The always busy Kim Gordon has been especially prolific since the breakup (or hiatus, depending on who you’re talking to) of Sonic Youth. Over the last year, she’s released a new record under the name Body/Head, a collaboration with musician Bill Nace; had a solo exhibition at the White Columns Gallery in New York; and even appeared on an episode of Lena Dunham’s HBO show “Girls.” It’s as if the dissolution of the group forced Gordon to peruse a multitude of projects she had been keeping on the shelf.
This week’s Performing Arts Pick is a collection of Gordon’s writing on art and music, published by Sternberg Press. “Is It My Body?: Selected Texts” reaches back to the earliest days of Gordon’s life as an artist, when she was still a student. Many of those pieces are about avant-garde music that was happening in New York in the early 1980s. Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, inspirations for Sonic Youth, get mentions, and the book includes remarkable essays on the nature of rock clubs and the fusion of experimental music and popular culture.
As the book progresses, the writings become consumed by visual art. An essay that begins by talking about the punk rock band Black Flag becomes focused on Raymond Pettibon, brother of Flag guitarist Greg Ginn who did all the early artwork for the group. These discursive essays, which mix forms and conflate ideas, resemble the writings of artist Dan Graham, an early mentor (his book “Rock/Music Writings” is indispensable).
The best pieces in the book (along with a Sonic Youth tour diary from 1987 titled “Boys are Smelly”) are a conversation with the artist Mike Kelley (Gordon recently performed as part of his major career retrospective at MoMA P.S.1, and Kelley’s art graced the cover of Sonic Youth’s album “Dirty”), where Gordon talks about the intersection of rock music and art; and a comprehensive interview with Jutta Koether from 2003. These pieces, collected in one volume, form the missing link in the career of an important artist.
