Lauren Redhead

Mistakes that Women Make

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:46:42 +0000

A number of observations over the last month or so have inspired these thoughts. They have come from various areas of my life and are probably particularly at the forefront of my mind since I am working on a project which looks at how gendered differences are manifest in musical institutions.

In very many places—blogs, magazines, books, etc—you can find discussions of women in the workplace: why and how are they underrepresented? How do women and men approach work/management/leadership differently? How do people speak to and about women? And very frequently: what mistakes do women make which result in them and their work being undervalued?

It is this last question on which I wish to focus. On the surface there seem to be some good reasons for asking this question: boys and girls are socialised differently, and since workplaces tend to have traditionally been male dominated environments this might not have left women with skills which allow the to achieve highly in those environments. Why shouldn’t women use the same behaviours as men to achieve the things that they want?

Why shouldn’t they?

Well, of course they should, if they want to, if this feels ok with them, and most often if they feel this is necessary to compete in a workplace that they don’t see as changing. But this is exactly the problem as I see it: correcting “mistakes women make” does not correct “mistakes that men make” or anything that might be wrong with the workplace. If a man, or group of men, underestimate(s) or do(es) not consider his/their female colleague that is a mistake. It should not be for the woman to shout her contribution at the man/men to “correct” this, it is for everyone involved in the situation to question why their workplace allows this to happen and why this situation is being socially described as a mistake of the woman that she must correct.

The second issue here is that correcting women’s “mistakes” in the workplace implies that women need masculine attitudes at work in order to succeed. Therefore the process of correcting women’s mistakes is really a process of immerisation. This means that although women are represented in terms of numbers, to all intents and purposes their behaviour and work is that of men. This is a subtle but important way for institutions to undermine women’s contributions: female colleagues are not considered as “real people” (functioning correctly within the workplace) until their output resembles that of men.
[It’s true that some of the books which aim to change women’s behaviours in this way are written by women. That in itself does not refute this point, however. It’s possible for someone to side with their oppressors.]

This is bad for men too. Of course not all men are the same and it seems likely that many men will also make the “mistakes women make” at work. Perhaps there is some argument that these men still have a gender advantage in having their work and contributions recognised, but even so it should not be the case that all contributions at work should look the same in order to be valued; this sort of homogeneity would be bad for everybody.

I’m sure that if equally as many books/articles/posts were available entitled “mistakes black people make” or “mistakes gay people make” or “mistakes disabled people make” most people would feel quite uncomfortable about this. Implicit racism, heterosexism, or ableism is of course unacceptable. This is not to say that these do not exist of course: the difference is that institutional discrimination against women is still actively being presented as a result of deficiencies and mistakes on the behalf of women.
[There are many more subtle ways that people who do not meet the image of a straight, white, able-bodied man are in some way implicated as the reason for discrimination that they might experience. That would have to be a whole extra post.]

Surprisingly or unsurprisingly these are unpopular views. In airing such ideas—which don’t belong to me alone and have been regularly stated in research which looks at women’s contributions at work and how they are valued—I have been called privileged, told that questioning the value systems in the areas in which I work is inappropriate as it will devalue everyone’s work, told that I should be happy with the advances women have made in the workplace to date and not push for more, and most frequently have heard, “that’s not what was meant.” This last one annoys me particularly since what was meant and what something actually means are clearly not the same.

For me the question of valuing women at work is not related simply to not openly denouncing one’s female colleagues. It should equate to not being complicit in the power structures which do not value women and the work that they do. This means questioning why women are not evenly represented on boards or committees (if they are not), and considering that women’s attitudes and approaches to work might be equally as legitimate as men’s. It means not expecting women and men to conform to masculine modes of behaviour in order for their contributions to be recognised as legitimate. There are men and women who already do this. But in the cases of those who don’t (and perhaps particularly in the cases of those who write books encouraging women to masculinise their behaviour) this needs to be very publicly denounced as a “mistake that men make.”

Valuing Knowledge, or, Investment in Ignorance

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:44:12 +0000

This article has sparked my interest in relation particularly to the Practice-Led Research debate that I have been taking part in recently, and about which kinds of knowledge are considered valuable or relevant.

Many vocational courses will be devalued in terms of their educational currency. There are a number of points here that all relate to knowledge in society. It seems that the aims of the policy are
1) to prevent schools from hiding failure
2) to therefore prevent pupils from failing
3) to deliver a more satisfactory education to the population as a whole.
These all seem to be pretty admirable aims.

However the actual detail of this policy is to make clear that
1) pupils who do well in non-traditional areas (here described as less academic) in reality are failing
2) schools who encourage pupils to do well in vocational and other non-traditional areas are really failing those pupils and society
3) a vocationally educated and employable population are undesirable.

A few practical points:
I dislike “non-traditional “almost as much as “less academic” - to whose/which tradition do we refer? Only in very recent history has non-vocational training become the norm for a majority. So here it’s possible to note that schools and colleges have taken on the roles of workplaces for many young people (Umberto Eco also noted such a phenomenon with regards to Italian universities, calling them “parking places for the unemployed”).
Other government policies are clearly aimed at decreasing student numbers and overall participation in Higher Education (arguably “more academic” education in these terms). As a first comment one wonders where all of these students destined for a more academic secondary education will end up, discouraged from university by prohibitive fees and the closure of underfunded departments. A part of this government policy has been to discredit non-STEM subjects, so one can only imagine that pupils being discouraged from vocational courses will only be considered successful if they excel in STEM subjects.
Finally, one might ask what the destinations of students who take vocational courses are? For most of them it will be employment that requires NVQ-type qualifications. In this respect they are being failed: the jobs that they hoped to take, with relevant qualifications in hand, are simply not available (most often because employers can take on unpaid work placements from the very courses the students have recently completed). Preventing them from taking the courses in the first place masks the problem that there are few jobs at the end of the courses, keeps the pupils in education longer, and thus hides unemployment.

