The Contemporary Avant-Garde: Classification, Organization, Spatiality and Practices of Resistance

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

The Contemporary Avant-Garde: Classification, Organization, Spatiality and Practices of Resistance The Contemporary Avant-garde: Classification, Organization, Spatiality and Practices of Resistance Matthew John Spokes Doctor of Philosophy University of York Sociology September 2014 1 2 Abstract The intention of the thesis is to explore and make visible the sociological importance of contemporary avant-garde music by investigating the ways in which associated cultures are constituted through the interplay between technologically mediated forms of dialogue and destabilizing practices. Through the case study of hauntology, the present work explores the interrelationship between different participant groups (building on, and problematizing, aspects of Becker's Art Worlds) and how they negotiate and collaborate with one another. Methodologically-speaking, the thesis adopts multiple approaches to data collection and analysis in an effort to develop a series of conceptual research tools predicated on the partial connections and assemblages observed during field work. The research is participant-focused, dealing primarily with the ways in which these groups engage in meaning-making activities within their own interpretive frameworks. The empirical focus of the thesis is fourfold. In the first instance, this involves detailing classificatory work on genre and boundary formation as enacted by participants through differing forms of dialogue in a variety of virtual locations. Secondly, an assessment of the organizational structures developed by artists (such as the record label) and audience members (the archive) is undertaken, in an effort to understand how information is collated and stored and how the development of a mediated 'aesthetic', or metadiscourse, is facilitated by these systems. Thirdly, co- operation between social actors is examined in relation to spatial associations and participant-led acts of destabilization (read through the work of Lefebvre). Fourthly, practices of micro and macro-level resistance - including direct political activities, techniques of composition, intertextuality and engagement with cultural theory - are considered in relation to the other empirical foci. 3 4 Table of Contents The Contemporary Avant-garde: Classification, Organization, Spatiality and Practices of Resistance ................................................................................................................................ 1 Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 3 Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... 5 Illustration list (inc. video materials) ....................................................................................... 9 Accompanying material ........................................................................................................... 9 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 11 Author’s declaration .............................................................................................................. 13 Chapter 1 - Towards an exploration of the contemporary avant-garde ............................. 15 1.1 The sociological importance of the avant-garde ....................................................... 15 1.2 Hauntology - a case study .......................................................................................... 21 1.2.1 The validity of hauntology as a case study ............................................................ 23 1.3 Two hauntological records ......................................................................................... 25 1.3.1 Classification and organization .............................................................................. 30 1.4 Two hauntological performances .............................................................................. 32 1.4.1 Spatiality ................................................................................................................ 37 1.5 The avant-garde and practices of resistance ............................................................. 38 1.6 Empirical questions .................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 2 - Literature Review ............................................................................................... 45 2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 45 2.2 Understanding the classification and categorization of music cultures .................... 48 2.3 Understanding the organization of music cultures .................................................... 53 2.4 The historical avant-garde: definitions and challenges ............................................. 62 2.4.1 Definitions .............................................................................................................. 63 2.4.2 Challenges .............................................................................................................. 65 2.5 The contemporary avant-garde ................................................................................. 67 2.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 73 Chapter 3 - Methodology ...................................................................................................... 77 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 77 3.2 Ontology and research ............................................................................................... 79 3.2.1 Bourdieu, the ‘field’ and the avant-garde .............................................................. 80 3.2.2 Becker and ‘art worlds’ .......................................................................................... 84 3.3 Identifying features: people, places, artefacts and activities .................................... 86 3.4 Epistemological approaches ...................................................................................... 90 3.5 Data collection ........................................................................................................... 93 5 3.6 Data analysis ............................................................................................................ 102 3.7 Ethics and informed consent ................................................................................... 106 3.8 Summary .................................................................................................................. 107 Chapter 4 - Classification and Categorization..................................................................... 109 4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 109 4.2 Genre and classification ........................................................................................... 112 4.3 Boundaries and classificatory practices ................................................................... 117 4.4 Direct dialogue - message boards threads ............................................................... 118 4.4.1 The Whitechapel message board ......................................................................... 120 4.4.2 The Dissensus message board .............................................................................. 126 4.5 Indirect dialogue - Last.FM ...................................................................................... 133 4.6 How is hauntology classified? .................................................................................. 143 Chapter 5 - Organization ..................................................................................................... 149 5.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 149 5.2 Artist-led organization ............................................................................................ 153 5.2.1 A hauntological network: Ghost Box Records ...................................................... 155 5.2.2 A hauntological network - Interviews .................................................................. 162 5.3 Audience-led organization ...................................................................................... 169 5.3.1 The hauntological archive - found0bjects ............................................................ 172 5.3.2 The hauntological archive - Interview .................................................................. 182 5.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 187 Chapter 6 - Spatiality ........................................................................................................... 191 6.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 191 6.2 The development of space in music cultures .......................................................... 194 6.3 The production of space .......................................................................................... 198 6.4 A case study - Netaudio 2011 .................................................................................
