PART II VI.Shimmering Ontology / (Laugh) Struck by the apparition, she burst out laughing. The laughter of childbirth.—Hélène Cixous and Jacques Derrida, Veils Kundry’s primal scene—the instant of her transformation into the figure of the eternal feminine pariah—takes place at the base of the cross: having laughed at the body of Christ, she endures as […]
Tag: New(ish) Music
Posted inEssay
Gap Trap Laugh
for Seth Brodsky PART I: STRANGE THINGS I. getting it just right Every act of reading is a difficult transaction between the competence of the reader (the reader’s world knowledge) and the kind of competence that a given text postulates in order to be read in an economic way.—Umberto Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation All artists play […]
Posted inEssay
The Disappearing Monument
It is easy to believe in the permanence of sound. Now every recording can be streamed and repeated on demand without degradation; files replicate flawlessly; loops repeat without wear; digital archives expand infinitely. Music appears inexhaustible as technology promises security against erosion—like nothing goes away. William Basinski’s “The Disintegration Loops,” receiving a deluxe reissue in […]
Posted inReview
Situations for Distracted Listening
Every time cultural organizers huddle to pick a festival theme, their brainstorming heat surely counts as a modest contribution to global warming. In today’s attention economy—where information is overabundant and rage-bait has surpassed click-bait like an evolved Pokémon—art institutions are forced to perform the same precarious dance, navigating survival and relevance under the increasingly standardized […]
Posted inReview
Strength in Absence
In late September 1940, a month after negotiations between the French and German governments dissolved the Third Republic and established the Vichy regime under Marshal Pétain, Walter Benjamin found himself a refugee with dim prospects for legal exit from France. The German-Jewish man of letters boarded a train from Marseilles toward the Spanish border with […]
Posted inInterview
What is the Work / What is the World
There is something strange in the ancient woodlands of Jeløya island. Were it not for the little orange sign staked into the ground, you might almost not notice it, so subtle is “The Grey Zone (NeverWhere),” an installation by Jacob Kirkegaard for this year’s edition of the Momentum Biennale in Norway. The loudspeakers are carefully […]
Posted inReview
The Dissolving of the Line
Under the artistic triumvirate of Marie-Therese Bruglacher, Laure M. Hiendl and Bastian Zimmermann, Musik Installationen Nürnberg—in its second edition following a 2022 debut—set out to present music differently: “not as a normal concert, but as an experience in space.” But what happens to music when it leaves the concert hall and instead latches onto a […]
Posted inProfile
The Energy of the Moment
A train chugs along rhythmically, accompanied by otherworldly birds. Lazy chords blossom, like flowers from another world. A chaotic burbling morphs into an endless, glistening haze. These are just a few of the images conjured by “Escape Rites,” an album featuring several new works by JACK Quartet violinist Austin Wulliman. The works range from pensive […]
Posted inReview
Saints of Doubt
In an episode of “Looney Toons” called “The Long-Haired Hare”—haughty classical fans were once called longhairs, supposedly after Liszt—Bugs Bunny quarrels with an opera singer. Bugs is hanging out in the Hollywood hills, singing and playing the banjo. Meanwhile, in his home nearby, the best-named Italian American in television history, Giuseppe Jones, is trying to […]
Posted inInterview
Useful Music
Composer, conductor and facilitator Michael Betteridge’s music sometimes moves like the ocean. In his reworking of Vaughan Williams’ one-act opera, “Riders to the Sea,” he stripped the orchestration to its emotional essence, replacing rich string textures with oboe, accordion, and bass clarinet. His new prologue was bold and theatrical as Bartley, silhouetted against a sea […]