Adding to the Narrative: Intersectional Feminist Critical Curatorial Practices in Classical Vocal Music Performance
(2022)
author(s): Shanice Skinner
published in: KC Research Portal
Diversity and inclusion within Western art music have become topics of elevated importance in in recent discussions. To create enduring results regarding these matters, there needs to be a commitment to in-depth study of practices that will produce visible change. This is one of the goals of my research, in which I tackle issues of representation by focusing on Black women composers and their absence from the canon as overlooked and marginalized artists. It is well known that women have been denied many opportunities throughout history; as composers, many experiences crucial to professionalism were not always available to women, including music education in composition, the publication and circulation of their works, not being hired as conductors, or receiving reviews from influential critics. These opportunities and resources dwindled further if a woman was also a person of colour. Thus, in order to ensure their inclusion within the canon, these underrepresented identities demand and require unique recognition.
I have examined the issue of neglected women of colour composers in classical music from an interdisciplinary standpoint, utilizing the methodologies of history and experimentation to form an “intersectional feminist critical curation” framework. This framework implements knowledge from intersectional feminist theory and music curation practices in order to answer following questions: “What is the impact on new audiences of diverse backgrounds experiencing classical music through an intersectional feminist curatorial framework?”, "Can classical music be an effective device for messages of social and political change?", and “What is the impact on myself as a classical vocalist and a Black woman to implement an intersectional feminist curatorial framework within my musical study and performance?”. The overall goal of this research was to discover an effective way forward to achieving diversity in classical music for underrepresented groups. Drawing from this study, I have created a digital performance project entitled “The Narrativity Sessions,” which functioned as an experiment utilizing this knowledge of intersectional feminist theory and praxis fused with select critical curation strategies applied to my own artistic practice as a classical singer. The outcome was a novel artistic practice that can contribute to creating innovative and artistically fulfilling performances while simultaneously advancing diversity and inclusion in the classical music sphere for audiences, performers, and composers alike.
The Baby Bucha Project
(2019)
author(s): Anna Ting Möller
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
In this exposition, I confront my feelings about having been transnationally adopted. I do not consider adoption a ‘win-win situation’, and I encourage people to think critically about the practice as well as the glorification of it. The colorblindness with which I was encountered as a PoC growing up with white parents was an existential complication for me. I was plagued by feelings I could not understand at the time and grew isolated. I want to visually express the feeling of being estranged and alienated from one’s own body and the fear of drowning in one’s own skin. I have often felt compelled to unzip my skin suit and leave it next to my trousers in a heap on the floor. In this project, I grow my own skin in a vat – or more specifically, I grow a kombucha culture in tea and sugar. During the fermentation process, the kombucha culture creates a cellulose material that resembles human flesh. The process is a slow one, and developing the material demands a great deal of love and nutrition. In return, I get a self-produced material that enables me to work independently.
Listening like White Nationalists at a Civil Rights Rally
(2017)
author(s): Bryce Peake
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This soundscape and accompanying essay explore the listened-to world of white nationalists protesting a 2015 civil rights rally in the United States. Marked by countless instances of police brutality and a racially motivated mass shooting, the autumn months of 2015 echoed with the rallying cries of Black Lives Matter… cries that stoked white nationalists’ nascent conspiracy theories about white genocide and an impending “race war” between black Islam and white Christendom. Both the new Civil Rights movement and these white nationalist fears came to a head at the Justice or Else Rally in October 2015. This essay explores the acoustemological – acoustic and epistemological – world of white nationalists protesting Justice or Else, using the nexus of creativity and empiricism to understand a white nationalist standpoint acoustemology proliferating in Donald Trump’s United States.