William Basinski

Disintegration Loop 1.1
William Basinski, 2001, video, 63m, USA
World Premiere: International Film Festival Rotterdam
Jan 2002 (1 special screening)

Disintegration Loop 1.1 consists of one static shot of
lower Manhattan billowing smoke during the last hour
of daylight on September 11th, 2001, set to the
decaying pastoral tape loop Basinski had recorded in
August, 2001. Shot from Basinski’s roof in
Williamsburg Brooklyn, this is an actual documentary
of how he and his neighbors witnessed the end of that
fateful day. It is a tragically beautiful cinema
verite elegy dedicated to those who perished in the
atrocities of September 11th, 2001.

Artist statement:

2o62
MUSIC & MEDIA LABORATORIES & UNKNOWN INDUSTRIES, INC.

The Disintegration Loops

In the process of archiving and digitizing analog tape
loops from work I had done in 1982, I discovered some
wonderful sweeping pastoral pieces I had forgotten
about. Beautiful, lush cinematic truly American
pastoral landscapes swept before my ears and eyes.
With excitement I began recording the first one to CD,
mixing a new piece with a subtle random arpeggiated
countermelody from the Voyetra. To my shock and
surprise, I soon realized that the tape loop itself
was disintegrating: as it played round and round, the
iron oxide particles were gradually turning to dust
and dropping into the tape machine, leaving bare
plastic spots on the tape, and silence in these
corresponding sections of the new recording. I had
heard about this happening, and frankly was very
afraid of this happening to me since so much of my
early work was precariously near the end of its shelf
life. Still, I had never actually seen it happen, yet
here it was happening. The music was dying. I was
recording the death of this sweeping melody. It was
very emotional for me, and mystical as well. Tied up
in these melodies were my youth, my paradise lost, the
American pastoral landscape, all dying gently,
gracefully, beautifully. Life and death were being
recorded here as a whole: death as simply a part of
life: a cosmic change, a transformation. When the
disintegration was complete, the body was simply a
little strip of clear plastic with a few clinging
chords, the music had turned to dust and was scattered
along the tape path in little piles and clumps. Yet
the essence and memory of the life and death of this
music had been saved: recorded to a new media,
remembered.

William Basinski, 8.28.01

Postscript:
On September 11th I was on my roof in Brooklyn, less
than 1 nautical mile from the World Trade Center, our
beacon, our compass: that which towered so far above
every other skyscraper in NYC, my nightlight. My
neighbors and I witnessed the end of the world as we
knew it that day. We saw those towering structures
collapse before our very eyes, on a crystal clear day
we saw the incomprehensible change of landscape: like
a volcano disappearing behind trees. We were
appalled. Despite the catastrophic fires, we had no
idea that these gigantic structures would
collapse…cascade below the lower Manhattan skyline.
But it happened. We were in shock. We sat on the
roof terrace in lawn chairs and watched the fires
burning all day into night with the Disintegration
Loops playing in the background. The human scale of
the catastrophe we couldn’t even comprehend at the
time. That would come next, in tears and agony. This
was the end of the world we all knew was coming sooner
or later, but had forgotten about…put in the back of
our minds. That evening I recorded on video the
static image of the lower Manhattan skyline billowing
smoke as the last hour of daylight turned to darkness.
This film is entitled Disintegration Loop 1.1 and is
dedicated to the memory of those who perished in the
atrocities of September 11th, 2001.

The Disintegration Loops will be released on CD in 4
parts in 2002.

118 N 11th Street 3rd floor Brooklyn, New York 11211
t. 718.599.1895 f. 718.387.3409 email:
billy2062@yahoo.com

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