Gesamtkunstwerk

On one hand, I love to do this art form that is 11 Madison Park.

It's kind of like a Gesamtkunstwerk.

And I love it.

I love to do it.

Totally.

Yeah.

You used this term earlier, Gesamtkunstwerk, total work of art.

What does that mean to you?

Yeah, yeah.

In some of the texts there's, it's described as a Gesamtkunstwerk, which I have issue with because it, it's too eclectic for that.

Yeah.

A Gesamtkunstwerk, to my mind, suggests greater homogeneity in aesthetic decisions between parts.

I think I, of that as like a totalizing-

Yeah

That's AI in time or temporality.

You know, in the discussion of protocol art and whether it's something new or just like a sweet, generous Gesamtkunstwerk kind of thing, pornography as well, how new is AI porn? When it comes to time and AI, I see a few of these contradictions, you know? It is the new wave we have to adopt or be left behind, and it recombines old things.

That's what next token prediction is.

It can make nothing new, and yet it changes how we make everything.

And I said, yeah, some Traviata, Bohème, Carmen.

it was like yeah it's beautiful but you know when it stops in the beautiful right and then i heard i listened to Tristan and Isolde and i oh my god this music this makes sense yeah and then of course i went to research about it and then i got to do Gesamtkunstwerk that is this, that in my mind is that, oh my God, this makes total sense.

So it's not just like a display of great vocalism.

It's like those mechanical clocks, like everything, one depending on the other.

I love that.

That's great.

So I know in reading about you, the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk is very intriguing to me, and I feel like that's a little bit of what you're talking about here.

Can you go into more depth in that? And it kind of rounded that out for us a bit.

I just said, in my mind as you're reading, I just said, I read German word and then just kept going.

Gesamtkunstwerk, I think.

But hey, don't say that without your false teeth in because it could go horribly wrong.

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The unavoidable question is the role of Wagner in Ziberberg's work.

The book does not mention the term Gesamtkunstwerk anywhere.

Does that concept have anything to do with Ziberberg or Ziberberg's relationship to Wagner?

He wrote about Gesamtkunstwerk indeed many times, but I think what really interested him was a double meaning of that term, or not just the meaning, but the fate of Gesamtkunstwerk as such.

In his contribution to the exhibition on the realism between the world wars, that was an exhibition in Paris in the early 80s, if I remember well, It was very interesting that all other contributions were learned texts about this or that tendency during the 30s.

And his text, his contribution was very short and was titled Hitler, the artist of the state.

So his thesis was that the most radical art, realistic art between the world wars were Hitler's.

And there he depicts or he discussed the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk in Hitler's case.

So it would be interesting to talk to the librettist to see what her thoughts are on the integration.

But it does seem very well almost Gesamtkunstwerk-like here.

Everything is tied together.

It's not just singers and orchestras accompanying.

But it's interesting.

It's definitely not that Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk.

It's a failed synth- synthesis of Morton Feldman's score and Beckett's text.

There's a vaguing going on, another one of Beckett's words.