. The voice, after all, is the one instrument (and Monk ensures the voice is an instrument) which most possess indiscriminately and without reserve. Of course, this is no new discovery; but whereas other composers, especially those canonized in the Western tradition, have supplanted the voice with harmony, Meredith Monk has decided to excavate the voice from its tonal constraints and reveal it as it is. While Whitacre mastered the choral arrangement, and Schubert perfected the form of the lieder, Monk has evolved the voice as a pure instrument in and of itself. It has its own timbres, its own rhythms, its own sonorities, its own cadences, its own "rules", as she has said. For her, the voice is "like a spine", able to bend and twist and rise and fall.

Though she is not a film composer, she is no stranger to film as a medium and has composed a variety of videographic performances. In fact, like the New York School of the 20th century, Monk does not shy away from exploring aspects of art beyond pure music, creating films, dance, and dramatic performances, both with and without words. All of these, moreover, without ever being explicitly political, which may seem anathema to Prismatica. Her reasoning, however, reveals a distinction often overlooked when discussing the purpose of art. She readily admits that some artists engage the world politically; they address contemporary social issues, cultural missteps, and economic perils. But there is, for her, another type of artist who is no less engaged: the antidotic artist. This is the artist who creates in order to show the world an alternative to the mundane. This is the artist who forces others to see different perspectives, not necessarily in the hope of changing a current situation, but in the hope of reminding people that there is an alternative. While this may not be engaged in the traditional sense, we do not believe this is all too different from the goal of engaged literature. In the very least, it is not all too different from the goal of Prismatica.

If nothing else, Meredith Monk reminds us that the voice can be used for more than just protest, and it often must be used for more if it is to have any kind of effect. To criticize is one thing, but to elicit an alternative to that which is protested requires a different type of courage, a different type of imagination, and a different type of discipline. Monk may not be as political as Yoko Ono or Luigi Nono, but she is no less creative because of it.

Sometimes creativity is exactly what changes the world.

Further Listening

Turtle Dreams
Nyems
Quarry

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Artist of the Week

1889-1978

Hannah Höch

Art: A New History makes no reference to Hannah Höch, so you'd be forgiven for knowing little of her work, if anything. In fact, most art reference works written before the 21st century make little mention of collage at all, let alone of the Dadaiste who transformed its possibilities. How unfortunate for readers.

Yet how apropos considering Höch's struggles within the Dada movement itself. If anything, her lack of recognition is evidence that the discrimination she faced by her peers (something well documented by the dadaists themselves) has not been rectified in the decades since her passing. While unfortunate, this also adds a bittersweet irony to her collage work. Just as collages combine disparate elements into a larger work, Höch's legacy reveals the hidden composition of artistic movements. Rather than singular figures working together as in the workshops of ancient masters, many art movements function through the disparate actions of their associated members, often with mixed and oppositional results. The dada movement owes part of its existence, even if only a fraction, not only to Höch's works themselves, but to the creativity she inspired in her compatriots. But like collage itself, the disparate pieces of a movement are so often overlooked for the grand narrative of the movement itself and so become amalgamated into the movement's story. Höch, then, becomes a footnote to Dada because Dada is more important than any of its individual members, just as a complete painting is given more attention than an assembly of individual pieces.

Add to this the fact that Höch was a collage artist and a woman, and her exclusion from canonical art courses and histories is disappointing but not entirely unexpected. All this despite the fact that her work directly influenced the punk movement, ingeniously criticized social structures of interwar Germany (for example, she signed her artworks by pasting a picture of her head on a map of countries with women's suffrage), and exposed the fragmented quality of modernity through her intentional use of the collage form (see: Cut with the Kitchen Knife...).

In this disappointment, however, perhaps lies Höch's most important contribution to modern art: a reminder that grand narratives rarely reveal the entire composition of their plot, and the pieces which get remembered are often determined by their own status in the greater cultural milieu. If Dada is remembered, it is only because of the artists who contributed to it; but which artists get remembered? Only those the public cares to remember. So, Hannah Höch suffers that great indignity: shaping a movement which has become canonical while yet being erased from the canon, only because she chose to embody that which makes any movement possible. Until collage is seen as deserving the same praise as sculpture or painting, and until attention is paid to the legitimate discrimination that occurs in even the (supposed) most progressive circles, Höch's legacy risks languishing under the generic. Perhaps our duty, then, is to reject the simplicity of broad labels and remember that in every creation there lies a multitude of voices, all harmonizing to create that which lands itself on the marquee.

Further Viewing

Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the Beer-Belly of the Weimar Republic
Ohne Titel (Aus einem ethnographischen Museum)
Heads of State

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From the Prismatica Desk

Along with ARCHE and Discord, we are officially launching The Collective, a collaborative gallery space for guest essays, artwork, and experiments. We can only publish so many pieces in the journal per issue, and sometimes we have to exclude works of incredible merit. The Collective is our attempt at expanding the artistic vision ENPRI represents by offering a space for these pieces to be seen.

While not as rigorous as the journal, The Collective will maintain ENPRI's commitment to engaged literature and art while expanding its reach. If you'd like to submit a work to The Collective, whether an article, a work-in-progress art piece, a diary entry, an interview, or a multimedia piece, you can fill out the form on The Collective page itself or send us an email with your suggestion. Please note that The Collective is entirely digital.

Finally, we are pleased to announce that Issue 4 of ENPRI will be releasing in October! We will announce a call for submissions soon.

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Until the Next Excavation

Let us create the world in which we want to live.

Join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/2SeWYX2GE

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