[After Hong-Kai Wang’s A Conceptual Biography of Chris Mann]

‘i mean am i Wrong to prefer your version of me?’ – Chris Mann
‘It begins with affections. It departs

from one’s desire to construct a biography

of an artist’s life or singularity in various modes

of cooperation with his friends & it ends

with encounters & exchanges with others

in tracing a much larger cultural space

that he is part of. The artist is my longtime mentor

& friend, the Melbourne-born composer Chris Mann’ – Hong-Kai Wang 
[Notes from a rearrange/r: this is a cento

from the expressions of Warren Burt,

Jim Denley, Eva Karczag, Rik Rue, John Shone,

Amanda Stewart & David Watson.

All references to Chris Mann have been: ______ ]
1949

‘Take a conceit, a title or a line: what you might call

social tics—heckling people loudly, public

manifestations, against the idea of documentation,

slang & everyday talk,  don’t follow word to—

it was either late 1973 or early 1974]
5 bottom lines: social, economic, environmental,

cultural & civic: ASIO had files on all [I thought

ASIO meant Australian Surrealist Intelligence

Organisation]. A now defunct theatre: The Pram

Factory, cardboard cut-out mannequin[s], the basis

for collaboration, love the fact it was free.

[A contract with the Victorian State Government—
Videotaping—someone should really record

this. I have mixed feelings about being

any kind of biographer, that’s a measure of time

we might abandon. We sit & chat, I have the video camera.
Cutting up tapes, the cutup culture

from the past, audio collage—it was Herbert

Brün: experimental music is not problem-solving

music, it’s a problem seeking processes

designed to embody failure. We did fail:

an unending stream of successes—
1994

I’ll send you a link to an article I [wrote]

on [Australian] experimental music history,

make decisions later, an archive, talking

in a very unedited way, ramble, ramble,

ramble—I don’t know what your question

was, but here’s your answer: 10 artists

meet with 5 property developers

& 5 trade unions in a little bar in Melbourne.
How can you bring normally competitive capitalist

interests together without a conversation

about ideology to pursue the common goods?
Video conferencing from different parts of the world.

[She] went to work at a delicatessen to support us.

Courageously creative & idiosyncratic, if not mad

that reputation of mine has continued.
Peacocks, huge tails, beautiful colours, outdoor

life. A time of heavy Marxism or pseudo Marxism,

a lot of friends who were Trotskyites in Australia,

at that time, we didn’t have a name.
I’m a dancer & for me, ______ dances,

the listening [is] bodily, response, words,

silences, empathy & the way ______ gives an impulse

or takes an impulse, a charged space, starting out on chairs.
1999

Who gives a fuck? You think I know what the words

are? Did ______ say “questions are portable, answers

are sedentary?” Did I say? 
[His] parents started the first commercially viable folk

music company in Australia in the 60s, before they started

the record label, his mother ran a business, created capital:

went around schools recording children speaking a poem

or singing, the professional reel voice recorder. Funny part

was no one had a reel to reel, buying a reel of child’s

voice they could never play, told you she was a good salesman.
A consciousness of speed & not tripping over yourself,

you make your own hole—I saw the application

the other day, going through old files: “What is the difference

between a rock [&] a stump?” Ethics was the subject

of the group ______‘s text was often like a grid:

a sequence of paragraphs, more like a tarot reading,

gonna get the same cards, just don’t know the sequence. 
Is it music? I‘m not even sure it’s a music group.
In sound work, things get flattened into the same space

wide junction of understanding, in the context

of what was referred as avant-garde music

at the time, free jazz voicing & improvisation,

that was the beginning, I don’t remember much more,

our friendship is not time-based, like a race caller.
2014

I don’t believe in avant-garde,

it was a period that existed & it’s been framed. 
______ stepped through the doorway yelling:

the meeting got underway. [In]1981, we started

the conversation about what we now call ‘internet’.
Little text duos, very fragile, sensitive, totally

unpredictable & unstable moments, strange,

halting, pausing logic between long conversations

on the phone a whole range of ethical issues

to do with language, of when the audience

is the medium, text & speech, speech & music]
We were not polite, we were searching—conversations

haven’t finished, like a functional/dysfunctional

family, just pick up the phone & talk

in the context of Machine for Making Sense.’