Recommended publications
  • Cancel Culture: Posthuman Hauntologies in Digital Rhetoric and the Latent Values of Virtual Community Networks
    CANCEL CULTURE: POSTHUMAN HAUNTOLOGIES IN DIGITAL RHETORIC AND THE LATENT VALUES OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITY NETWORKS By Austin Michael Hooks Heather Palmer Rik Hunter Associate Professor of English Associate Professor of English (Chair) (Committee Member) Matthew Guy Associate Professor of English (Committee Member) CANCEL CULTURE: POSTHUMAN HAUNTOLOGIES IN DIGITAL RHETORIC AND THE LATENT VALUES OF VIRTUAL COMMUNITY NETWORKS By Austin Michael Hooks A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of Master of English The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Chattanooga, Tennessee August 2020 ii Copyright © 2020 By Austin Michael Hooks All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT This study explores how modern epideictic practices enact latent community values by analyzing modern call-out culture, a form of public shaming that aims to hold individuals responsible for perceived politically incorrect behavior via social media, and cancel culture, a boycott of such behavior and a variant of call-out culture. As a result, this thesis is mainly concerned with the capacity of words, iterated within the archive of social media, to haunt us— both culturally and informatically. Through hauntology, this study hopes to understand a modern discourse community that is bound by an epideictic framework that specializes in the deconstruction of the individual’s ethos via the constant demonization and incitement of past, current, and possible social media expressions. The primary goal of this study is to understand how these practices function within a capitalistic framework and mirror the performativity of capital by reducing affective human interactions to that of a transaction.
    [Show full text]
  • L'hantologie Résiduelle, L'hantologie Brute, L'hantologie Traumatique*
    Playlist Society Un dossier d’Ulrich et de Benjamin Fogel V3.00 – Octobre 2013 L’hantologie Trouver dans notre présent les traces du passé pour mieux comprendre notre futur Sommaire #1 : Une introduction à l’hantologie #2 : L’hantologie brute #3 : L’hantologie résiduelle #4 : L’hantologie traumatique #5 : Portrait de l’artiste hantologique : James Leyland Kirby #6 : Une ouverture (John Foxx et Public Service Broadcasting) L’hantologie - Page | 1 - Playlist Society #1 : Une introduction à l’hantologie Par Ulrich abord en 2005, puis essentiellement en 2006, l’hantologie a fait son D’ apparition en tant que courant artistique avec un impact particulièrement marqué au niveau de la sphère musicale. Évoquée pour la première fois par le blogueur K-Punk, puis reprit par Simon Reynolds après que l’idée ait été relancée par Mike Powell, l’hantologie s’est imposée comme le meilleur terme pour définir cette nouvelle forme de musique qui émergeait en Angleterre et aux Etats-Unis. A l’époque, cette nouvelle forme, dont on avait encore du mal à cerner les contours, tirait son existence des liens qu’on pouvait tisser entre les univers de trois artistes : Julian House (The Focus Group / fondateur du label Ghost Box), The Caretaker et Ariel Pink. C’est en réfléchissant sur les dénominateurs communs, et avec l’aide notamment de Adam Harper et Ken Hollings, qu’ont commencé à se structurer les réflexions sur le thème. Au départ, il s’agissait juste de chansons qui déclenchaient des sentiments similaires. De la nostalgie qu’on arrive pas bien à identifier, l’impression étrange d’entendre une musique d’un autre monde nous parler à travers le tube cathodique, la perception bizarre d’être transporté à la fois dans un passé révolu et dans un futur qui n’est pas le nôtre, voilà les similitudes qu’on pouvait identifier au sein des morceaux des trois artistes précités.
    [Show full text]
  • The Idea of Mimesis: Semblance, Play, and Critique in the Works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W
    DePaul University Via Sapientiae College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 8-2012 The idea of mimesis: Semblance, play, and critique in the works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno Joseph Weiss DePaul University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd Recommended Citation Weiss, Joseph, "The idea of mimesis: Semblance, play, and critique in the works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno" (2012). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 125. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/125 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Idea of Mimesis: Semblance, Play, and Critique in the Works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy October, 2011 By Joseph Weiss Department of Philosophy College of Liberal Arts and Sciences DePaul University Chicago, Illinois 2 ABSTRACT Joseph Weiss Title: The Idea of Mimesis: Semblance, Play and Critique in the Works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno Critical Theory demands that its forms of critique express resistance to the socially necessary illusions of a given historical period. Yet theorists have seldom discussed just how much it is the case that, for Walter Benjamin and Theodor W.