But what does this tell us about public (or government) attitudes to knowledge? Well, these things:
1) knowledge is considered to be only verbal and numerical. Thus education which does not express knowledge in this way is failing students.
2) practical(ly gained) knowledge is undesirable.
3) knowledge related to professions is undesirable. Therefore people who work in those professions can also be considered less desirable than those who are “more academic”.

This is really a devaluation of knowledge, those who transmit it (teachers) and those who receive it (students). By limiting the definition and value of knowledge to a small group of subjects, disciplines, and methods of delivery, the government can devalue the contributions of many in the population (and presumably an economic penalty may follow).

I’m sure there weren’t many people up in arms that the BTEC level 2 in Fish Husbandry had been devalued in academic terms. But framing this policy change through the listing of what may seem obscure subjects prevents the perception that this is about privilege. In both the arts and sciences pupils are restricted access to knowledge simply by the limiting of the definition of what knowledge is, and in the arts in particular economic privilege becomes the only means by which any kind of knowledge (practice-led or otherwise) can be accessed.

This is not about fish husbandry. This is a dangerous ideological investment in ignorance.

Talking Birds?

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:01:38 +0000

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?

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:44:00 +0000

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'?

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:29:06 +0000

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

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:25:23 +0000

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

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 15:40:00 +0000

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:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAABBBBCCCCDDDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE FFFFFFGGHHHHHIIIIILLLLMMMMMNNNNNNNNNOOOOO PPRRRRRRRRRRRSSSsSSSSSTTTTTTTUUUWY

An Angry Book Review

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:54:00 +0000

Today I was trying to buy an ebook version of the following book:
John Shepherd, ed., Whose Music? A Sociology of Musical Languages (London: Latimer, 1977).
This is a book which I think contains some excellent passages, and some important ideas, and is an important example of the early writings that belong to what we now call ‘New Musicology.’ Whilst being unsuccessful in buying an ebook, I stumbled across the following review of John Shepherd’s book:
Whose Music? A Sociology of Musical Languages. by John Shepherd; Phil Virden; Graham Vulliamy; Trevor Wishart. Review by: Paul DiMaggio, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 87, No. 3 (Nov., 1981), pp. 752-754.
I was particularly struck by this book review and wanted to write about it. In a way, this post is a review of the book review (sorry that there is no link to the review, it is a subscribed journal so if you have an institutional affiliation that will let you read it you can look it up. Otherwise, I suppose you’ll have to take my word for it).

The review itself is very short. Rather than outlining the content of the book, it gets right into explaining all the problems the reviewer found with the book. The tone of the review is what I found most surprising: it comes across as rather angry about the arguments made in the book and goes about trying to explain why they are inadequate. In reality, DiMaggio’s arguments come across as stemming mainly from the angry tone of his article. I’ll cite his final paragraph in full:

“Whose Music? may be important reading for musicologists, critics, music educators, conventional musicians, or Reagan-administration arts-policy braintrusters, although its authors do not preach in a manner calculated to convince the unconverted. Its basic point - that the aesthetic standards used to promote fine-arts music and degrade pop music are arbitrary and maintained by the power of elites and their allies to monopolize the training of musicians, the setting of curricula, the legitimation of musical “art,” and the awarding of benefices to composers, performers, and sponsors - is unexceptionable. But, lacking the sustained, rigourous argument and evidence it deserves, the authors’ relativism is as much a political artefact as is the elitism they decry, and it should be subject to the same mode of analysis.” (p754.)

DiMaggio’s general points here are that: although this very large group of people may make use of the work presented in this book, it is of little use to sociologists; although the social critique it presents is valid, I disagree with the methodology; and really isn’t all discourse a product of society so shouldn’t we be analysing this argument too?

There are several responses that I have, firstly to these comments and then to these comments with respect to the book Whose Music?

First is to say that in 1981 the sociology of music was not the sub-discipline that it is today. Such critique of music and musical discourse was fairly revolutionary. But today, as in 1981, sociology of music is often met with equal derision particularly from non-musicians. I have little evidence for this next point other than my own conjecture, which is of course not the kind of evidence that would convince DiMaggio (although this is a blog post, not a book), but my opinion is that the perception that music and art are somehow special disciplines because of the ability of music and the arts to enrich people’s lives, to move them, to allow them to express themselves, is the reason that criticism such as Shepherd et. al.’s is not well tolerated. (This is often true within music too). Cognitive studies which quantify the amount by which people are moved, or explain the extent to which music has been successful in therapy, are welcomed in the press and non-music disciplines alike, but a study of how power and socially constructed meaning has effected this perception in the first place are less that welcome. The tone of DiMaggio’s review is that he is genuinely offended by the book and I strongly suspect this may be the reason for the offense.

