Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors

Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors is a 1976 video by Art & Language.

Watch on UbuWeb

Track listing

		Track
1.		"It is a G&CE to desire socialism with capitalist desire..."
2.		"It is the task of the pragmatisers..."
3.		"Interpretation is the evident lack of an activist epistemology..."
4.		"Reductionist empiricist without specificity..."
		"Born to Win" (instrumental)
5.		"It is a G&CE to regard language as a classless mode of communication..." (1)
6.		"We must ferociously attack..." (1)
7.		"We must ferociously attack..." (2)
8.		"It is a G&CE to regard language as a classless means of communication..." (2)
9.		"Capitalist cognition produces systems of interpreted beliefs..."

Background

Description in The Fox 3, May 1976

Songs on video-tape have all sorts of anomalies. These nine video-taped 'errors' are all songs of going-on. Separate technology reinforces and is an instantiation of capitalist taxonomy. Leaving the music business to 'professionals' adds up to the same thing: the reproduction of capitalist formalisms and control mechanisms. Video-taped songs are not offered to those who can 'necessarily' afford access (though we do want them to go to schools) — we have something to say and a bunch of nobodies to say it to. But history 'frees' us to adapt ... there are real people out there (here) penetrating separate technology with class activism.

Exhibitions

• First exhibited at the "(Provisional) Art & Language" exhibition at John Weber Gallery in New York on June 18 – July 14, 1976
• Screened in Chicago in 1995 with "Four Songs"
• 2014: MACBA
• June 7 – July 15, 2017: Rob Tufnell, Cologne

• 
  Postcard for John Weber exhibition, 1976
• 
  2014
• 
  2017

Physical releases

• May 1976: Full page advertisement for sales and rentals in The Fox 3
• October 1994: The Red Krayola sold a small amount of copies on their Japan tour
• 2000: Circuit 9 DVD magazine: two tracks
• 2010: Unreleased DVD

[Thompson] also informs me that a DVD is in the works for release this year which will include the Art & Language sections from Struggle In New York, a subsequent '76 music-and-video project Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors, and more material from the period. "We won't be advertising it as featuring Kathryn [Bigelow]," Thompson says, "though [we] naturally welcome anyone who reads the fine print and gets interested because of her."

• 
  Full page ad in The Fox 3, 1976
• 
  Tape sold in Japan, 1994
• 
  Circuit 9 video magazine, 2000

Digital releases

• 2011: Full video appeared on UbuWeb
• 2014: A portion of the video was uploaded to YouTube. The upload was titled "VTS 01 1" meaning it came from a DVD

Personnel

• Mel Ramsden - lyrics
• Mayo Thompson - music

Art & Language

• Kathryn Bigelow
• Ian Burn
• Christine Kozlov
• Donna Lendon

• Nigel Lendon
• Mel Ramsden
• Paula Ramsden
• Terry Smith

The Red Crayola

• Mayo Thompson - guitar
• Jesse Chamberlain - drums

Retrospectives

Mel Ramsden, 2016

When we made that so-called 'insane' video Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors, one of the reasons why that took place was that one of the tracks on Corrected Slogans was recorded at 112 Greene Street. And at 112 Greene Street — Kathryn Bigelow was the then-girlfriend of Jeffrey Lew — Kathryn Bigelow, who had also worked for Vito Acconci, knew how to get a video camera. And a video camera was something — 'wow, video camera, that's really cool!' And so we got that, and that was just made up on spot. There was no rehearsal or anything and it was deliberate take off on Corrected Slogans to have Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors. It's almost unwatchable. Its virtues are its extreme embarrassment — to me.

Mel Ramsden, 2019

The performative aspects — I know people keep bringing it up now — Art & Language and performance and drawing and performance. And I'd never thought of the performative aspect of it until we did Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors, which was an absurd performance. [...]

No, there was no rehearsal. There was just a bit of a conversation then invited a few people. But Mayo Thompson had done that already, years and years ago, because the Red Crayola used to have this thing [The Familiar Ugly] which were some fans that used to follow them around and then they came up on the stage and disrupted the performance. But that's in the late 60s. [...]

Well it was just a preposterous thing to do, to speak those kind of lyrics. But it was called Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors because, I believe, in response to Corrected Slogans, in some way, because it was done slightly later even though the record wasn't released. But I'd heard some of the tracks. In fact I performed one of the tracks on Corrected Slogans [Penny Capitalists]. Brilliantly, I must say. [...]

Reviews

Frieze

October 13, 2005

Andrew Hunt

Two videos And Now for Something Completely Different and Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors (both 1976), which have a similar lyrical content to the album [Corrected Slogans] and which both contain ironic posturing that thinly masks an awkward energy brought about by the mixture of political anthems and rock and roll. Of the two videos, Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors best represents this experimental vitality. Unrehearsed songs are performed by groups of unsuspecting participants as well as the knowing core collaborators Art & Language’s Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden, with Thompson on guitar and Jesse Chamberlain on drums. Activist slogans, such as ‘we must ferociously attack so called institutionalized egalitarianism – it is a smokescreen, which attempts to replace activist content with liberal structures’, are chanted en masse and played out as theoretical quotations and self-mocking mantras. At one point Ramsden sings the line ‘Marx’s old chestnut “the philosophers know how to interpret the world, the point is to change it” is embedded in the nexus of dialectics’ and Thompson makes a dedication ‘to Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said “you cannot be a philosopher and a Communist at the same time”’.

Through visible misunderstandings of each text or acts of insincerity on the performers’ behalf, there’s an inevitable displacement of belief in these videos, where each deliberately inauthentic voice strives for a form of validity. Although the musical backing by The Red Crayola is vital and exciting, the aim, through the unfeasibility of the verbal performances and the lyrics – or the ‘conspicuous errors’ – appears to be to keep the gap between the performer and the text open. This is enforced by philosophical ramblings about the ‘commodification of social relations’ and remarks about language serving a strong managerial role, and interspersed by some expertly amateur routines, with Ramsden, in particular, fluctuating between self-conscious embarrassment – indicating the confusion of the situation – and an overconfidence about his own workmanlike timekeeping. At one point he looks extremely proud of a fellow player who’s so lost she has no idea what line she’s meant to be singing. Baldwin also appears ridiculous in his Travis Bickle sunglasses, growling comedically into the microphone and whistling pointlessly along with Ramsden. [...]

Art & Language and the Politics of Art Worlds, 1969-1977

2012

Robert Bailey