Lauren Redhead

Talking Birds?

This post contains some musings prompted by similarities I noticed between Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven and Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel. Further thought on these similarities caused me to think about the roles of talking birds in art. As a quick way to get started I will outline some of the similarities and differences that can be observed via a quick survey of both works.

Similarities
Both the poem and the song have a talking bird (this one probably goes without saying, given the title of the post).
The rhythmic structure, kind of, but certainly the patterns of stresses, is/are similar. If you’re happy for half of a word to fall onto the next line you can sing The Raven to the tune of Solsbury Hill (although it should be noted that neither is improved by this).
Both works contain the overall idea of a major life change.
Both employ a simple verse form, with a repeated stanza or strophe at the end of each.
There is a significant change in the pattern of stresses at the end of each verse in both works.

Differences
Subject matter is an obvious difference: The Raven is about a young academic who goes slowly mad over lost love, whilst Solsbury Hill seems to be about receiving the inspiration to make a positive life change (it’s often claimed this is about Gabriel’s decision to leave Genesis).
Genre: poetry and song aren’t really the same thing.
The Raven is a lot longer than Solsbury Hill.
A raven and an eagle have quite different connotations.
The two works were written/recorded and published more than one hundred years apart and so are products of very different societies.

The last point under ‘differences’ is an important one for me: although many similarities can be identified, these could be said to be tropes in art which were perhaps understood by Peter Gabriel through his knowledge of The Raven and many other poems and songs which bridge the gap between the two works I am discussing; it’s not unlikely, therefore, that he might use them in his song as well. For this reason I think the link of the talking birds is the most interesting line of enquiry—the other tropes mentioned might be found in many other songs and poems but in the popular music of the late 1970s talking birds are not as prominent as they might be.

Whilst preparing to write the opera green angel I spent a lot of time investigating the various roles of bird imagery in art, and particularly Anglo-Saxon art. It can be said that Poe’s Raven and Gabriel’s Eagle carry the connotations of this tradition. But since they are also talking birds they also carry the connotations of the oracle. This means that they are instruments of the truth since oracles (either animals or statues) are considered as being incapable of lying since they are not sentient, reasoned beings in the same way that humans are (and thus they are a convenient way to get characters out of sticky corners in Greek/Roman drama and in opera: what they say can’t possibly be questioned). Although pushed to speak the truth, talking birds can still misbehave. In Christian and Greek mythology the Raven ends up black as a punishment for either being too slow to give a message or for being the carrier of bad news. The eagle, on the other hand, is a symbol of positivity, strength and truth.

Interestingly in both works the birds don’t give a real message: Poe’s academic projects his own interpretation onto the Raven’s only word (“nevermore”) while we never hear the full message of Gabriel’s Eagle except the final outcome (“Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.”) In both cases the link between the words of the bird and the eventual outcome is not a direct one: whereas an oracle would describe to the audience the events of the future (and usually gain the subject’s trust by first explaining the events of the past) here the birds function more as the impetus for change (from sanity to madness or form an undesirable life situation to freedom). There’s also a spiritual connection: the jangling guitar sound which links with folk song and its tradition of storytelling; the recourse to folk imagery by the placement of the first scene on the top of a hill; the use of the word “son” about a grown man; and the unlikelihood of an eagle being anywhere near Bath, all create the image of the character in Gabriel’s song being looked after by a higher power. On the other hand the suggestions that the raven has been sent either from God, from a previous master who suffered some sort of demise, or is the prophet of the man’s downfall also create the image of a higher power being behind the scene, albeit a malevolent one.

So what is the relevance of talking birds in art today? If oracles and talking animals speak the truth, and aesthetics, to some extent, seeks the truth in art, what does aesthetics have to say about talking birds? In order to fully answer this question then perhaps a more contemporary example of a talking bird than from 1977 is needed. However both talking birds seem to give the rather postmodern (for Poe, at least) message of ‘find your own truth’. In both cases the outcome for the protagonist seems to be that which was desired at the outset—as much as one could wish one’s own downfall as Poe’s character seems to do (but there is a long tradition of this in tales of courtly love). The extent to which the oracle has ever been a believable character in that they might be accepted to genuinely appear in everyday life in debateable, but their artistic tradition of sorting out the storyline and hastening the outcome seems unchanged. What can be concluded, perhaps, is that the relevance of talking bird in art—whilst their historical imagery might not be at the forefront of a present consciousness—is as it ever was. The social change between 1845 and the 1970s has not reduced the agency of the bird and both birds achieve the same agency as a classical oracle through more subtle delivery, possibly suggesting that the talking bird as a symbol has the effect of an oracle without the need for a lengthy explanation of the past and the future as found in Greek and Roman drama.

