Many years before the internet, Benjamin asserted that the authentic artwork had an 'aura,' and could be perceived to be originary, singular, infused only with the inquisitive life of its creator. One can infer from this that all work in a sense performs; all art is performance, even when it can only stand still, as does an image. But even mechanically (and digitally) reproduced work still performs. I do not think that one can assertain the authenticity of a work of art by predisposing oneself towards the means by which material is generated and produced. But I follow Benjamin in concept of 'aura.' I read into this concept, vitality, life, charcaterisitcs that can only be discerned insofar as the work performs.

And what does it perform? Work for me is discursive. I adjudicate its performance by its demonstrated ability to be discursive; the extent to which it demonstrates or moves me to wonder, to question, to contend, ... to exalt and celebrate even. Works performs through thought. Thinking happens through natural language, though emotional narrative, through catogory generating intellection, through and by the body, .... History comes to an end. As far as I can determine, this statement means that an epoch of thought exhausts itself. There are ever new epochs. And yet there is also a thinking which thinks this condition. I am interested in such thinking of origins. I prefer to think this as one of the higher discursive accomplishments of art. There are many other types of discursive accomplishment. I am used to saying that under the heading of music, there are very different types of objects, according to their discursive accoimplishement. Some music functions entirely like equipment; it dissappears into a task (ambient, healing, ceremonial). Some music pursues topics as would a scientist (most classical traditions, think of a fugue, sonata, or symphony). This music know the epoch to which it belongs, it is epistemologically grounded. Other musics attempt to think the space between such epochs. As far as I can determine, this is a more originary thinking. Adorno called this utopian, disruptive and fragmentary, and he meant well by these characterizations. Heidegger called it poesis. I call it the thinking of difference, after philosophers closer to my time, e.g., Deleuze. Or, after very old philosophers (e.g., Heraclitus), a thinking that demonstrates a principle of contradiction. "The river into which we step is and is not the same rive; we are and we are not." This could also be characterized as a thinking of conjunction.
Only art which is epochal dies. Work which dissapears into some instrumental task, never really lives. Art which is able to touch origins lives very long indeed, longer than epochs.

Bruce Gremo

composer - New-York