Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by Cyrus Bozorgmehr

Author:Cyrus Bozorgmehr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

PS 88

2015 dawned bright and full of promise. RZA was gearing up to direct his new film Coco, Cilvaringz was awaiting the birth of his second child, and I was still chuckling about having turned up to my daughter Zara’s birthday party pretending to be her long-lost Russian uncle Vladimir. Life was good, A Better Tomorrow was out, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin was living the high life at the Royal Mansour, and Paddle8 was setting all systems to go.

We had settled on a password-protected website to act as the album’s sale catalog. RZA and Alexander were drawing up personal introductions, interviews were being conducted to give some deeper insight to the concept, rare photos of the Clan from Jonathan Mannion’s archive were being collated, and Chris Norris, RZA’s coauthor on The Tao of Wu, was preparing a background article for the site.

With the site in the hands of the design team, attention swung to our one and only exhibition. Gabriel had prepared a list of galleries in New York that we could use as a venue for a listening session, and as we sat down to consider their virtues, a sense of unease began to pervade the sunshine.

Sweeping Statement No. 23,645: Commercial galleries are way too frigid to create genuine atmosphere around a listening session.

Galleries are rather clinical places. I suppose the logic of white walls and unprepossessing modernity is to limit the extent to which context can influence the perception of an artwork. Sure, you have all kinds of different aesthetics, from steampunk to brick, but there is no question that the overwhelming majority are set to a default shade of sensory deprivation. This might be the proven medium to exhibit canvas or sculpture, but it really wouldn’t work musically. It just felt—well, emotionless, as the frequencies bounced off the temporary plaster walls and wilted.

We expressed our limited enthusiasm to Gabriel. There was no doubt that the galleries he and the Paddle8 team had sourced were prestigious among the art community, and if it was good enough for Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst, then whether our untrained eyes saw the benefits or not, we would be exhibiting with major players. Yes … but no. What about a noncommercial gallery or, better still, a museum of contemporary art?

The problem was that the major public institutions that were sustained by grants and endowments had very clear remits. They were about the experience and appreciation of art, creating a social axis of beauty and ideas that was open to all and acted as a bulwark against the rising tide of monetization. In doing so, they had to maintain a strong separation of church and state, or in this case, commercial and public. The top institutions might be more than happy to exhibit our album, but not if it was identifiably part of a sale campaign. Major museums could not be seen to be co-opted into a PR role for a commercial venture.

On behalf of society, thank God. On behalf of us … damn their interminable red tape.

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