On the question of methodology, DiMaggio frequently mentions how the approaches of the book can be found lacking, but doesn’t quite go to as far as to explain what is lacking. Some strategic use of quotation marks around the types of arguments used to mark his own displeasure suggests to the reader that these arguments may themselves be lacking, but his only real suggestion is that a reference to William Weber would not have gone amiss. On this point I could agree with him: Weber’s work is generally of high quality and could strengthen some of the arguments presented in Whose Music?. A possible reason for its omission could be drawn from my own experience: recent feedback from a journal stated that they wished I would draw upon musicological sources rather than sociological ones (although they didn’t want me to change the argument I was making). I can’t say for certain but perhaps the authors of the book received similar feedback. Or maybe they weren’t aware of Weber’s work. Either way, I’m not sure the omission of one reference is equal to the methodological failing DiMaggio is accusing the authors of.

Finally, DiMaggio calls for a sociological critique of the discourse used by the authors. I wholeheartedly agree. To quote Terry Eagleton, “every discourse is […] inscribed in ideological relations, and will be internally moulded by their pressure.”[1] Of course New Musicology has its own ideology and bias; one which was incredibly important at the time Whose Music? was written and is possibly over-expressed by the authors in their arguments in order to combat a dominant ideology. Of course its readers should be aware of this. My argument would be that DiMaggio’s review should, by the same argument, be subject to the same sort of analysis. (And the analysis I make of it should be too, and so on, and so on…). Without inviting the same critique of his review, DiMaggio’s argument takes on the same character as such lines as, ‘if you can’t conclusively disprove the existence of God I find your argument worthless,’ and ‘yes, this seems plausible, but I hate you.’ (Again, since, this is a blog post I’m allowing myself a little more subjectivity than I seem to be allowing the reviewer. The difference is that I’m not going to submit this to an academic journal).

In an attempt to begin that which I have just suggested, I will look only at the very first sentence of DiMaggio’s review:
“Whose music? Not ours, if one believes the authors of this collection.” (p752)
Here I simply want to ask whom the “we” DiMaggio refers to are? Most of the evidence in the review suggests that ‘we’ might be the readers of the American Journal of Sociology. Imagining these readers as a subset of academics (in 1981) then I imagine that they are predominantly white, middle-class, men. It’s not difficult to imagine why such a group, with DiMaggio as their spokesperson, might object to a book of arguments dismissing their control and perceived ownership of music as illegitimate. Even more offensive is that the authors of the book, themselves predominantly white, middle class, men, are objecting to a power structure that they should supposedly belong to. The overall argument of the book, which seems to have passed DiMaggio by, is that when its white, middle class, male authors asked the question “Whose music?” they came up with the answer “not ours.” The reviewer cannot imagine that other readers could feel anything but alienated by an argument against the dominant power structure.

My initial reaction to this review was surprise at how something with such an angry tone, and with such an insecure, subjective argument, ended up in print. However after some thought I see that even though all of the reviewer’s criticisms of Shepherd et. al. could be equally, if not more correctly, applied to the review itself; the assertion of the dominant ideology over dangerous books which challenge it is probably something that many in 1981, and even today, might have valued over good scholarship.

I should end here, as this has got rather long. So I will conclude with a quote often attributed to Marshall McLuhan (although I’ve no idea if it does belong to him, or if so, where it is from) “I don’t know who discovered water, but it wasn’t the fish.”
[NB anyone who can correct me on that quote, or offer a citation, please send it]

[1] Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London: Verso, 1991) pp195-196.

lines that have been drawn on photographs of sculpture

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:30:19 +0000

Here are Midnight Llama performing the piece at New Music Against the Grain in Colchester

Lines that have been drawn on photographs of sculpture - Lauren Redhead by Midnight Llama

Concert Review: Mark Knoop at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:47:00 +0000

I was only able to attend one concert this year at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and it was pianist Mark Knoop performing Xenakis and other works. In previous years I have attended all or most concerts on offer and have found that this somehow destroys any possible enjoyment of the later concerts; perhaps the effect is of being slowly sanded down until it’s possible to plot the dramaturgy and content of the pieces without even hearing them, and of course these expectations are always met. The perception that new music can be exciting, interesting, and fun to listen to is gradually replaced by the perception that new music is a process of recycling a limited about of material and dressing it in the emperor’s new clothes. In other words, too much new music can make me rather cynical about the whole exercise, and I think that is worth saying in order to contrast it with my feelings about this concert.

There are of course two kinds of new music: dead new music (where the composer, not the performer, is dead) and contemporary new music (where no-one is dead yet). This concert had both. This distinction is important to me because the constant recycling of ‘old’ new music has some dangerous consequences: mainly of creating the impressions that the 20th century is some sort of exceptional experimental period that can only be understood by specialist listeners, and that contemporary new music can only be understood within an historical context. As a result I was much more looking forward to the pieces by Johannes Kreidler, Peter Ablinger, and Stefan Prins than the Xenakis pieces themselves.

How wrong I was! Of the pieces by Xenakis I liked Herma the best (the other two were Mists and à R (Homage à Ravel), I probably enjoyed this one the most because it was the most crazy. I also went into the concert feeling that I know Xenakis (at least as much as I feel is necessary to get on with my day to day life, which is still probably more that a lot of people) but left feeling quite the opposite; the difference between his orchestral and large ensemble works and these pieces for solo piano was made astonishing by Mark’s performance of them, which brought out extremes of contrast in the pieces which I have found lacking in other works by, or perhaps performances of, Xenakis.

