The Collected Writings of Michael Snow

The Real "New Jazz", 1950

The Audience (Peter Street Group), 1987 VI Contents Foreword by Louise Dompierre 1 The Real "New Jazz," 1950 5 Poem, 1957 8 Something You Might Try, 1958 10 Title or Heading, 1961 12 A Lot of Near Mrs., 1962­63 16 Around about New York Eye and Ear Control, 1966 20 Statements/18 Canadian Artists, 1967 26 First to Last, 1967 28 Crafts, 1967 31 On Wavelength, 1968 38 Abitibi, 1969 47 Tap, 1969 48 Ten Questions to Michael Snow, 1969 51 La Region Centrale, 1969 53 Converging on La Region Centrale: Michael Snow in Conversation with Charlotte Townsend, 1971 57 Michael Snow: A Filmography by Max Knowles, 1971 61 Passage (Dairy), 1971 66 The Life & Times of Michael Snow, 1971 68 DeLa, 1972 81 Information or Illusion: An Interview with Michael Snow, 1972 82 The Camera and the Spectator: Michael Snow in Discussion with John Du Cane, 1973 87 Boucherville, Montréal, Toronto, London, 1973 92 Notes for Rameau 's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by WilmaSchoen, 1974 97 vii viii The Collected Writings of Michael Snow Some Scripts for Rameau 's Nephew by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen, 1974 104 Voice 106 Polyphony (Sequence 10) 107 Bus (Sequence 11) 125 Fart, aka Tea Party (Sequence 12) 128 Embassy (Sequence 15) 132 Hotel (Sequence 20) 144 Tom Gibson's Photographs, 1974 172 Michael Snow Musics for Piano, Whistling, Microphone and Tape Recorder, 1975 173 The Artists' Jazz Band Live at the Edge, 1976 182 A Letter to Alvin Balkind, 1976 186 Crushed Cookies Make Crumbs Liberates Swing. Cuts Its Pulse, 1978 ..: 188 Larry Dubin's Music, 1978 190 Pierre Theberge: Conversation with Michael Snow, 1978 195 Cerisy­la­Salle, 1979 203 Edinburgh, 1979 205 Statement for 10 Canadian Artists in the 1970s, 1980 208 So Is This, 1982 209 Michael Snow and Bruce Elder in Conversation, 1982 221 On Murray Favro, 1982 232 (Hand­written) To Write, 1982 234 On Hollis Frampton, 1984 240 Music and Me, 1986 249 An Entrance to Redifice, 1987 251 The Audience, 1987 253 Laocoon of the People, 1987 254 The Last LP, 1987 257 Trying to Figure It Out, 1987 279 Statement for an Exhibition,Tokyo, 1988 281 Playing the Radio: A Personal History, 1989 284 Admission (or, Marcel Duchamp), 1989 286 Sign Paintings by Robert Hedrick, 1990 290 Statement for the 8th Biennial of Sydney, Australia, 1990 292 Statement for an Exhibition,Paris, 1992 293 Foreword R ecently, as I was going through Michael Snow's writings and preparing this intro­ duction, I found a query from him: "add? to intro. Our arrangement of the material is chronological but this really is a book built for browsing." He is, of course, right. If this book can be read from beginningto end, giving a sense of the evolution of his ideas and career, it can also be absorbed at random and slowly. Michael's comment is significant for another reason: it reveals the collaborative nature of this endeavour. Though I initially approached him with an idea and a selection of his published texts, he provided me with additional documents, many of them unknown to me because they had never been published before. He also explained the context in which many of the texts had been written. From beginning to end this was truly a joint effort. As always, Michael proved to be an ideal partner, generous with his ideas and enthusiasm. Although the anthology began to take shape only in the past few years, it was in fact in 1983 when I first began thinking about assembling a book of Snow's writings. At the time I was compiling the bibliography for Walking Woman Works (Kingston: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen's University, 1985), an exhibition catalogue accompanying a series of works by Snow from the Sixties. I was then, as I am now, impressed by the quality, range and number of his writings. Moreover, as a researcher, I often have occasion to regret the lack of anthologies of writings by Canadian visual artists. Compared with our American neighbours, for instance, we have been negligent in taking advantage of this resource. Yet writings by artists abound. They not only pro­ vide an important layer of understandingabout artists' works and ideas but also often reveal significant facts about the social and historical conditions that surround the pro­ duction of their art. This is certainly true of Snow's...