How can the concept of 'Failure' be used as a methodology to create a body of Experimental Music Theatre work?
Lead Research Organisation:
Birmingham City University
Department Name: ADM Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Abstract
My research explores discourse on 'Failure' as an aesthetic category, applying these theories specifically within the context of Jennifer Walshe's manifesto, "The New Discipline" (2016). Alongside herself, Walshe includes James Saunders, Natacha Diels and Matthew Shlomowitz as artists who draw on multiple disciplines. By combining aspects of this new discipline and Punk DIY aesthetics, I will go beyond pre- existing work to create an oeuvre that can be used as a political and feminist strategy to overturn received expectations of female musicianship in experimental music.
My research thus far has led me to Sara Jane Bailes' "Performance Theatre and the Poetics of Failure" (Routledge 2010). Failure has since been widely discussed in experimental theatre studies. Tim Etchells and Matthew Goulish's website, the "Institute of Failure", is a notable example. Merging cultural theory and artistic practice, Sarah Gorman's "Women in Performance: Repurposing Failure" (Routledge 2020) and Jack Halberstam's "The Queer Art of Failure" (Duke University Press 2011) discuss failure as an alternative route to 'conventional understandings of success'.
Eldrich Priest's "Boring, Formless, Nonsense" (Bloomsbury Academic 2013) brings the discourse to experimental music. Priest himself remarks upon the lack of women practitioners in his study, claiming that 'in practice only those who have (always) already succeeded as social agents can play with failing, and in Western culture this has traditionally been the prerogative of men'. My research and work will explore how failure might be used as a political and feminist strategy, upturning expectations of female musicianship and bringing female Punk subversive aesthetics into the experimental music context.
My primary research aims are to:
1. Use failure as a decisive compositional aesthetic to break from, and challenge current compositional practice.
2. Discover how setting out to fail affects the outcome of a work.
3. Expand upon the discourse of failure in experimental music to include interdisciplinary work and challenge received expectations of female musicianship and the male lineage in experimental music.
The main outcome of this research will be an original body of work that promotes failure as a hopeful strategy to liberate the creative mindset and establish a useful compositional method. As a collaborative
My research thus far has led me to Sara Jane Bailes' "Performance Theatre and the Poetics of Failure" (Routledge 2010). Failure has since been widely discussed in experimental theatre studies. Tim Etchells and Matthew Goulish's website, the "Institute of Failure", is a notable example. Merging cultural theory and artistic practice, Sarah Gorman's "Women in Performance: Repurposing Failure" (Routledge 2020) and Jack Halberstam's "The Queer Art of Failure" (Duke University Press 2011) discuss failure as an alternative route to 'conventional understandings of success'.
Eldrich Priest's "Boring, Formless, Nonsense" (Bloomsbury Academic 2013) brings the discourse to experimental music. Priest himself remarks upon the lack of women practitioners in his study, claiming that 'in practice only those who have (always) already succeeded as social agents can play with failing, and in Western culture this has traditionally been the prerogative of men'. My research and work will explore how failure might be used as a political and feminist strategy, upturning expectations of female musicianship and bringing female Punk subversive aesthetics into the experimental music context.
My primary research aims are to:
1. Use failure as a decisive compositional aesthetic to break from, and challenge current compositional practice.
2. Discover how setting out to fail affects the outcome of a work.
3. Expand upon the discourse of failure in experimental music to include interdisciplinary work and challenge received expectations of female musicianship and the male lineage in experimental music.
The main outcome of this research will be an original body of work that promotes failure as a hopeful strategy to liberate the creative mindset and establish a useful compositional method. As a collaborative
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Francesca Fargion (Student) |