Also surprising for me was that the newer works seemed to contextualise the Xenakis rather than the other way around. So rather than the impression that the more contemporary pieces were afforded authority and agency by their placement with Xenakis, I felt that these works were able to explain why it might still be relevant that we hear some Xenakis in a contemporary music festival. I have heard about 5 or 6 performances of Johannes Kreidler’s Klavierstück 5 and up until now this was my favourite. In his performance of this piece, and also of Stefan Prins’ Piano Hero #1 and #2 Mark showed himself as a performer who understands the piece as a whole in his performance of a single part of it, and as well as synchronising perfectly with the tape part in the former piece performed in a way that allowed the videos to become ‘musical’ in the latter as well.

At the end of the concert I very much felt that both dead and contemporary new music for piano can be exciting, interesting, and fun when performed together, and left without any cynicism at all. I also felt that the rest of the audience had enjoyed the programme and the performance as much as I did. As a final comment I can say that performance of new music is of equal importance in stating its relevance as the content of the pieces are; this was proven very much by Mark’s performance in this concert.

Third Visit to Grimsby

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:15:32 +0000

On Monday I made my third trip to Grimsby, and was feeling pretty dark and cold by the time that I got there. I was also somewhat apprehensive since this was to be my final ‘exploratory’ visit, due to the impending deadline for the score in January and the necessity to create this over the Christmas break from university and college teaching. However three things were encouraging me to brave the weather: the return of the conductor, Sue, after a short break; speaking to my mentor David on the phone shortly before catching the train; and a desire to hear the results of my latest efforts.

At the beginning of the rehearsal I spoke to the choir about the overview of the piece to try to get all of the experiments in context. I’m going to refrain from sharing that here, though, as I think it should remain a secret between me and the choir until the piece is finally unveiled! This time around we worked on some ‘linking’ ideas, including some which involved techniques like choral breathing, speaking, and changing mouth-shape to change the timbre of the notes. The results in the rehearsal were really atmospheric and perfect for the part of the piece they will fit into.

I’m looking forward to producing the full score, and the organ accompaniment, and to entering a process of rehearsing the music for the concert (which is on the 28th April).

Strike Action

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 11:27:00 +0000

I completely support all of those on strike today.
I have been in a position to witness the significant contribution to people’s lives that those who work in many aspects of the public sector make; private-sector contributions in these areas have little to no chance of being successful since they are financially rather than people-motivated.

I’m motivated to write this blog post after encountering the attitude from more than one person that not being stood at a picket line is in itself equal to a betrayal of the public sector. I’m not sure that such a black and white attitude is helpful to anyone; after all, unions are involved in negotiations as well as industrial action on behalf of their members (and to the benefit of others working in the sector who are not union members).

My problem with this attitude stems from the fact that people are individuals. Whilst policies are extremely important in terms of people’s rights at, and access to, work, and in terms of how employment is viewed by those in power, an individualised attitude to those involved in work is ultimately preferable. In my current situation the ability to strike seems like a privilege. I’ve already posted on this blog about the issues facing those in part time, hourly paid, academic employment in terms of their ability to develop themselves at work. All of those problems are equally relevant to anyone on this sort of contract in any area of the public sector. I’m 100% certain that I am not the only person caught between the wish to protest over an issue that is incredibly important, and will effect everyone who is involved in the public sector or not, and the necessity of supporting myself in an essential way.

There are, of course, ways that unions try to support people in this situation (for example by recompensing those on strike, supporting negotiations at work), however these are also hampered and potentially stalled by real issues such as lack of funds and personnel. If everyone in my situation took advantage of these support mechanisms in order to strike, unions would not be able to support us.

The message of this short post is this: I support those on strike, and believe that unions and others should support me and other people in my situation to support them. Striking is an important right, and an effective method of protest, particularly against a government that is concerned with the erosion of ordinary people’s agency. But there are other methods of protest and seeking to integrate these into plans for industrial action would include those in more difficult circumstances and recognise the diversity of people who are, or who wish to be, involved in unions. Demonising potential supporters does not help anyone’s cause.

Well done to everyone who is out today.

Second Visit to Grimsby (with Grim and Havelock)

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:28:51 +0000

On my second visit to Grimsby Philharmonic Society I took with me four songs about Grim and Havelock. If you haven’t yet heard of them they are characters from a Norse myth of the same name. Their fleeing of civil war in pre-medaeval Denmark results in landing in England, setting up a fishing community, and giving the town of Grimsby its name (and some further adventures afterwards).

I have drawn on this myth, both in its text and atmposphere, in the creation of some of the ideas for the piece I am writing for the choir.

Armed with four songs, and much bouyed by my previous encounter working with the choir, I travelled to Grimsby on Monday afternoon. Unfortunately the conductor was unable to attend the rehearsal, so I undertook to conduct the sections that I had brought myself. I’m not the world’s greatest conductor, and faced with so many people I’m nost sure if my conducting was a help or a hindrance, but I found that even though the music contained some difficult ideas the choir quickly rose to the challenge and it was great to hear some of the harmonies soundling like I imagined them. One of the members of the choir even described some of the music as “like chips with mushy peas”!

At the rehearsal a photogrpaher from the Grimsby Evening Telegraph also turned up to take some photographs; I’m apprehensively awaiting the outcome of those…

I also got the opportunity to sing some Viennese songs with the alto section during the rest of the rehearsal, which was an excellent reminder of the fun one can have when singing in a big choir (something I haven’t done for quite a number of years).

