While institutional critique has long been an important part of artistic practice and theoretical debate in the visual arts, it has long escaped attention in the field of music. This open access volume assembles for the first time an array of theoretical approaches and practical examples dealing with New Music’s institutions, their critique, and their transformations. For scholars, leaders, and practitioners alike, it offers an important overview of current developments as well as theoretical reflections about New Music and its institutions today. In this way, it provides a major contribution to the debate about the present and future of contemporary music.
An anthology of writings and projects by artists from across Europe and throughout the Americas who developed and extended the genre of institutional critique.
« Institutional critique and after explores the history and contemporary reassessment of the Institutional Critique movement lauched in the late 1960s, redeveloped in the 1980s, and vigorously reoriented in recent years to address issues such as globalization. In this publication, the histories, theories, diverse locations, and different kinds of institutional alternative space are investigated, looking at traditional forms of art but also at installation, performance, new media practices, and cultural activism. Its central questions turn on the critical potential of art (and institutions) and whether–and if so how–they can stimulate social or political change. »--
Contemporary music, like other arts, is dealing with the rise of »curators« laying claim to everything from festivals to playlists - but what are they and what do they do anyway? Drawing from backgrounds ranging from curatorial studies to festival studies and musicology, Brandon Farnsworth lays out a theory for understanding curatorial practices in contemporary music, and how they could be a solution to the field's diminishing social relevance. The volume focuses on two case studies, the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre, and the Maerzmusik Festival at the Berliner Festspiele, putting them in a transdisciplinary history of curatorial practice, and showing what music curatorial practice can be.
The Orpheus Institute celebrates 20 years of artistic research in music Artistic research has come of age, and with it the Orpheus Institute. Founded twenty years ago, the Institute’s purpose from the start has been to pursue research through the practice of musicians. The Orpheus Institute is of the same generation as the field it was established to explore. Like many young adults, artistic research and its structures are still constructing their identity within a wider world. How have they developed? How will they mature? How can they negotiate relationships with institutions, disciplines, and bodies of theory and yet retain the essence of their work—the critical perspective of the artist? In the last two decades there have been major changes in the dynamics and structures of culture, its institutions and constituencies. How can artistic research maintain a productive dialectic between its potential status as a discipline and its core as radical practice? These and related questions are the threads woven through this collection of essays and assessments by present and past members of the Orpheus community—researchers, scholars, administrators, advisors. Together and separately they weave a tapestry of past accomplishments, current research, and future perspectives. They celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Orpheus not with congratulations but with challenges and questions—a job for research, a job for the Institute, a job for the future. The wide range of contributors to this volume includes practitioner-researchers, theorists, and academic leaders from institutions at the forefront of artistic research in music. Contributors Tom Beghin (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Paulo de Assis (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Leonella Grasso Caprioli (Conservatorio di Vicenza), Jonathan Impett (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Esa Kirkkopelto (University of the Arts, Helsinki), Kari Kurkela (University of the Arts, Helsinki), Susan Melrose (Middlesex University, London), Stefan Östersjö (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Gertrud Sandqvist (Malmö Art Academy), Huib Schippers, Vanessa Tomlinson, Paul Draper (Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Griffith University), Luk Vaes (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Janneke Wesseling/ Kitty Zijlmans (Leiden University)
A leading activist museum director explains why museums are at the center of a political storm In an age of protest, cultural institutions have come under fire. Protestors have mobilized against sources of museum funding, as happened at the Metropolitan Museum, and against board appointments, forcing tear gas manufacturer Warren Kanders to resign at the Whitney. That is to say nothing of demonstrations against exhibitions and artworks. Protests have roiled institutions across the world, from the Abu Dhabi Guggenheim to the Akron Art Museum. A popular expectation has grown that galleries and museums should work for social change. As Director of the Queens Museum, Laura Raicovich helped turn that New York muni- cipal institution into a public commons for art and activism, organizing high-powered exhibitions that doubled as political protests. Then in January 2018, she resigned, after a dispute with the Queens Museum board and city officials. This public controversy followed the museum’s responses to Donald Trump’s election, including her objections to the Israeli government using the museum for an event featuring Vice President Mike Pence. In this lucid and accessible book, Raicovich examines some of the key museum flashpoints and provides historical context for the current controversies. She shows how art museums arose as colonial institutions bearing an ideology of neutrality that masks their role in upholding conservative, capitalist values. And she suggests ways museums can be reinvented to serve better, public ends.
Institutional theory has become one of the dominant organizational approaches in recent decades. Its roots can be traced to Europe, and an important intellectual objective of this book is to examine North American theory strands and reconnect them with European research traditions. In addition, this book focuses on how organizations and individuals handle heterogeneous and challenging social conditions which are subsequently reflected in various forms of change.
By linking the institutions that support musical research to complex historical changes such as globalization and the commodification of knowledge, the author critiques musical scolarship as an institutional discourse while contributing to a general theory of disciplinary structures.
"This volume advances understanding of the nature of current inequalities in the field of classical music production in the Global North, exploring why inequalities continue to exist, and asking what can be done to tackle ongoing exclusions. It constitutes an urgent intervention into these contemporary debates, drawing together ongoing and emergent analyses from scholars, activists and musicians in a variety of countries across Europe and North America to foreground both scholarly examination of these inequalities, alongside discussion of strategies and catalysts for change. Academic accounts investigate inequalities in higher education and the classical music industry, exploring racial, class and gender inequalities, 'authenticity', disability representation, changing the canon, and neoliberalism. The book also includes interviews with those working in the classical music industry where they reflect on issues of diversity and share insights and inspiration as well as good practice, putting into dialogue scholarly and industry-based accounts. Themes of the book include institutional legacies and possibilities for change; racial, gender and class inequalities and marginalised voices; and strategies for activism whether reflective practices, informal networks, or larger organisations leading change"--
This groundbreaking exploration of appropriation and institutional critique assembles a wide variety of artists and mediums to offer new insight and make unprecedented connections. Exploring two parallel strands of post-conceptual art, Take It or Leave It highlights artists known for their use of appropriation and those who engage in "institutional critique." Focusing on American artists who emerged from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, the book highlights dynamic practices in a variety of media: from performance to photography; video to installation; painting to writing. Artists as wide-ranging in approach as Dara Birnbaum, Mark Dion, Robert Gober, Barbara Kruger, Zoe Leonard, Glenn Ligon, Adrian Piper, Stephen Prina, and Fred Wilson are examined within the context of the larger culture--from the political landscape to design strategies in advertising. Essays by curators Anne Ellegood and Johanna Burton as well as scholars George Baker, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Gavin Butt, and Darby English explore the historical and current terrain of appropriation and institutional critique, while pursuing topics including the downtown music scene in New York in the '80s, new strategies of painting, and theories of race after identity politics' heyday.
