Kevin Logan

Rolling stones gets me no

satisfaction.

Rolling

stones

gets me no satisfaction. Rolling

stones gets me no satisfaction.
Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction.
Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction.
Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling
stones gets me no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me
no satisfaction. Rolling stones gets me no satisfaction.

Rolling

stones gets me no satisfaction

Kevin Logan
In Greek mythology King Sisyphus was made to roll a huge boulder up a
steep hill. Before he could reach the top however, the massive stone would
always roll back down, forcing him to begin again.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.1
The Sisyphean task is both performative and performance-like. Performative
in that it does-something-in-the-world 2, and performance-like in that it is an
action available as spectacle or audition. What is the sound of one rock (n)
rolling?
Repetition refers to the action of producing something over again. Repetition,
although not a necessity of my practice, is however a re-occurring theme.
Recording, re-staging, re-mediating and re-presenting a performed act.
Whether this be mechanical (the end being connected to the beginning) or
procedural (through re-enactment), it is nonetheless a re-petition, an appeal
again for consideration to heed-the-deed, again and again.
Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?
Repetition is relocation. It is an event with substance and form. A particular
form of repetition is to give a text or a work another locale. What does the same
mean in a new environment?

Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?

Repetition, as a strategy, is not the multiplication of the same, or the orthodox
fidelity to an event, but the marking of difference. A re-occurring theme of my
practice is repetition.

From Worstward Ho by Samuel Beckett. Written in 1983.

[P]erformative works enact and make evident, rather than represent or express.
(Neumark, N., Gibson, R. & Van Leeuwen, T., 2010. Voice: vocal aesthetics in digital arts
and media. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Kevin Logan
Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?
Repetition is subjectivity. Subjectivity is the constant re-iteration through
embodied performance. According to Judith Butler, performativity is an ongoing and never-ending process grounded in the compulsion to repeat" 3.
Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?
Repetition promises a climax but continually disappoints. In an environment
where the linear striving towards a goal obfuscates the re-current nature of a
boom-slum-boom socio-political system, the refusal to culminate, the
wallowing in process rather than product gratification, tends to irritate, chafe
and inflame.
Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?
Repetition when seen/heard as a non-productive supplement engages with
the absurd, and as such with the possibility of comedic intervention as an
oppositional gesture. Doing, saying, hearing something over-and-over again is
a mainstay of comedy, "I heard that! Pardon?" 4
Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?
Repetition ensures that each utterance is a new utterance, coloured, if only a
teeny-weeny, teensy-weensy, itsy-bitsy, little-bitty amount, by now-ness.
Subjecting the humdrum to a cyclical procedure aesthetizes the most low-key
and subtle of deeds. And, in a foldback double-gesture, repetition makes
quotidian of the most fantastical. Just as a belch, recorded and looped,
becomes a rhythmic beat, causing heads to bob, hands to clap, fingers to
snap and feet to tap. So too, the most miraculous Siren song heard time-aftertime, becomes banal.

Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge. (p.145)

Catchphrase of a character in the TV comedy I Didn't Know You Cared set in a working
class household in a Yorkshire mining village. BBC (1975-79).

Kevin Logan
Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?
Repetition dovetails with everydayness, re-routing the routine. The everyday
is that which has become exceedingly familiar and unexceptional as a result
of repeated exposure. The infra-ordinary is just that because its constant
regurgitation rebuffs significance 5 . A re-occurring theme of my practice is
repetition.
Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?
Repetition, when used as an actual methodology or conceptual trope
generates new forms. It is a constraint that channels, condensing into a
critique of everydayness, going hand-in-hand with a disregard for the
monumental and momentous. An endless tautology that is limited by time,
whilst continuously re-enacted in time. A re-occurring theme of my practice is
repetition.
Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?
Repetition is an auto-appropriator. Continuously cross-examining itself as it
does and re-does, whether in actuality or via a technological re-staging.
Central to my practice is the opposition of the particular and the general, what
becomes of the singular when it is re-articulated? These infra-deeds strive to
develop a grammar of everyday practices as an exploration of the sonic.
Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?
Repetitions rotator motion, acts dialectically, both like a centrifugal governor
reducing changes and maintaining control; and as a loop gain, adding
instability, disturbance and noise. It is elliptic, providing wobble to the
positive/negative feedback of the self-regulating system that is reflexive praxis.
And, a re-occurring theme of my practice is repetition.

The infra-ordinary is a term coined by George Perec.

Kevin Logan
Is repetition opposed to measurable or determinate change?
Repetition and everydayness collude not as a strategy, but as a tactic of
resistance, an anti- or infra-disciplinary practice, evading the satisfaction of
the beginning-middle-end, the commodification of outcome, the notable, the
atypical, the re-markable6. The quoting of the quotidian might exasperate, but
[o]ne must imagine Sisyphus happy7.
There was an old man named Michael Finnegan,
He kicked up an awful din-egan,
Because they said he could not sing-egan,
Poor old Michael Finnegan, begin again.8

I refer here to Michel De Certeau's distinction between tactics and strategies, in which he
states that, "[t]he place of a tactic belongs to the other...because it does not have a place, a
tactic depends on time...It must constantly manipulate events in order to turn them into
opportunities'.
7

Last line in the essay The Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus, 1942.

Traditional repetitive childrens song, origin unknown.