Many other things have moved on with the project. I have secured copyright permission for all of the borrowed and quoted materials needed for the work, completed the text for the full piece, and made contact with many individuals from Grimsby.

I am now underway with the final set of musical ideas, related to the town history and its documentation, for my next visit in December.

Phenomenology and/of Practise/Practice

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:10:00 +0000

Some ideas that I heard spoken about have inspired this blog post; they concern phenomenology and music, and also the status of musical research and particularly practice-led research. I’m happy to post them since they relate particularly to some topics which I’ve written about in the past: the process of research in music, and the role of practice as an instrument of research. The ideas which form the starting point of this post were delivered at the ‘Time, Space, Intentionality’ symposium that I attended in Lisbon earlier this month.

The first idea, presented by Emmanuel Nunes, was that intentionality is not something which exists outside of music in the process of composition. Nunes claimed that it is not possible to take a set of ideas and translate them into a musical score. The phenomenological concept of something as something else does not allow a piece of music to be the ideas as they exist outside of the score, and as a representation they are imperfect. So intentionality for composers is not about representing something else in music, but for Nunes is actually about the initiative in creating the music in the first place. In his own words, it is about deciding, ‘is the piece going to be composed or not?’

I like these ideas very much. They link to my perception of practice-led research (also linked to the AHRC report on the topic) which is that art works that come about as a consequence of practice-led research should not merely be a representation of a body of ideas (since they would be a poor one at that). They are also very much against the concept of genius or inspired works. The issue of bringing musical works into being is here described by Nunes as one of intentionality on behalf of the composer; the issue of creation is dealt with in this decision.

The second set of ideas were delivered by Prof. Dr. Andreas Georg Stascheit from the Kultutwissenschaftliches Institut in Essen. He began by speaking about ‘listening with intentionality’: the intentionality being ‘am I hearing or am I not?’ Prof. Stascheit pointed out that often what one hears is distorted by what one wants and hopes to hear, that we are predisposed to hearing what we think should be there. This, of course, has been borne out in many psychoacoustic and cultural investigations. This was pointed out with respect to musical performance: an unintentional way of listening would be ineffective at assessing and improving one’s own performance. Again, this is something that all performers know. Therefore Prof. Stascheit spoke about phenomenological method with respect to the practise (the s/verb form is important) of music moving from this point of ‘listening to intentionality’ to a phenomenology of practise.

Prof. Stascheit described phenomonelogy as a ‘methodologically reflective method of science in the first person’, intended to reveal ‘the things that are given as they are given’ (a variation on Husserl and Heidegger ‘zu den Sachen selbst’). With respect to music he said that there is a clear distinction between the attitude (for Husserl the subject-world relations linked to specific corresponding objects of thinking or acting) needed for practise and that needed for performance. Practise itself doesn’t allow for the attitude needed for performance on stage: it requires repetition, self criticism, and listening with intentionality, while a philosophical construction of music performance requires the body to be the medium through which the music flows.† Prof. Stascheit also noted that Merleau-Ponty notes in the Phenomenology of Perception that the organist’s body and instrument are merely the medium of performance. This difference means that as opposed to training which is an endeavour concerned with acquiring skills to move towards and achieve a single goal, practise is a permanent beginning. Since the performer-as-medium is an unachievable goal (particularly since the construction of the work and the performance supposed by this are erroneous - my observation) then with each act of practise the performer moves closer to something, but is also remains equally far away from a further point which now becomes visible.

I’d like to move from Prof. Stascheit’s position to describe how a phenomenology of practice (noun form) is equally possible using these ideas. The concept of practise as a permanent beginning is equally applicable to practice. Countering the perception that science provides answers I recently heard Prof. Jurgen Denecke speak about how scientific research is a process of unveiling increasing numbers of questions of increasing complexity by answering those questions which are already existing. I like this as a definition of research as a whole. Combining this with Prof. Stascheit’s description of phenomonelogy as a ‘methodologically reflective method of science in the first person’, one could posit that a phenomonelogy of practice(-led research) would explain the process of revealing further questions through addressing those which exist. In fact, this is the same concept as that of practise as a permanent beginning described above. I won’t attempt to go into depth about this idea: it is something for the future, but a revelation to me on the nature of practice-led research, not because it will change how it will do my work but because if confirms the way I am working and helps me to articulate it better.

Therefore here there are three things contributed to a fuller description of the nature and purpose of practice-led research.
1. The issue of intentionality. ‘Will the work be made? Will the work be research?’ So practice-led research cannot come about by accident (or retrospective assessment).
2. The attitude required to undertake practice-led research is one which involves analysing the subject’s own relationship to the world rather than imagining it to be objective.
3. Practice is a permanent beginning. Practice-led research can reveal things about the world by unveiling further, more complex questions about the world. Claims to the presentation of answers or representation of ideas are erroneous.

† I’ve recently written about the second half of this construction with respect to singing; hopefully the publication is in the pipeline.

Today: Dialogues Seminar For the Northern Arts and Sciences Network

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:45:54 +0000

Today: Dialogues Seminar For the Northern Arts and Sciences Network:

Click here to see what it’s about…you need to reserve a (free) ticket by email if you want to come.

