Drone and Apocalypse: An Exhibit Catalog for the End of the World

by Joanna Demers

Drone and Apocalypse is an exhibit catalog for a retrospective of twenty-first-century art. Its narrator, Cynthia Wey, is a failed artist convinced that apocalypse is imminent. She writes critical essays delineating apocalyptic tendencies in drone music and contemporary art. Interspersed amid these essays are “speculative artworks”, Wey’s term for descriptions of artworks she never constructs that center around the extinction of humanity. Wey’s favorite musicians are drone artists like William Basinski, Celer, Thomas Köner, Les Rallizes Dénudés, and Éliane Radigue, and her essays relate their works to moments of ineffability in Herodotus, Aristotle, Plato, Pliny the Elder, Isidore of Seville, Robert Burton, Hegel, and Dostoyevsky. Well after Wey’s demise, the apocalypse never arrives, but Wey’s journal is discovered. Curators fascinated with twenty-first-century culture use her writings as the basis for their exhibit “Commentaries on the Apocalypse”, which realizes Wey’s speculative artworks as photographs, collages, and sound/video installations.

Genres: Music, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Art

120 pages, Paperback

First published December 11, 2015

Reviews

[Brandon Woodward · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intriguing commentary on apocalypse through the lens of the narrator’s love of drone music. Each essay is intensely personal while being cold and distant, like the wistful anguish of trying to to hold on to a poignant dream that inevitably slips from your grasp. The decision to frame an autobiographical text as the journal of a fictional character discovered 200 years in the future was really successful. It aligned form with content; a treatise on the inevitability of apocalypse transformed into an art-object following an almost disappointing absence of cataclysm.

I’m not entirely sure how meaningful this book would be if you aren’t familiar with the drone classics (Basinski, Hecker, Radigue), but it could be a good jumping off point if you are interested in the genre. Much of the text revolves around the author’s analysis of drone music. I did find it very enjoyable to listen to the tracks while reading her relate them to apocalypse.

The book was the perfect length to communicate it’s message (~100 pages) without overstaying it’s welcome, was well written, and introduced a lot of novel concepts that demand reflection. The one weak spot in the book is the “speculative artworks,” in which the narrator describes art she would like to make, but didn’t have the skills for. Her outlines are lovely, but the artworks created by future artists to fit her description really fall flat. Mostly amateur collage work that’s almost a mockery of the provided description. It would have been much more successful if the narrator’s descriptions were left to stand on their own, allowing the reader to imagine the work themselves.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in drone music, philosophy of art/aesthetics, or experimental book structures. 4.5/5

[Five · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dear God, this was a slog. I dreaded returning to this to finish it. I came into this book as a fan of drone music and found this to be almost entirely impenetrable unless you're incredibly well-versed in philosophy.

I got nothing out of it except a bunch of references to music I haven't yet heard. Extremely disappointed.

[Benas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Čia keistas reikalas. Tai pusiau fikcija, pusiau trumpų ese apie šiuolaikinę muziką rinkinys. Joanna Demers mėgsta protingus žodžius ir jei jos "Listening through the Noise", kaip labiau mokslinė knyga, tai pateisina, tai čia gal ir pretenzingiau atrodo tas protingžodžiavimas. Nors gal nieko, šiaip įdomus kampas, per kurį ji drone/ambient kūrėjus apžvelgia ir jei nieko kito iš knygelės nepasiimtų skaitytojas, tai bent liktų su tlikėjų ir dėmesio vertų albumų sąrašu.

[Cleo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting concept, not fleshed out nearly enough

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it was going to be a commentary on drones, but it was a commentary on drone music