    [Show full text]
  • RE-ANIMATING GHOSTS MATERIALITY and MEMORY in HAUNTOLOGICAL APPROPRIATION Abstract
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FILM AND MEDIA ARTS (2019) Vol. 4, Nº. 2 pp. 24-37 © 2019 BY-NC-ND ijfma.ulusofona.pt DOI: 10.24140/ijfma.v4.n2.02 RE-ANIMATING GHOSTS MATERIALITY AND MEMORY IN HAUNTOLOGICAL APPROPRIATION Abstract This research examines the spectrality of an- MICHAEL PETER SCHOFIELD imation and other media based on the photo- graphic trace. Using diverse examples from pop- ular culture and the author’s own investigative practice in media art, this paper looks at how ar- chival media is re-used and can be brought back to life in new moving image works, in a gesture we might call hauntological appropriation. While sampling and re-using old materials is nothing new, over the last 15 years we have seen an ongoing tendency to foreground the ghostly qualities of vintage recordings and found foot- age, and a recurrent fetishisation and simula- tion of obsolete technologies. Here we examine the philosophies and productions behind this hauntological turn and why the materiality of still and moving image media has become such a focus. We ask how that materiality effects the machines that remember for us, and how we re- use these analogue memories in digital cultures. Due to the multimodal nature of the author’s creative practice, photography, video art, doc- umentary film and animation, are interrogated here theoretically. Re-animating the ghosts of old media can reveal ontological differences between these forms, and a ghostly synergy be- tween the animated and the photographic. Keywords: hauntology, animation, memory, media * University of Leeds, United Kingdom archaeology, appropriation, ontology, animated [email protected] documentary 24 RE-ANIMATING GHOSTS MICHAEL PETER SCHOFIELD Every culture has its phantoms and the spectral- how we can foreground their specific materiality, and the ity that is conditioned by its technology (Derrida, haunting associations with personal and cultural memory Amelunxen, Wetzel, Richter, & Fort, 2010, p.
    [Show full text]
  • Epilogue 231
    UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Noise resonance Technological sound reproduction and the logic of filtering Kromhout, M.J. Publication date 2017 Document Version Other version License Other Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Kromhout, M. J. (2017). Noise resonance: Technological sound reproduction and the logic of filtering. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:30 Sep 2021 NOISE RESONANCE | EPILOGUE 231 Epilogue: Listening for the event | on the possibility of an ‘other music’ 6.1 Locating the ‘other music’ Throughout this thesis, I wrote about phonographs and gramophones, magnetic tape recording and analogue-to-digital converters, dual-ended noise reduction and dither, sine waves and Dirac impulses; in short, about chains of recording technologies that affect the sound of their output with each irrepresentable technological filtering operation.
    [Show full text]
  • The Focus Group and Belbury Poly by Mark Fisher
    Nostalgia for Modernism: The Focus Group and Belbury Poly ‘Myself and my friend Jim Jupp had been making music, independently and together for a while, and also obsessing over the same things – the cosmic horror of Machen, Lovecraft, the Radiophonic Workshop, weird folk and the occult. We realised that we wanted to put our music out, but also create our own world where we could play with all these reference points. Starting our own label was the only way to do it.’ Julian House is describing how he and his school-friend Jim Jupp came to found the Ghost Box label. Off-kilter bucolic, drenched in an over-exposed post-psyche-delic sun, Ghost Box recordings are uneasy listening to the letter. If nostalgia famously means ‘homesickness’, then Ghost Box sound is about unhomesickness, about the uncanny spectres entering the domestic environment through the cathode ray tube. At one level, the Ghost Box is television itself; or a television that has disappeared, itself become a ghost, a conduit to the Other Side, now only remembered by those of a certain age. No doubt there comes a point when every generation starts pining for the artefacts of its childhood – but was there something special about the TV of the 1970s which Ghost Box releases obsessively reference? ‘I think there definitely was something powerful about the children’s TV from that period,’ House maintains. ‘I think it was just after the 60s, these musicians and animators, film makers had come through the psychedelic thing and acid folk, they had these strange dark obsessions that they put into their TV programmes.