Space, Time, Intentionality, Difference

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:06:13 +0000

Here I describe the rather strange experience I have had this weekend. Although I’m often found commenting upon representation of women, of under-considered academic subdisciplines, and characterising my own work as slightly different from other work being undertaken in my field, anyone who has read my previous posts will know that my experience of this difference has not been specifically negative and that I usually feel encouraged and stimulated when interacting with other academics. In fact, I could hardly say that I’m aware of non-academic differences most of the time. This hasn’t necessarily been my experience this weekend.
I should also point out that my weekend began with an experience of difference as the airline (TAP Portugal) turned up their noses when I pointed out that I was vegetarian and asked me if I wanted to “eat around” the meat in my meal. While not a particularly militant vegetarian, I also don’t regard my dietary choices as all that odd or uncommon and find such disparaging comments unwelcome at the best of times. Perhaps this experience made me more acutely aware of difference throughout the weekend. Perhaps not.

I was very much looking forward to attending the Time, Space, Intentionality symposium due to my particular interest in this area. I was hoping to learn much to enrich my own work and gain feedback on my own thoughts by sharing them with others. However, my time at the International Symposium for Emmanuel Nunes was beset by several problems which I’ve characterised in the terms of the conference: Space (Particularly that which I occupy: female body, the UK)
Time (age - perhaps a minor one, but one I am conscious of now)
Intentionality (what I wanted to talk about)

Space

I’ve already blogged about conspicuously low numbers of women at conferences, but on this occasion I felt that gender was something that was noticed a being a specific difference between me and the other delegates. Quite a lot of time was spent noticing that I wasn’t male. And I suppose I was wearing a skirt, but I reserve my right to do that.

Occupying the UK also seemed a problem. I’m very used to the put-downs that English people can be subject to in Europe over language: it doesn’t matter how many languages you speak or how hard you are trying, if you don’t speak the specific language of the person you are talking to at an acceptable level of fluency you are just an example of the general failings of the residents of the UK at learning other languages. (OK - Of course not everyone thinks this, but I’ve come across this attitude enough times to feel irked by it). In this specific instance I believed I was attending an English/Portuguese bi-lingual conference and was rather surprised to find all of the keynote talks delivered in French. And felt put out, not by my lack of understanding, by the time spent noticing my difference (failing) at not being in possession of sufficient faculties to understand (it was actually pointed out in the lecture - and only about me rather than the men in the room who also couldn’t speak French, of which there were some). Later on, one of the talks was given in German. Although I had a greater chance of understanding this, and so probably felt more positive about it, the speaker provided us with the full text as a way to meet in the middle. Nunes himself, fluent in many languages, spoke in both English and French - perhaps in an attempt to satisfy everyone in the room. (It seemed the conference didn’t know what to do about all the different languages and so just allowed everyone to speak in any language they preferred).

Those of you who follow my twitter stream will know that I know British Sign Language and am hoping to qualify as an interpreter in the future (altho I’ve got a way to go yet). This experience has given me lots of pause for thought over language differences and communication problems, and I speak to people in what is their first language but my second language almost every day. These experiences have taught me that beginning from a construction of difference does not go very far in assuaging communication difficulties.

Time

As perhaps a corollary to the first point above, not only was I female but I was also the youngest person in the room most of the time. In most of my academic experiences age hasn’t been an issue for me - I usually find that academics are most interested in what you have to say rather than your age while saying it. However I feel as if age was another excuse to notice my gender/dress, as well as an unspoken reason that, having finishing noticed these two things, there is little reason to speak to me.

Intentionality

Perhaps my answer to the call for papers had been rather stringent in its interpretation. I often worry that what I want to talk about doesn’t really seem to be “about” music (in this case it seemed to be “about” the relationship of musical discourse with the phenomenology of time). However I realised I had probably been naïve when it seemed that I was one of the only speakers who hadn’t discussed their paper in detail with Emmanuel Nunes before arriving at the symposium.

I had, however, been accepted to speak, and I was heartened to hear Nunes make comments in the discussion after another paper that seemed as if he might agree with my conclusions (mainly because those others present didn’t seem as if they would contradict anything Nunes said).

With respect to the Brian Ferneyhough symposium in February this year I noted that the presence of the composer seemed to limit wider discussion. On this occasion I don’t think that was the specific intention of the composer (Nunes), since it seems that he is simply happy to be engaged in all academic discourse about music. But it did come out in the presentations that others there were unwilling to disagree with him or to risk presenting anything that hadn’t been run by the composer first. So again I marked my difference by turning up with a paper that risked being outside of the party line.

This party line consisted of discussions of a small group of pieces from Nunes’ substantial oeuvre, focussing mainly on directions arising from the composer’s notes. It took Nunes himself to question whether the terms of this discourse were at all meaningful. A further question might be asked whether this really offered any new insight; the lack of questions after almost every presentation might suggest it didn’t.

Its not my intention to give this exposition so as to bemoan not having been invited into this very closed circle. Drawing attention to this experience of difference might seem redundant after the close of the symposium. And on some of these counts I might like to change myself: for example I hope to be better at speaking other languages in the future. However I believe that speaking about these experiences makes it possible for others to also speak about them in the future. Being excluded from the Old Boys Club, in any discipline, is not a right of passage for young researchers who should tow the line until they gain enough autonomy to express themselves; it is an unhelpful and unwanted facet of the academic experience which prevents useful research from being done and perpetuates stereotypes.
I will continue to be female, vegetarian, to wear dresses, to speak English and British Sign Language and sometimes bad German, and to promote the issues in musicology that I think are important. I will not be discouraged; I will discuss the constructions of difference that are meant to discourage me and others. And I hope that others won’t be discouraged either, and will do the same.