As a concluding statement I might then say that these artworks show that mythical figures, which might be considered less believable in the 19th and 20th centuries when compared with the past, are as useful and effective as symbols as they ever were.

Is Composition Research?

I have previously contributed thoughts on this topic at this blog, but a recent re-opening of the debate caused me to think again and to put down some more thoughts. I wish to be careful about what I say here, since it is not my intention to devalue the work that is done by anyone, but to look at the value system itself. This is, in fact, one of the core problems: debates relating to practice-as-research/ practice-led research often focus on which kinds of work are more or less valuable or which methodologies might generate better kinds of knowledges, thus causing rifts amongst a community of researchers who might be better off joining together to explain how practice-led research exemplifies the way that all kinds of research are valued is not as appropriate as it could be. This is the point that I have tried to explain here.

Writing is not resarch.
This is a frequent point made by both those who do and don’t value practice-led research. From those who don’t can be heard, “we shouldn’t value writing just anything, it’s the content that counts.”
And from those who do, “we don’t value just anything, it’s the content that counts, writing is just a medium.”
The second point of view contains an important addition which allows for the position that a written article or oral presentation is also performative. This is important to me because it shows that a performed nature is something that is shared by all research. So just as the act of writing is not research (even when creative and performative writing are considered) the act of composition is not research.

Composition is work, not research.
This is a point on which the debate over differences in methodology surfaces. It is clear that some practice-led research projects conflate the “looking things up in a book” everyday definition of research with the creating and applying new knowledge definition of research that Universities use. Thus many research projects can be viewed as merely re-arrangements of exisiting knowledge (and this doesn’t sound much like research). what is not often added to this argument is that the same problem exists in traditional musciological research: biographies of obscure composers, extracted at length from dusty archives, are surely subject to the same objections.

What does it mean to create new knowledge?
That is clearly an epistemological question and not a blog post paragraph. However the long standing argument that practice-led research creates different kinds of knowledge is an important one. The problem is that these kinds of knowledge are poorly defined - probably because the use of words to describe something extralinguistic is going to yield poor results. Really this throws into question what the nature of knowledge really is, and how and if it can be valued.

Is composition a commercial enterprise?
It does seem to be - which also undermines research contributions made by composers. The problem facing composers researching in universities is this: composition costs money. Performers, venues, people who record and document performances all have to be paid. And unlike in science disciplines where large budgets are available to provide necessary materials for research, music departments have no budget for this. However, all of these things and people are necessary since unless compositional research is performed, and preferably by internationally known performers who have little or no interest in research, in international venues in countries which don’t even recognise the contributions made by practice-led researchers, it is not valued highly. This research is valued on its commercial success.
It is interesting to note that while this seems not to be the case for traditional musicological written research, the recent debate around academic publishing has thrown this into question. All research is valued (publically) on its ability to make money for someone else. This commercial condition both devalues practice-led research and exemplifies how the process of valuing research devalues all kinds of research.

Is composition research?
It was a hard-won battle and an important recognition of work done that brought composition into the academy. Thus claiming that composition is not research can be seen as merely a technique of dividing researchers and distracting attention away from the fact that research might not be what the REF would have us all believe that it is.
Composition is research - the problem that I have with this statement is the word is: because this is not necessarily the case. I do not believe that anything might inherently be research. But to reject this statement is not to accept that composition cannot be research.
The more problematic question is to consider the following: research is (although not always) composition.
Considering what research might be, and how it might be valued outside of a commercial arena, the peer review process (which is inherently flawed), and arbitrary grading systems, will more readily give the answer as to which practice (and traditional) contributions are doing research: but this seems an elusive goal.

Don’t be a ‘hater’?

I wrote this from a burrito bar. This in itself is significant as until recently I wouldn’t have been able to sit on my own in a burrito bar and have a beer and a burrito without thinking I must be guilty of some heinous social failing, but so far no-one has turned up and called me a friendless croissant, or indeed any sort of croissant, so I’m safe.

