07/07 @ 8:00pm - Theoretical: Thinking Out Loud: Christoph Cox and Seth Kim-Cohen

Thinking Out Loud: Christoph Cox and Seth Kim-Cohen

Everybody likes a good fight. Earlier this year, in the pages of Artforum, Christoph Cox and Seth Kim-Cohen publicly disagreed on how to think about the sonic arts. Cox advocates a sonic naturalism “which short-circuits the aesthetics of representation and mediation and instead affirms an aesthetics of force, flux, and resonance.” Kim-Cohen, argues that “it is the worldly, rather than the earthly, that presents the possibility of meaning – sound derives its meaning from context, from intertextuality, from the play of difference in its conceptual and material strata.”

Oftentimes, the only thing you get out of a good fight is a bloody nose. Hoping for more, Cox and Kim-Cohen will sidestep the ad hominem upper cuts that sometimes pass for critical debate in the art world, exchanging their ideas of the sonic and trying genuinely to think out loud. Each will come armed with examples: audio, video, image, and text. These might include works by John Cage, Robert Morris, Francisco López, Christina Kubisch, Vito Acconci, and the work that started the debate: Doug Aitken’s Sonic Pavilion. Theorists are likely to be dragged into this as well: Friedrich Kittler, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Jean-Luc Nancy, Manuel de Landa, et al.

No champion will be declared, no belt will be awarded. The hoped-for outcome is a few new ideas, a more thorough understanding, maybe even one or two “ah-has.” By thinking out loud about the sonic, Cox and Kim-Cohen believe they can accomplish more in tandem than either could in isolation. It’ll be a friendly fight: Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Seth Kim-Cohen
Seth Kim-Cohen is an artist and theorist. His work has been presented at venues spanning the cultural spectrum, including: CBGBs, Tate Modern, PS 122, ZKM, Issue Project Room, Peer Gallery. His recent book, In The Blink of An Ear: Toward A Non-Cochlear Sonic Art, (Continuum 2009), argues for a wide-ranging sonic conceptualism and against sound-in-itselfism. Kim-Cohen has written for Artforum, The Chicago Reader, Art Review, Pitchfork, and Pop-Stock. He received his PhD from the London Consortium and has taught at Yale University and Pratt Institute. Seth Kim-Cohen is Director and Assistant Professor of Art and Theory at the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts.

More at www.kim-cohen.com

Christoph Cox
Christoph Cox, Professor of Philosophy, teaches and writes on contemporary European philosophy and contemporary art and music. He is also on the faculty at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, and a member of the CCS Graduate Committee. Cox is the author of Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation (University of California Press, 1999) and co-editor of Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum, 2004). The recipient of a 2009 Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation, Cox is editor-at-large for Cabinet magazine and regularly writes for Artforum, The Wire, and other magazines. He has curated exhibitions at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Kitchen in New York City, New Langton Arts in San Francisco, and G Fine Art Gallery in Washington D.C. Cox has written catalog essays for exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Mass MoCA, the South London Gallery, Berlin’s Akademie der Künste, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Seattle Center, and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum. He is currently at work on a philosophical and historical book about sound art and experimental music.