I’d link to thank Samantha Fernando for being a notable exception to my bad experience (she’s also a composer - look her up!), and to point out that the ideas of the conference weren’t all bad. Another post about what stood out for me will follow.

Rhetoric and Artistic Research Careers

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:31:00 +0000

I was sent, not so recently, this article by Kirsten Forkert from Variant in 2009 by fellow musicologist Roddy Hawkins. I have only just got around to reading it, but, having done so, lots of the points made resonated with my personal situation at the moment and some thoughts I have been having about the process of looking for more permanent employment after PhD. Two specific points, both from p22, particularly stood out.

The first of these describes the job market and the way that those looking for work are expected to relate to it:
“[T]here is an expectation to be an “entrepreneur of the self”: each individual is meant to be responsible for his/her continued employment; keeping “employable” through continually investing in oneself […]; continually adapting oneself to the latest job market demands. […] If individuals fail to do so, they only have themselves to blame.”    (“Entrepreneur of the self” is a term that Forkert quotes from Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics.)
This very eloquently states something I’ve wondered about trying to get out for some time: the onus on the individual here says that if you aren’t having much success in finding a job, there must be something wrong with you. You aren’t doing it right, or you just don’t care enough. Never mind that there is low employment, an increasing number of ways for people to be deskilled, and increasing numbers of proposals by the government to strip employees of their rights and thus of their value (such as this recent example).
This also increases the likelihood of negative rhetoric being used against those looking for work: clearly those not in employment mustn’t be interested in seeking it out. Ways have to be found to “encourage” people to stop claiming benefits; those who can’t be “encouraged” quickly enough must be involved in some sort of fraudulent activity (even though the figures show that benefit fraud is much less of a problem than it might be). The second quotation refers directly to those involved in the creative arts:   “Social exclusion places artists in a contradictory position in several different ways. The first is the issue that, in its narrow focus on the virtues of paid employment, social exclusion does not perceive unpaid labour as real work and “undermines the legitimacy of participation in work”. As cultural production can involve, in many cases, activities outside of the “day job” and even identifying with them more than one’s paid employment, this starts to pose a problem. The irony, of course, is that the dedication and willingness to work for free on the part of artists, but also others in the cultural and voluntary sectors, are practically celebrated at the same time as the support structures that facilitate this kind of work are withdrawn[…].”
I’m sure many musicians, other artists, and those who research in those fields, will identify with this. The pressure to work for free, to do just that little bit more in all areas of artistic employment in the hope that it will be paid in the future, and to class practice-led research in particular as some sort of glorified hobby, is very great. And while the value of this research begins to be recognised by Higher Education and research institutions, the money that would support it is being quickly withdrawn. Increasingly it seems like artistic work, and particularly artistic research, might become the preserve of the very privileged who can afford to self-fund, and that those pursuing this work as a career can be characterised as doing so at the expense of other, “more important” things. Within academic research, and research in creative arts, perhaps even more so than in other artistic disciplines, this problem is evident. For many early career researchers a first full-time job may seem particularly elusive: balancing PhD and work commitments, deciding whether to spend time gaining teaching or publishing experience, choosing which training to attend and not to attend, and going about the actual business of writing the PhD while trying to maintain some sort of social life has probably already left them feeling like they have had to make compromises. A first job, often part time, temporary, or hourly paid, is hard work but offers an opportunity to gain experience of other institutions. For many researchers this is ok for a short time. However if, and in many cases when, this first job becomes a second, and third job, it may lead to longer term problems which tie in with the two quotations above. This Feminist Philosophers blog post on temporary academic work highlights what these are, and the British Philosophical Association has also produced [policy documents] outlining these problems and making recommendations. The description in these reports is eloquent and succinct enough that I won’t re-iterate it here, but would recommend reading it.

But consider these problems within the context of the two quotations given above. This is one way to identify how what I see as a significant problem with how the government’s plans for Higher Education and the arts will play out. The inability of early career researchers to guarantee job security, or full-time employment, which prevents time being spent on research, alongside a culture of blaming them for their employment status as a result of their lack of achievement, will be the result. In fact it’s easy to see that only the very privileged, who don’t need to work full-time to meet their outgoings, will be able to find as much time to spend on research as they would like and thus remain “employable”. Under the guise of wanting something that all involved in research are interested in: universities populated by a body of researchers who consistently produce high-quality, useful, work, and contribute to an excellent student experience, it seems that we are moving to a situation where the very privileged are allowed to educate the very privileged, publishing each other’s work in a closed system, while the rest of the population look on from the sidelines. It doesn’t seem as if anyone stopped to ask if this situation of excellence was already in place. If they had they could have noted that british universities are some of the best in the world and despite heavy teaching and administration workloads researchers are producing high quality work which cannot be said to be a misuse of funding. There is also almost no commentary about the problems with REF or discussion of how it might disadvantage some researchers.

All this seems very bleak. I don’t have very many solutions except to hope that Universities and can be active in exposing and ignoring this rhetoric. Some of them have already begun to do this. In addition, a culture of being honest about how the funding situation for HE and the arts, and its negative effects on particularly early career researchers, impact those in the area rather than simply looking for an unbroken stream of peer reviewed publications, would go a long way to recognising the value of researchers as people rather than the metrics of research as a kind of economic output; something which in my opinion would benefit everyone involved.

