ESSAYS
Allusions to Music, Sexuality and Skin Color. In Conversation with Georg Friedrich Haas
JIK: Sex is not music, and music is not sex. Music and sexuality are not identical. They relate to each other. I would like to ask you about their relationship. GFH: Why are you asking this question of me? Because I have come out as a member of a sexual minority? I have no idea […]
read moreI Can’t Breathe: A Virtual Dialogue
by George Lewis In 2016 I first heard I Can’t Breathe, Georg Friedrich Haas’s haunting work for solo trumpet, performed by Marco Blaauw at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Haas’s work, written just after the birth of the Black Lives Matter organization, and well before the concept of Black Lives Matter came to international prominence, […]
read moreTHE PARACHRONIES OF TZLIL MEUDCAN 2023
Quiccritique of the 2023 edition of Tzlil Meudcan Festival Tel Aviv under the topos of the voice
read morePHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC FROM AESTHETIC REASON
Philosophy of music can only succeed by reflecting upon the state of new music and binding itself to the aesthetic judgment. Philosophy thinks musical production, musical reproduction and musical reflection within the horizon of the autonomy of sound; within the horizon of music’s being different from all heteronomies; within the horizon of its freedom.
read moreTHREE PARADOXES OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
The notion of a musical installation contains three paradoxical desires: the paradox of creating situations, the paradox of static sounds and the paradox of a musical performance art. These ideas are intelligible non-sense, and yet they can become legitimate intentions of an artistic procuction.
read moreMARY MELTING MEDIATION BAUERMEISTER
Mary Bauermeister represented what is missing in the ever-turning carousel: We need to establish contexts that are independent of both, culture-industry and the state, in which music can be played, performed, developed, discussed and criticized. We mourn Mary Bauermeister, grandmother of Fluxus, melting pot of the arts.
read moreTHE LEGACY OF POLITICAL MUSIC
The composer and pianist Frederic Rzewski died on June 26th, 2021. In this conversation, Rzewski, towards the end of his life, was able to conceive of himself as a symptom and to reflect on the legacy of political music around the revolt of 1968, its potentials, limitations, and ultimately, its failure. As a representative of a generation of political musicians, he gave an account of its legacy.
read moreWHEN FATE CROWS AND NOBODY CAN HEAR IT
This article discusses the work of Viennese artist Georg Nussbaumer (1964) in the constellation of contemporary questions of media and material and historical consciousness in music. Transforming the coordinates of traditional musical work, the essay suggests Nussbaumers work as mixed martial arts instead of multi media art.
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