    [Show full text]
  • S Y M P a T H Y F O R T H E D E V
    SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL WORDS MATT MUELLER J U N K I E . SATANIST. MURDERER. MUSIC PRODUCER JOE MEEK WAS N E V E R G O I N G TO BE THE KIND of boy you’d TAKE HOME TO MEET MOTHER. S O W H Y I S A N E W FIL M T R Y I N G TO RESURRECT HI S R A D D L E D REPUTATION? . MUSIC SPECIAL . MUSIC SPECIAL . ON FEBRUARY 3RD 1967, eight years to the day after Buddy Holly’s time) to get back together for the play’s West End opening night. “I AT FIRST HATED by the music establishment for his unorthodox sound out from other band members, Heinz did what he had to do. I’ve made death, music producer Joe Meek’s body was wheeled on a gurney think pretty much everyone who’s in the film who’s alive I’ve met or and style, Meek came to be grudgingly admired. He wasn’t interested my decisions from my research and I’ve stuck them in the film.” out of his rented London studio at 304 Holloway Road. The corpse spoken to at some point,” he says. in returning the favour. Phil Spector once called to tell him how much of Violet Shenton followed. Meek had beckoned his long-suffering In an industry rife with self-immolating screwballs, Meek’s sorry he loved his music – Meek shouted down the phone that Spector had HEAVILY INTO THE occult, Meek held séances to communicate with landlady (who used to bang on the ceiling with a broom and had no tale still has few competitors in the tragicomic stakes.
    [Show full text]
  • This Week's Essential Reading
    10 Friday, December 3, 2010 www.thenational.ae The N!tion!l thereview The N!tion!l thereview Friday, December 3, 2010 www.thenational.ae 11 this week’s essential reading ‘From Rising Skirt Lengths to the If ‘mood polarity’ is negative, then markets falter. Horror movies are popular, people buy Collapse of World Powers’ by Michelle drab cars and governments favour protectionist policies. That’s socionomics, so-called } music { Baddeley, Times Higher Education playlist " From Halim El-Dabh to the theremin – a look back into early incarnations of synthesised sound Resonant freq uencies Halim El-Dabh Crossing into the Electric Magnetic Without Fear (2000) The Egyptian composer’s electronic experiments include A new book details the history of the ess, whether that be a composer recordings from the Columbia- writing down notes or a musi- Princeton Electronic Music BBC Radiophonic Workshop and its cian playing them. Few people hear a soaring string quartet and Studios in the 1950s, and boundary-breaking adventures in attribute its power merely to a material made in a Cairo radio maestro’s fleeting moods, or the station 1944, which may be the electronic music, writes Andy Battaglia wood and steel of a violin. But first treated music in history. even fewer of us can hear a work El-Dabh’s curiosity has led him For all the ways they can sound The broadcast in question was an of electronic music and even try along many low-tech paths, too. strange now, it’s hard to imagine experimental spoken-word show to guess at its origins – at its real how alien the earliest electronic called Private Dreams and Public causes and effects.
    [Show full text]
  • Songs in the Key of Z: the Curious Universe of Outsider Music Free
    FREE SONGS IN THE KEY OF Z: THE CURIOUS UNIVERSE OF OUTSIDER MUSIC PDF Irwin Chusid | 272 pages | 01 Apr 2000 | A Cappella Books | 9781556523724 | English | Los Angeles, CA, United States Songs in the Key of Z | Chicago Review Press If VH1's Behind the Music were as interesting as Chusid's first, and reportedly last, book, this reviewer would never leave his apartment. A record producer, music historian, and host of WFMU's Irwin Chusid. Outsider musicians can be the product of damaged DNA, alien abduction, drug fry, demonic possession, or simply sheer obliviousness. This book profiles dozens of outsider musicians, both prominent and obscure—figures such as The Shaggs, Syd Barrett, Tiny Tim, Jandek, Captain Beefheart, Daniel Johnston, Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music Partch, and The Legendary Stardust Cowboy—and presents their strange life stories along with photographs, interviews, cartoons, and discographies. About the only things these self-taught artists have in common are an utter lack of conventional tunefulness and an overabundance of earnestness and passion. But, believe it or not, they're worth listening to, often outmatching all contenders for inventiveness and originality. A CD featuring songs by artists profiled in the book is also available. Syd Barrett 21 Snapshots in Sound. The Shaggs 12 Eilert Pilarm. "Songs in the Key of Z" by Irwin Chusid | The Curious Universe of Outsider Music Presidents' Day. Veterans Day. Shopping Cart Checkout. Follow Us. Audio Downloads. Activity Kit. Songs in the Key of Z. Overview Reviews Author Biography Overview Outsider musicians can be the product Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music damaged DNA, alien abduction, drug fry, demonic possession, or simply sheer obliviousness.