It isn’t all bleak though, for me. Faced with the choice of struggle on with something I really want or change career (something equally difficult and time consuming) I am finding enough reasons to carry on. And for me these don’t come from the successes of publishing research or gaining experience but from other researchers who I find inspiring. Currently the possibilities to meet people who are incredibly successful, incredibly hard working, and who are contributing excellent research and to an excellent student experience are very many for me. And I can’t say that all these people come from the privileged backgrounds that they may in the future. My PhD supervisors, Derek Scott and Martin Iddon are two examples, and I’ve been lucky enough to work with them on my PhD project and to have them as role models. I’ve also used twitter to connect with other, more senior, researchers who are dealing with extremely heavy workloads and yet producing high quality work. Stephen Mumford [@SDMumford](http://twitter.com/#!/SDMumford] and Anita Leirfall @anitaleirfall are just two examples of people I’ve contacted this way who have inspired me.

This is to say that I am inspired to research, to work, and to be productive not by any incentive to remain “employable” but by the inspiring people I come into contact with. These people also inspire me to stress the value of the work I do, even when it is not valued as paid employment. Perhaps a change in rhetoric to value individuals, their work and contributions, and research itself, rather than economics or anything as faceless as bibliometrics might go much further to improve the employment situation for researchers, rather than belittling the contributions of those who are participating in, or looking for, work.

What do researchers want to get out of working with...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 13:45:13 +0000

What do researchers want to get out of working with non-specialist publics?

This video from th beginning of the ‘Big Ears’ project I took part in this year might shed some light on some of their intentions.

I’m speaking abouthalf way through.

First Visit to Grimsby If someone were to say...

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:18:00 +0100

First Visit to Grimsby

If someone were to say “Grimsby” to you, you might think of fish and chips, or of fishing or trawling, but feel hard pushed to think of much else. That’s certainly the situation I was in at the beginning of September. That is, until I found out I would be taking part in a project sponsored and organised by Making Music and the PRS for Music Foundation, and had been “adopted” as a composer by Grimsby Philharmonic Society. This presented me all sorts of interesting opportunities and challenges - to learn about the history of this particular town in the North East of England (and the history of the North of England is something that interests me greatly), to try to work collaboratively with the choir, who are a very large group of people, and to produce a work suitable for the 160th celebration of Grimsby Dock Tower and the Philharmonic Society itself. An even greater challenge was to finish the score in January, which left not much time to learn and try things out, work collaboratively, and then improve still, but then again I am never one to say no to a challenge.

Before the first weekend of work with the choir I had organised myself to learn as much as possible about Grimsby, to produce a structure for the piece, plan for the project, and arrange four traditional songs which could become part of the final work. Joan and Joan, two prominent members of the choir, were frequently in touch with me helping to offer me ideas and suggestions of where to look for more sources. After making my way through all of these, and some communication with North East Lincolnshire County Council, it was finally time to make my way to Grimsby for a weekend of working with the choir on the project.

I had lots of objectives to cram into just three days and was more than a little apprehensive about meeting so many people for the first time. Thankfully my initial introduction to the choir was a musical one; at their invitation I attended their performance of The Bartered Bride. From this I was able to get an excellent picture of the abilities and personality of the choir; I particularly enjoyed their participation in the celebrations and drinking songs.
Attending this performance also allowed me to meet some members of the community in Grimsby, including the Mayoress, and answer their questions about what I would be doing and why I wanted to do it. These people also gave me even more suggestions of things to investigate, including using some details about the fishing community recorded in the beautiful small fisherman’s chapel in the Central Hall.

By the time I arrived I had already learned a lot about the pre-mediaeval history of Grimsby, and had a number of details about Mediaeval events. Whilst in the town I was able to spend time in the archives at Grimsby Town Hall and Grimsby Central Library getting to grips with the social and fishing history of the town, and most importantly finding text and details that will make it into the final work.

The most important and challenging aspect of the whole visit was working with the choir themselves. I had previously sent some ideas and music to them but was yet to hear their thoughts, or from their conductor, Susan Hollingworth. Thankfully my mentor for the project, David Horne, turned up at just the right time to discuss this with. In the end there was little need for me to be apprehensive: the rehearsal itself was a fantastic experience. I was able to meet most of the choir, try out some music with them and hear their responses to what I had written. I was particularly happy that everyone engaged with my musical ideas, and I was able to get even more ideas from members of the choir and from hearing them sing.

The rest of my time in the town was spent exploring the docks, seeing the dock tower close up for myself (as illustrated in one of the accompanying photos), and making some field recordings of the sea and sea birds which I hope will become part of or inform the final piece. Being a vegetarian, I was excluded from trying the fish and chips but I was able to get an independent report which informed me as to their excellence.
For me, the next steps are to confirm the rest of the text for the work, and to put together the next part of the music (which will be about Grim and Havelock), for the next time I will meet the choir which will be in November.

Photograph 1 - This boat cost North East Lincolnshire County Council £1 to buy in 1991. It is now part of the National Fishing Heritage Museum
Photograph 2 - Side view of the boat
Photograph 3 - The sea shore at Grimsby Docks
Photograph 4 - A make-shift solution to recording in high wind!
Photograph 5 - Grimsby Dock Tower

A short video, by Sqaureye Media, of highlights from the...

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:07:17 +0100

A short video, by Sqaureye Media, of highlights from the performance of Treatise I was involved in.