Travels in Intermedia[lity]: ReBlurring the Boundaries

9. Geniune Thought is Inter(medial)

To think is to create. —Antonin Artaud tHiS CHapter dealS WitH tHe QueStion of intermediality as the space in between different media. Taking into account the “theories of difference” of French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, I argue that the virtual “space in-between” has the potential to create genuine thought as an event within the concentrated form of intermedial artwork. Hence the creative act, with its ability to produce a “new language” (Barthes 155), becomes necessary for the emergence of meaning as a signifying potential. My analysis revolves around the works of the three musicians Diamanda Gal ás, Peaches, and Janine Rostron, a.k.a. Planningtorock. I choose their work as examples of contemporary intermedial production that aims at the creation of a “new language.” What the three musicians have in common is their mixture of different music genres, their extraordinary physical presence on stage, and their ability to allow these two realms—body image and sound—to interact in a new way: Their bodies constitute a part of an intermedial sound-sculpture enabling these performers to present their compositions in an immediate or visceral manner. genuine thought is inter(medial) J u li a m ei er 126 Ju l i a m e i e r “That which hits right into the nervous system without the detour of the brain” is one of the most important statements made by British painter Francis Bacon (Sylvester 18).1 Basing his concepts on this notion, Gilles Deleuze developed his “logic of sensation” (see Francis Bacon). Not to represent but to present is a property of genuine creation, which unfolds in a realm that can only be understood via sensation—viscerally. What is implied in this concept is that all other intelligible understanding refers to something already known—to a referential system, grid, or code. In Diamanda Galás’s, Peaches’s, and Planningtorock’s performances the familiar habitat is left behind—distinct spaces of music genres and media are shattered, mixed up, and, in the process, violently brought together again. This clashing of distinct spaces is what opens up the spaces in-between. If we attempted to trace the various sources of their work and to define the different influences on that work with the aim of establishing one fixed meaning, we would “fall in with the myth of filiation” as Roland Barthes argues (“From Work to Text” in Image-Music-Text 160)—simply because we could not avoid reestablishing the well-known codes. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze attests to this idea, stating that genuine thought begins with an external act of violence inflicted upon thought in order to “awaken thought from its natural stupor . . . . Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter” (139). This fundamental encounter is like a jolt, like a disequilibrium or deregulation of the senses “that can only be sensed” (139). diaManda galáS In the work and persona of American vocalist, pianist, and composer Diamanda Galás2 intermediality manifests in her ability to filter the space in between all different kinds of musical styles, genres, eras, and cultures into a particularly concentrated sound: She can be considered the first artist to feature in her performances a variety that ranges from classical opera sung over blues and gospel traditionals to a visceral collage of “chants, shrieks, gurgles, hisses often at extreme volumes, frequently distorted electronically and accompanied by a torrent of words” (Harris 20) which defies description. Similar to this contracted and “folded” sound material, her visual appearance ranges from the “Dark Diva,” the “Callas of the avant-garde,” to the tortured or devastated body of a victim.3 The textual realm of her work oscillates among Edgar Allan Poe, French poetry of the nineteenth century, the Old Testament, various other texts, and her own writings (see Galás, The Shit of God). In the clashing of all these elements, a new, previously unknown space of sonic-sculptural quality is created. In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Deleuze and Guattari 127 g e nu i ne tHo u g Ht is int e r (m e dial ) describe the space in-between as follows: “Between things does not designate a localizable relation going from one thing to the other and back again, but a perpendicular direction, a transversal movement that sweeps one and the other way, a...