Taking the Temperature Crisis, Curating, and Musical Diversity
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Taking the Temperature Crisis, Curating, and Musical Diversity Expanded Second Edition Edited by Brandon Farnsworth, Anna Jakobsson, Vanessa Massera OnCurating.org Zurich Taking the Temperature Expanded Second Edition OnCurating.org Zurich Published by OnCurating.org OnCurating.org Pfingstweidstrasse 96 8005 Zürich, Switzerland www.on-curating.org This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA 2 3 21 22 23 See inside back cover of publication for printing location and partner. ISBN: 9798711770350 The excerpt on page 202 is courtesy of The Pauline Oliveros Trust and PoPandMoM.org The excerpt on page 204 originally appeared in NewMusicBox, the web magazine from New Music USA and is reprinted with permission. Taking the Temperature: Crisis, Curating, and Musical Diversity Edited by: Brandon Farnsworth, Anna Jakobsson, Vanessa Massera Cover, layout, design: www.asiapietrzyk.com Proofreading by: David Selden Transcriptions by: Kajsa Antonsson, Brandon Farnsworth, Anna Jakobsson, Vanessa Massera, Lexi Mendoza, Ragnhei∂ur Ragnars Produced as part of the Discussing Diversity exchange project supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie du Québec. Project steering group: Brandon Farnsworth, Vanessa Massera, Anna Jakobsson, Thorbjørn Tønder Hansen, Sandeep Bhagwati, Aida Aoun Special thanks goes to Torunn Forland, Konstmusiksystrar and to the Zurich University of the Arts for their support. This publication is supported by Nordic Council of Ministers Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie du Québec Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival Société de musique contemporaine du Quebec 1. Front matter 2. Introduction to the Second Edition 3. Introduction to the First Edition FESTIVALS 4. Thorbjørn Tønder Hansen (Ultima Festival) + FOLLOWUP 20 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth 5. Tanja Orning (Norwegian Academy of Music) 30 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth 6. Astrid Kvalbein (Norwegian Academy of Music) 40 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth 7. Jennifer Torrence (Norwegian Academy of Music) 48 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth 8. Sandeep Bhagwati (Concordia University Montreal) 54 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth 9. Alain Mongeau (MUTEK) 60 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth 10. Peter Meanwell and Tine Rude (Borealis – a festival for experimental music) 68 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth 11. Merja Hottinen (Music Finland) 74 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth 12. Anne Margvardsen and Anna Berit Asp Christensen (SPOR Festival) 82 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth NETWORKS 13. Collective Interview with Ung Nordisk Musik + FOLLOWUP 92 by Kajsa Antonsson 14. Marta Forsberg and Adele Kosman (Konstmusiksystrar) + FOLLOWUP 108 interviewed by Anna Jakobson 15. Pauline Hogstrand (Damkapellet) 116 interviewed by Anna Jakobsson 16. Marcela Lucatelli (SKLASH+) 122 interviewed by Anna Jakobsson 17. Anna Xambó (WoNoMute) 130 interviewed by Anna Jakobsson 18. Siri Haugen Holden (Balensekunst) 136 interviewed by Vanessa Massera 19. Terri Hron (Canadian New Music Network) 144 interviewed by Anna Jakobsson INSTITUTIONS 20. Dena Davida (independent curator, Montreal) 152 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth 21. Barbara Scales (Latitude 45, Canadian Music Centre) 162 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth & Vanessa Massera 22. Gabriel Dharmoo (artist, Montreal) + FOLLOWUP 168 interviewed by Vanessa Massera 23. Anne Hilde Neset (Kunstnernes Hus) 178 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth 24. Bjørnar Habbestad (NyMusikk) 186 interviewed by Brandon Farnsworth 25. Fredrik Andersson (Konserthuset Stockholm) 194 interviewed by Anna Jakobsson 26. Intervention by Jennifer Torrence 200 27. Kasper Holten (Det Kongelige Teater) 206 interviewed by Anna Jakobsson 28. Helena Wessman (Royal College of Music, Stockholm) 212 interviewed by Anna Jakobsson 29. Juliana Hodkinson (composer) 218 interviewed by Anna Jakobsson 30. Myriam Boucher (Canadian Electroacoustic Community, Codes d’Accès) + FOLLOWUP 224 interviewed by Vanessa Massera This book was produced in accordance with all measures by national governments to impede the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19. It was produced using the following platforms: Zoom, Box.com, Microsoft Word, Facebook Messenger, Google Docs, Skype, e-mail, telephone calls, Amazon KDP, WordPress and Telegram. