Rowboat

Vito Acconci, City of Words, 2010, photograph, 42 x 29.7 cm, courtesy of Galerie de Multiples Alain Sechas, Cascades, 2010, pigment printing, 42 x 29.7 cm, courtesy of Galerie de Multiples

JEFF RIAN is a musician and an art critic. He would also be the best French guitarist, if not for the fact that he’s American. Jeff knows his Sonic Youth and he’s read the Frankfurt School philosophers. For these and other reasons, he’s perfectly aware of what is so painfully happening to music — that people no longer think of it as an art form at all. Music is by nature a collective process, and it’s having a hard time surviving in a world driven by individualism. First dematerialized by new technology, music is now considered merely an object in a system in which acquisition is the only allure. Music is…