My project revolves around liminal and radically relational music practices – and how they unfold at punk/hardcore concerts and raves. Through my band these chaotic happenings have made their mark on me in a lot more ways than broken bones: they have given me a feeling of community, empowerment, good times and the experience of becoming other – new (or forgotten) ways of being in the world. From the Greek pre-Hellenistic orgies to the Middle Ages’ feast of fools, to avant-garde movements in the 20th century, people have been drawn to these practices of transgression of perceived borders for what we are, what affects we can feel, what movements our bodies can set in motion. Why do these ritualistic practices feel almost unthinkable without music and sound? What role do I as a musician have in this, and how do I make and present music to evoke the unpredictable and unfolding collective swarm of arms, dreams, affects, yells and desire to live? Could this lead to an understanding of the musical work that revolves around what music does, not what it is?
Does this music have a political potential, a form of musical actionism? In her book Chaos, Territory, Art, Elizabeth Grosz writes that art is the place where properties and qualities invoke future sensations, a people to come, worlds and universes in the making. Art is therefore intensely political in the sense that it develops the possibility of new and different sensations than those we know. Could this be a foundation to an actionism that would set its sight not on hearts and minds, but on our nervous systems? We must, in the words of the British critic Barney Hoskyns, make of joy once more a crime against the state.
Edvard Haraldsen Valberg is a vocalist and songwriter, currently a fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music: I play in Honningbarna, a post-punk band. I have won prizes for it. I like to make music that is life-affirming and that engages in friction/ambivalence. I am also an enjoyer of cool things other people make.