Transcript powerpoint slides

The Significance of New Music Practice in a Revised
Temporality of Class-Based Resistance
Yi Hong Sim
University of California, San Diego
Classically trained musicians are Othered.
2. Their Otherness serves capital.
3. Classically trained musicians, especially new music
entrepreneurs, participate in their own Othering.
4. How not to Other: coevalness instead of revolution
or newness  a revised Marxist class framework
1.
* The politics of time (the temporalities of different
political stances) matter in all of this.
Objects of discursive Othering:
 classical music
 the labor of performing classical music
 classical musicians
Temporal modes of Othering:




relic of the past
behind the times
in decline
timeless
“Classical music of days bygone is
beautiful, and like the myths of
antiquity that were familiar to the
educated elite of the patrician
class, that familiarity strokes our
egos, flatters our intellectual self
and sets
us apart,
but itthe
is not
“The popular answers
seized
upon…tell
story
this:
“I live
in
San
Francisco,
and
I'mlike
a composer,
and yet I
relevant
to
those
not
educated
in
Classical musicrarely
is no
relevant
to usSymphony
or to our because
“‘I longer
thinkto
there's
this
stereotype
that goesofalong
with
want
go
to
the
the old,
it
any
more
than
the
average
modern society.
… classical
And that is
because
classical
music
music.
It’s
elite.
It's
boring.
It'sin
stiff.
conservative,
elitist
programming.
… Even
SanAnd it's
Viennese
citizen
of the 18th
was written for and
by people
in another
time and place–
reserved
forsymphony
old people,’
says
hornist
Emily 80%
Wozniak,
Francisco,
the
audience
is probably
Elite
cared
about
“Hercules”
as
in a world whollycentury
unlike our
own.
… Symphonies
were
who's
artistic
director
and
founder of a studentCaucasians
age
50+about
on
any
night.”
much
asthe
hetherefore
cared
his given
written for aristocracy,
and
orchestras
represent
gossip
run orchestra
called Sound
based out of the
the bastion of an barber’s
oppressive
and (Amadeus).”
offensive
elitism.Exchange
…[a]
Eastman to
School
of Music.”
frivolous art form belonging
a vanished
class of elites.”
Nominated multiple times for the Nobel
Prize in Economics
“Human ingenuity has devised ways
to reduce the labor necessary to
produce an automobile, but no one
has yet succeeded in decreasing the
human effort expended at a live
performance of a 45 minute Schubert
quartet much below a total of three
man-hours.” (p. 164)
“…as William J. Baumol is fond of pointing out, a
half-hour quintet calls for the expenditure of 2½
man hours in its performance, and there can be
no increase in productivity when the musician’s
wage goes up.” (p. 155)
“When an organization reaches a certain stage in its
development, instead of developing
like a self-organizing
“…Peters’
managers must in their own ways be artists: They
string quartet, it becomes more like
an orchestra
must
mobilize whose
energies above contingencies to impose
disparate sections now need“The
a conductor.”
musicians
were
responsible
fororganization, employees,
resolutely their vision
onto their
In Sweden,
it isforth,
becoming
increasingly
to bring
organising
their
own
activity,
making
markets,
and
so
…like
maestros liftpopular
orchestras
abovein
conductors
to lecture
at leadership
them ‘entrepreneurs
and managers
of programs.
musicians’
individual
scores
and achieve
musical…ecstasy.”
Following a conductor is no more a precise science than
themselves’. …[T]he co-ordination and
following a business manager. …
acknowledgement of leadership comes
about spontaneously….
“This article
“Artful performance, the kind of performance
that qualitatively analyzes trust-control
relationships in a creative organization. I chose to study
we hear in an accomplished string quartet….
the Orpheus
orchestra, the world’s largest conductorless
Practice, practice, practice. This is the secret
of
chamber
orchestra, because it does not have a baton
artful performance in the performing arts,
and it is
holder, employs both trust and control and relies on the
no less the secret in the art of management.”
artistic input of its musicians.”