    [Show full text]
  • Visual Metaphors on Album Covers: an Analysis Into Graphic Design's
    Visual Metaphors on Album Covers: An Analysis into Graphic Design’s Effectiveness at Conveying Music Genres by Vivian Le A THESIS submitted to Oregon State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Honors Baccalaureate of Science in Accounting and Business Information Systems (Honors Scholar) Presented May 29, 2020 Commencement June 2020 AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Vivian Le for the degree of Honors Baccalaureate of Science in Accounting and Business Information Systems presented on May 29, 2020. Title: Visual Metaphors on Album Covers: An Analysis into Graphic Design’s Effectiveness at Conveying Music Genres. Abstract approved:_____________________________________________________ Ryann Reynolds-McIlnay The rise of digital streaming has largely impacted the way the average listener consumes music. Consequentially, while the role of album art has evolved to meet the changes in music technology, it is hard to measure the effect of digital streaming on modern album art. This research seeks to determine whether or not graphic design still plays a role in marketing information about the music, such as its genre, to the consumer. It does so through two studies: 1. A computer visual analysis that measures color dominance of an image, and 2. A mixed-design lab experiment with volunteer participants who attempt to assess the genre of a given album. Findings from the first study show that color scheme models created from album samples cannot be used to predict the genre of an album. Further findings from the second theory show that consumers pay a significant amount of attention to album covers, enough to be able to correctly assess the genre of an album most of the time.
    [Show full text]
  • Hauntology and Its Supplements: the Role of the ‘Spectre’ in Pole, Four⁶ and Metatechnic
    Hauntology and Its Supplements: The Role of the ‘Spectre’ in Pole, Four⁶ and Metatechnic. …a ghost never dies, it remains always to come and to come-back. (Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx)1 ‘What’s in a word?,’ we may ask ourselves. What indeed, especially when words have a nasty habit of evolving, mutating, getting lost or diverted, slipping through our fingers, or should that be ‘our minds’? But a certain evolutionary quality, in that how we understand and use words changes according to their contexts, times and users, does allow for an even greater multitude of interpretations than might otherwise be the case (it’s hard to think of many words whose meanings have never evolved), and also throws questions of authors, origins, and centres nicely into doubt. In fact, it allows for the permanent deferment of the arrival of a fully stable meaning or use, thereby allowing our hermeneutic faculties full play. Thus, meaning is deferred: our word plays through contexts of difference, differences that can be read, but not always heard, written but not effectively spoken—our word is caught up in a net of différance, one of Derrida’s key concepts. As Wortham notes: ‘différance is a famous neologism coined by Derrida to establish the limits of phonocentrism. Différance combines and develops a sense of differing and deferral implied by the French word ‘différence.’2 Wortham goes on to suggest that ‘Derrida frequently includes différance in an unmasterable chain or untitleable series that also includes the trace, the supplement, the remainder, writing, dissemination, pharmakon, cinder and so on.’3 Thus, although one of différance’s key attributes is what might be loosely termed its speech-curtailing properties, it is its capacity for an implied deferral that is of most relevance here.
    [Show full text]
  • The Singing Guitar
    August 2011 | No. 112 Your FREE Guide to the NYC Jazz Scene nycjazzrecord.com Mike Stern The Singing Guitar Billy Martin • JD Allen • SoLyd Records • Event Calendar Part of what has kept jazz vital over the past several decades despite its commercial decline is the constant influx of new talent and ideas. Jazz is one of the last renewable resources the country and the world has left. Each graduating class of New York@Night musicians, each child who attends an outdoor festival (what’s cuter than a toddler 4 gyrating to “Giant Steps”?), each parent who plays an album for their progeny is Interview: Billy Martin another bulwark against the prematurely-declared demise of jazz. And each generation molds the music to their own image, making it far more than just a 6 by Anders Griffen dusty museum piece. Artist Feature: JD Allen Our features this month are just three examples of dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals who have contributed a swatch to the ever-expanding quilt of jazz. by Martin Longley 7 Guitarist Mike Stern (On The Cover) has fused the innovations of his heroes Miles On The Cover: Mike Stern Davis and Jimi Hendrix. He plays at his home away from home 55Bar several by Laurel Gross times this month. Drummer Billy Martin (Interview) is best known as one-third of 9 Medeski Martin and Wood, themselves a fusion of many styles, but has also Encore: Lest We Forget: worked with many different artists and advanced the language of modern 10 percussion. He will be at the Whitney Museum four times this month as part of Dickie Landry Ray Bryant different groups, including MMW.
    [Show full text]