This is relevant because my recently-found ability to sit in burrito bars on my own has also revealed space and time to think about things in a way that one doesn’t do when not sitting alone in a restaurant: winding-down, not really consequential, but exploratory sort of thoughts that there doesn’t seem to be time for elsewhere.

This particular burrito bar is Leeds’ best answer to fast food: not really corporate (they only have 5 restaurants in the north of England) and without excess fat, salt, sugar. All in all, it looks like good food despite having at times only tenuous connections with Mexico. As such this burrito bar plays a mixture of latinised pop songs and not-latinised pop songs. And two of the not-latinised pop songs played have contained the word ‘haters’.

What are ‘haters’? I don’t even need to see it written down to know that the word is probably more correctly spelled ‘h8rs’. A quick survey (google search): reveals this: haters are people who spoil the fun, who won’t go along with and support what you’re doing no matter what you’re doing. This message is masquerading under a theme of respect.

This is a disappointing theme which seems to recur in numerous aspects of life. It seems to me that all sorts of hate are going on around me all the time: mainly people who hate other people because of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, ability…and unfortunately are given too loud a voice or too high a platform with which to express this hate, under the banner of ‘religion’, ‘morality’, or something else equally dubiously conceived. It appears to me that the government really does hate the jobless, people with disabilities, women, people from other countries, and is seeking to demonise these people in order to support a group of very wealthy people who are making money at the expense of everyone else. It seems that the government hates these people because they might just have figured them out.

But: governments, bigots, they’re not the haters! The haters are those who are stepping in and spoiling the fun, and asking them to keep this hate to themselves. This is the subtext I hear in every interview with every government minister asked to justify another unpopular social policy, and every time I hear it questioned whether minority religious beliefs should be applied to everyone. “Don’t be a hater! Don’t spoil the fun!”

It’s a curious aspect of the current postmodern approach to politics and society that discourse has become about “you can believe whatever you want! No-one can take that from you! If you think it, that’s your truth!” and if anyone wants to dispute that, that’s their truth. Tell them not to be a hater!

Thus far from promoting a discourse of respect this word promotes the “rights” of the individual to do whatever she/he wants, without recourse to anyone who might disagree or question her/his position.

These are my burrito thoughts: I’d rather be a ‘hater’.

Relational Aesthetics

Nicholas Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’ were extremely influential in my PhD thesis. After thinking again today about these, and about explaining what relational aesthetics are to others, I decided to post a short summary here to share my thoughts. For those not familiar at all with Bourriaud, he comes from a tradition of twentieth century French thought about art and society and is primarily concerned with the state of art in the present. As such his thought stems from what can be known about contemporary art through an experience of it, and the ideas that are generated by it. When I first read Bourriaud’s work I was impressed by how intuitive it seemed to me in terms of how I also thought about art. A frequent criticism of Bourriaud’s work is that he makes generalisations about history. It is true that he often does this, however the reason for this criticism is that his detractors believe that his conclusions are based on a misunderstanding of art history. I believe the case to be quite the opposite: Bourriaud feels happy to generalise about art history since he treats it as an afterthought in a discourse about contemporary art. For me this is a very refreshing position.

If this blog post interests you and you want to find the book, the reference is as follows:
Bourriaud, Nicholas, Relational Aesthetics, trans. by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods (Dijon: les presses du réel, (1996) 2002).

Relational aesthetics considers the position of the listener or viewer of the work of art as paramount in its construction; they can be summed up in Bourriaud’s statement ‘relational aesthetics considers interhuman exchange as aesthetic in and of itself.’ Bourriaud uses this statement to summarise relational aesthetics in a later work:
Nicolas Bourriaud, Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprogrammes the World (Berlin: Lukas and Sternberg, 2005) (p. 3).
In my own research I have used the term ‘relational aesthetics’ to signify not only Bourriaud’s first theoretical work but the entire body of his writings. This is because I believe (and Bourriaud indicates in these later works) that his theoretical position does not change over the course of his writings but develops to take into account further developments in artworks, and to better explain them. For example, he briefly introduces the term semionaut in his first work, but it is not until almost ten years later that he goes into a larger amount of detail about the mechanics of creating art as a semionaut, and what this really means for the resultant artworks.