anthropology’s
“denial of coevalness”:
“a persistent and systematic
tendency to place the referent(s)
of anthropology in a Time other
than the present of the producer
of anthropological discourse”
(p. 31)
“[Orientalism] is, rather than expresses, a
certain will or intention to understand, in
some cases to control, manipulate, even to
incorporate, what is a manifestly different
(or alternative and novel) world; it is, above
all, a discourse that is…produced and exists
in an uneven exchange with various kinds of
power, shaped to a degree by the exchange
with power political…, power intellectual…,
power cultural…, power moral….” (p. 12)
“In our society women stand for the
side of life that seems to be outside
history—for personal relationships,
love and sex—so that these aspects
of life actually seem to become
‘women’s areas.’ But they are also, broadly speaking,
the arena of ‘mass culture.’ Much of mass culture
takes place, or is consumed, in the ‘feminine’
spheres of leisure, family or personal life, and the
home; and it also focuses on these as the subject
matter of its representations.” (p. 101)
economy
of the Other*
*concept and coinage by
Katie Simpson, [email protected]
Ph.D. student, Communication
UC San Diego
Spirit 1 (1600s-1910s):
Weber’s Protestant ethic,
industriousness, self-discipline
Spirit 2 (1930s-1960s):
the “managerial revolution,” efficiency,
rationality, long-term planning
Spirit 3 (1980s-present):
the “entrepreneurial revolution,”
innovation, networks, mobility, projects
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Innovation
Creativity
Flexibility
Mobility
“gig economy”
change
risk
revolution
“creative destruction”
disruption
music 
music 
music 
music 
music 
music 
music 
“Consider it this way: You really
can’t separate the act of playing
music, even very, very old music,
from entrepreneurship. Selfmotivating, inspiration from
within, producing, inventing,
creating. Whether you’re a
composer making a new work out
of stardust, or a pianist breathing
fresh life into a 350-year-old
masterpiece, you are exercising
entrepreneurial skills.”
“While at first glance, the artist and the
entrepreneur may seem worlds apart, in fact they
are remarkably similar. Artists, by definition, exude
curiosity about the world we live in and help us see
opportunities and ideas from a rare vantage point.
Through creativity, they find new ways to usher
beauty into the world and challenge popular
assumptions. And who is more collaborative than
members of a string quartet or a jazz trio or more
tenacious than a musician who has faced difficulty
or failure in the practice room or concert stage but
pushed through anyway, striving for the
unattainable? … What artists and entrepreneurs
share is the ability to address complexity and thrive
while playing in the messy, fertile space of
uncertainty, ambiguity and promise.”
As a founder of the trailblazing collective Bang on a Can, Mr. Lang
knows about variety, enterprise and gumption. That, as well as the
lofty imprimatur of his 2008 Pulitzer Prize, makes him an ideal
ambassador for a conventional institution seeking to engage with an
entrepreneurial new wave of composers and performers.
“What are opposed, in conflict, in fact, locked
in antagonistic struggle, are not the same
societies at different stages of development, but
different societies facing each other at the same
Time.” (p. 155)
Coevalness:
(1) recognizing different cultural fields as
exercising different temporalities, while
still acknowledging that they exist at
the same time, in the same present
(2) communicating between fields in a
“shared Time”
(Fabian, pp. 30-31)
“…‘now-being’ is a form of avant-garde experience.
… The avant-garde is that which, in the flash of
the dialectical image, disrupts the linear timeconsciousness of progress in such a way as to
enable us, like the child, to ‘discover the new anew’
and, along with it, the possibility of a better future.
… However, if the experience of the ‘truly new’ can
only be momentary, how is it to inform identity
and action, which are inscribed within the time of
narrative?” (pp. 149-150)
“We need a conceptual bridge back from now-time
to a new narrativity, such that its disjunctive power
might have a transformative effect on modes of
identification and action. Unless we can find one,
Benjamin’s ecstatic ‘now’ will remain a mere ‘timelag’ or ‘in-between’, without historical force.” (p.
156)
revised Marxist class framework (DRAFT)
capitalists
middle class…?
workers
unemployed
incarcerated
“under”employed
welfare recipients
CRITICAL CLASSES
(Marx’s dritte Personen)
artists
intellectuals
teachers
social workers
non-profit employees
nurses
public employees
librarians
freelancers
etc.
= multi-directional
constructions
of Otherness