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION Brandon Farnsworth, Anna Jakobsson, Vanessa Massera We’re still here We write this introduction just short of one year since the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the cancellation of most live arts festivals and the closure of cultural institutions. It is also the second book we have made together as a team under lockdown. Though updating is always easier than starting something new, we also noticed how our research, Zoom meetings and editing process had developed into a certain rhythm and sense of normality. Traditionally, the festival format has been used to mark the passage of time, such as through feasts (or fests) celebrating the high holidays, or more recently through the yearly circuit of European music festivals spaced out throughout the calendar year (‘are you also coming to Darmstadt?’). Soon will come a period where, for the second time, it is impossible to gather together and mark this passage together as musical communities. This is significant because the repetition of this state of exception is antithetical to the concept of the festival itself. Festivals are always singular, unique experiences, promising continuity but also revitalization and novelty. In 2020 that novelty came from the morbid thrill of seeing established festivals make extraordinary decisions to cancel or alter their events and watching years of work evaporate without a trace. A second year of cancellation transgresses this novelty, transporting us back to the realm of normality, albeit a new and unfamiliar one. As these new patterns continue to inculcate themselves into our lives, what we left behind quickly fades in the rear-view mirror, becoming ever more difficult to ‘return to.’ Instead, attention has to be paid to where culture is happening now and cultural institutions need to support the artists and communities creating and consuming it. Just because concert halls are closed does not mean that culture has stopped, it has simply moved to occupy different spaces and taken on new, maybe yet-unrecognizable forms. Live events are guaranteed to return in time, as their ancient track record can attest, but it would be a mistake to confuse our nostalgia and sense of loss for the last world with aversion to the new one. As Adele Kosman from Konstmusiksystrar says in her follow- up interview, livestreaming concerts is simply uninteresting for many people, especially compared to the rich multitude of artistic practices developed specifically for online formats. In other words, the very modernist idea of wanting to bring ‘the concert hall into the comfort of your own home’ with as much fidelity as possible seems more to harken back to an era of technological progress and perfect digital representation than to forecast a new one. Whilst there is a need to spend time mourning ways of life now gone in order to understand what has changed and how we can persist, instead of imagining we are on hold and need to make due with ersatz digital concert halls, the structures themselves have to be redefined. We should concentrate on developing new forms of response-ability towards this newly emerging world, using this caesura as an opportunity for reflecting upon, reconsidering and reorganizing our working methods, programming practices and habituated ways of thinking. Speaking to this, artist Gabriel Dharmoo’s text observes that as the pandemic has worn on, artists’ willingness to produce and stay busy at any cost have begun to wane. As they come to appreciate slower ways of working, artists have also found an unexpected fissure in institutions reliant on their overproduction, opening doors to new forms both of creating and of resisting. For their part, many institutions have themselves rediscovered the advantages of response-ability and flexibility to reconfigure themselves to serve the shifting needs of artists and audiences. For instance, when transitioning nyMusikk’s OnlyConnect festival to an online-only format, as so many others in 2020 had to do, artistic director Bjørnar Habbestad discussed and developed concepts together with artists for how their ideas (not necessarily their concerts) could be translated into an online format. Because it prioritizes creating musical experiences over arranging concerts, nyMusikk saw an online- only festival as just yet another continuation of its existing activities and ways of working. At MUTEK in Montreal, the festival has been focusing on interrogating its aesthetic and social responsibilities to its audiences, rather than prescribing these in advance. This model has allowed the festival and its programming to grow and evolve, embracing change and diversification as necessary to staying relevant, rather than asking how an audience can be developed for a fixed set of artistic practices. Six months ago, we closed our first introduction to this book with what was then a cheeky call for art music to seize on this moment to finally sever its toxic relationship with a white, European bourgeois