The footage begins to cut between the crew in action (filming the actors and conversing with Greaves) to a discussion between the crew about Greaves. The viewer senses that a mutiny is afoot; in their discussion they question the directors competence and ask themselves what they believe the purpose of the entire exercise is – perhaps he is doing this on purpose. There is much confusion as to what exactly is going on, yet one crewmember has a prescient view of what is happening in that moment—that their on-camera discussion concerning Greaves and his movie—is, in fact, their “function” in the film. As a result the viewer begins to thoroughly question the ‘authenticity’ of what they’re watching; if Greaves is willing to trick his crew will he also trick his audience? The film is a brilliantly layered view of an event viewed from multiple angles via the people’s reactions. For arguments sake, lets that that Greaves masterminded the entire thing; the reactions of the crew were real, the original film was real and the chaos was real. In relinquishing total control he transcended to a completely new level of ‘author’. Greaves is the creator of a documentary that documents the documentation of the filming of a film thus capturing something far more authentic than the idea of a film itself, in short, Greaves recorded reality. A bizarre, twisted form of reality that’s forced through ill-fitting holes into spaces it has never previously occupied. But what is the film wasn’t ‘real’? If the crew were actors also does the film still hold the same sort of power? Well, if there is one thing to take from Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, is that the ‘real’ doesn’t matter, in fact to record a successful documentation of reality, one must perhaps relinquish their own ties to reality as they perceive it. Without the fictional ‘director’ played by Greaves there is no reaction from the crew and there is no Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, and without Symbiopsychotaxiplasm there is no discussion formed about reality after watching the film. Consquently in creating a possibly false reality within the film, Greaves creates a very ‘real’ discussion of reality exterior to the film regardless of whether the film told the truth. As Oliver Laric says in ‘Versions’ 2010 “Every lie creates a parallel world, a world in which the lie is true”.
There is has been a recent rise musicians that question the reality of the album, when is an album finished (real)? What should one consider to be the true version of a piece of music? – an album version, a live version, the sheet music or a remix? Or if there is any ‘reality’ that can exist at all. Kanye West’s new album ‘The Life of Pablo’ has already existed in many different forms; this began with its many title changes, from ‘So Help Me God’, to ‘SWISH’ to ‘Wolves’; each of these titles creates an unheard potential album. Again we return to Oliver Laric’s versions when he states “All outcomes exist simultaneously but do not interfere further with each other, each single prior world having split into mutual unobservable, but equally real worlds.” By using a similar behind the scenes-style method of communication to Greaves, Kanye manages to create multiple personas for the album, and this is continuing! After tweeting many track-listing alterations in the run up to its release including a live streamed album launch show at madison square gardens where West played a version of the album in it’s entirety only to announce the next day that he was adding/removing/reshuffling the tracks. Kanye continues to update the album on TIDAL (the only place where it is available) by adding verses, swapping songs and changing the artwork. He recently announced that there will not be a physical version of ‘The Life of Pablo’, there will only be updates on TIDAL, a never finished project with no official release date, or should we say REALease date??
While Kanye West’s project is by far the most blatant and interesting example of the decline of the ‘real’ or ‘finished’ other musicians are still toying with similar ideas, albeit with less conviction than West. Kendrick Lamar recently dropped a surprise new album ‘Untitled Unmastered’ which consists of ‘unfinished’ rough cuts of songs that have never quite made it onto ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ or have been recorded since then. Kendrick has now started editing the tracks on ‘Untitled Unmastered’; ‘untitled 07 | 2014-2016’ has been repacked and released as a single on iTunes, with the name “untitled 07 | levitate.” He shortened the track; on the album version, the “untitled 07” lasts more than eight minutes, and is broken up into three distinct sections, with three separate beats. This latest version, though, is just under two-and-a-half minutes long, highlighting only the first piece of the original album version. All the songs were originally untitled and, in their messy nature, seem to contradict the overproduced, heavily perfected nature of the music industry. Lamar acknowledges the ability that music has to never be the ‘real’ thing; a live version will never sound like the studio version, and vice versa. If the two strive to become each other they will only end up chasing each other’s tails. But that leads us to ask what is this album? Is it an album at all? Its neither live or perfected in a studio, the songs feel live, and are untitled yet one is still able to skip from track to track, and therefore have a favorite ‘untitled’ track. With no directional song titles, no grand proclamations, and no album promotion the audience is left nothing to deal with but the music. As with ‘The Life of Pablo’, ‘untitled unmastered’ is neither here nor there; it struggles with the ‘finished-ness’ of products designed for consumer culture.
Before David Bowie died he commissioned the Instagram page @instaminiseries to make a music video series for ‘Blackstar’ on Instagram, named ‘Unbound’ the 16 part series posted four times a week with 15 second “visual interpretations of his songs, with no limits or preconditions on his part”. @instaminiseries picked their own snippets of songs from ‘Blackstar’ and made videos to accompany it. As viewers we experience an odd style of narrative here; while we already know the progression of the album we are not aware of the narrative in the videos, which, in this case take priority over the order of the music on the album, the series doesn’t stay true to the ‘reality’ of the album track list, because it simply has no need to! Due to its habitat (Instagram) the viewers will be drip fed these little snippets mixed in with the rest of their content on the Instagram feed, while there is a narrative within the videos, they are also designed to be consumed in small chunks, the order of the music doesn’t matter, it’s the continuation of producing small segments of entertainment consistently that takes priority. It could be argued that as a work commissioned by David Bowie this series is perhaps the last thing he ever did, the last unreleased ‘reality’ from his life. The last rock unturned. ‘Unbound’ ended two days ago and in turn so did David Bowie; let’s hope he had more things hidden up his sleeves waiting to become a reality. But we all know that you don’t really need David Bowie’s permission to carry on using his work. Naturally same applies to everything ;)
Access @instaminiseries here