Bourriaud describes a relational art as, ‘an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space.’ (p14) From this statement there are therefore three elements to be given consideration in order to define what constitutes a relational artwork: the ‘theoretical horizon’ of the artwork; its consideration or inclusion of the ‘realm of human interactions’, and the ‘social context’ in which these take place. All three are important. The ‘theoretical horizon’ takes into account the conceptualisation of the work, meaning that artworks which are related to, despite this never necessarily being an intention of the artwork’s creator, are not themselves relational; this aspect of Bourriaud’s definition implies that what is important is the consideration of, rather than the absolute certainty of the creation of, relations. The ‘realm of human interactions’ is much more broad than to simply indicate a kind of art in which the viewer or listener is invited to take part, despite many of the examples cited by Bourriaud in Relational Aesthetics involving a participatory element as part of the work. Indeed, Bourriaud is opposed to such a narrow definition, writing that, ‘[relational approaches] do not stem from a “social” or “sociological” form of art. They are aimed at the formal space-time constructs that do not represent alienation, which do not extend the division of labour into forms.’ (p82) Consideration of the ‘realm of human interactions’ therefore invites the possibilities not only for a kind of taking-part on behalf of the viewer or listener but also the inclusion of modes of human relationships in the material of the artwork. For example, on artworks which might induce a certain emotion in viewer or listener, Bourriaud explains that, rather than the experience of the emotion by the perceiver, ‘what matters is what is done with this type of emotion: what [the emotions] are steered towards, how the artist organises them among themselves, and to what intent.’ (p64) Finally the ‘social context’ of this ‘realm of human interactions’ is considered important since it defines the relevance of these interactions; it is not sufficient that the possibility for relations be created as a constituent part of the artwork, but it is also necessary that these relations be meaningful and relevant to the work’s perceivers.

This definition focuses on the existence of the artwork as constituted in the experience of the creator and the viewer or receiver, rather than its constituent material parts, as its main quality. Thus Bourriaud, recognising the variable and transitive nature of such a group of interrelations, describes art as ‘like an opening to unlimited discussion,’ (p15) and further comments on the autonomy of such a work by saying, ‘contemporary art is definitely developing a political project when it endeavours to move into the relational realm by turning it into an issue.’ (p17) Bourriaud claims that, ‘present day art shows that form only exists in the encounter and in the dynamic relationship enjoyed by an artistic proposition with other formations, artistic or otherwise.’ (p21) This has been important in my research, both in terms of music I produce as a composer and in the way I analyse other works, since it is exactly these kinds of forms which I am interested in creating and also identifying.

In terms of an approach to art, this means that interactions become the most important starting place. Bourriaud writes, ‘[a]s part of a “relationist” theory of art, inter-subjectivity does not only represent the social setting for the reception of art, which is its “environment”, its “field” (Bourdieu), but also becomes the quintessence of artistic practice.’ (p22) This ‘quintessence’ of artistic practice is demonstrated by Bourriaud to exist first and foremost in works which invite participation (so, before the participation has occurred), and thus participation can be considered to be one of their relational properties. For example, Bourriaud’s reading of the work of Cuban artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres focusses not on a theme of gay activism which could be understood by the recurring theme of the depiction of events from Gonzalez-Torres’ home-life with his boyfriend but on the cohabiting relationship between the two partners; something which is shaped by them as individuals and not by their sexuality, and is entirely separate from the relationships created between the artist and the perceivers who might take his sweets or his posters away from a gallery. (pp49-52) In this description of Gonzalez-Torres’ work as relational, Bourriaud concludes that, ‘the idea of including the other is not just a theme. It turns out to be essential to the formal understanding of the work.’ (p52) Further to this, Bourriaud goes on to conclude that although elements of participation might alert one to the relational nature of an artwork, ‘[w]hat nowadays forms the foundation of artistic experience is the joint presence of beholders in front of the work, be this work effective or symbolic,’ (p57) indicating that the relationship with art need not be a participatory one at all.

I’m happy to share my reading of this work since I believe that Bourriaud’s writings are under-appreciated and under-considered, particularly in contemporary aesthetic thought, and they are almost absent in musical discourse. One reason for this might be that he draws extensively on examples from contemporary visual art which many readers might not be familiar with. I certainly wasn’t when I first read the books and had to look all of them up. But I’m glad that I took the time, as these writing have been so influential in the way that I think about music, art, and aesthetics, and also in the way that I express myself in my own work.

AAEFFNR

Below is AAEFFNR, a short electroacoustic fanfare I created for the firstsite Fanfares project at firstsite gallery in Colchester.

More information about that project can be found here.

AAEFFNR by laurenredhead

Programme note:

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