Questions
Richter’s opening statements in Defragmentation, the ensembles’ dual-directional, active, and dialogic approach, and the role of the floating curator as exemplified by Walshe have prompted the following questions. Our presentation and subsequent paper will be centred on these questions and the material developed through attempting to answer them.
1. Given the dialogic approach presented by Matthynssens and Prins, is there any shift apparent in power between the festival directors, receptive venues, and performing ensembles/individual artists?
2. Are festival directors justified in (continuing to) view their role as the central when they demand the level of curatorship present in the performing ensembles?
3. Given the presence of floating curators, such as Walshe, are performing ensembles (who also have floating membership), by contrast, developing a more rooted artistic, social, and financial practice?
4. What are the available tools for the negotiating, creating, evolving and maintain tactically applied leaders (i.e. conductors, curators, and rehearsalists)?
5. Can we discern any aesthetic impact from the presence of a curator? Would we appreciate the music in another manner without their influence or would even other music be performed? And, finally to what extent would the cited situation(s) differ from performances without curatorial intervention?
The authors of Defragmentation: Curating Contemporary Music, a Sonderband of the “Darmstäder Beiträge zur Neuen Musik”, all by (un)spoken agreement appeared to have taken for granted that nothing in contemporary music curation can actually be taken for granted. In other words, all conceivable aspects of any given contemporary music event were fair game for curatorial play. The writers, all deeply involved and respected in the contemporary music scene, suggested that not only could the choice in pieces, soloists, conductors, and ensembles (all conceivably conventional details of a concert) be (re)tooled, but even site-specific aspects, roles of the musicians and audience, and even value regimes could be instrumentalized to meet the curatorial and artistic need of the programming actor. Dorthee Richter, renowned professor of curation, introduced the bundle by proposing that curation should be a ‘practice that is deeply involved in the politics of display, politics of site, politics of transfer and translation, and regimes of visibility’. [1] If we understand politics as (according to Merriam-Webster), ‘the total complex of relations between people living in society’ [2], than Richter’s opening suggests that every thinkable manner in which people relate can, and more importantly, should be taken into account when putting on a concert. Curators of new music should consider how relationships in our world are displayed, the interplay involved on site (e.g. the history of specific concert venues), the participation (or lack thereof) of an audience, the participant’s ability to understand, enjoy, and be entertained (or not), and even the audience’s and presenter’s perceived position in society and how that interplays in concert.
In the same bundle, Florian Malzacher, a theater curator, placed special importance on curating time, space, chance, people and their roles, and even the discourse surrounding the performances. In his words, ‘all live arts are defined by their relationship to the permanent possibility of failure’, arguing that this offered a chance for a ‘productive (…) obstacle’ that could lead to ‘key curatorial strategies for creating a tension that emphasizes the very aliveness’. [3] As a curator, Malzacher suggests focusing on time (which for him inherently includes chance and space), stretching or shortening the planned durations within his works to navigate ‘the level of physical or mental strength, exhaustion, boredom, or enthusiasm in the collective body of the visitors’. He further reflected on Jan Hoet’s “Chambre d’Amis” in which 50 inhabitants of the city of Ghent hosted artistic works within their homes. Malzacher draws inspiration from and thus defends his premises through the built-in chance, reversed roles, and ‘individual narrations and dramaturgies’ found in this uniquely curated exhibition.
Returning to Richter and her opening statements on curating today, we are presented with a nuanced yet perhaps problematic ambition. She begins by describing the impact of the Fluxus artists on 1960s Europe:
All institutional parameters were questioned; the artists freed themselves from institutional restrictions and organized events by themselves. So, one could see this as a first example of curatorial activity, until this role of knowledge producer was taken up by Harald Szeemann and a new type of curator – mimicking on an iconographic level the position of a god, a king and a genius – emerged with Documenta 5 in 1972. [4]
Continuing, she argues that the goal of the Fluxus artists was at first to ‘transform musical notations or scores to any other imaginable act’ thus creating interesting intersections between both performing and non-performing art disciplines as well as non-artistic activities such as ‘bird-watching or lumberjacking’. To achieve these goals, the Fluxus artists felt the need to leave the traditional concert circuit to put on their shows, thus demonstrating a wanting found in the typical concert arena of the time. Philosopher Boris Groys, in his treatise on care (separate from the above cited bundle) concurs, noting that the Fluxus artists initially took ‘over the role of curators’ when organizing their ‘exhibitions and publications’. [5] Groys further points out that the word ‘curator’ shares a common Latin root with care, cura, helping him to define the curator’s role thus as taking ‘care of artworks (and artists) with the goal of keeping them visible and accessable’. Both Richter and Groys agree that the Fluxus artists felt the need to make themselves accessible via other means then the professional venues.Where they might differ, and what could be problematic regarding the ambition found in Richter’s statement, is the proffered view that professional curators (of said venues), and more specifically programmers of contemporary music festivals, might somehow (re)fill this void and return to the central role of ‘knowledge creator’ and ‘god’.
Caring
In order for an art institute ‘to fulfil its mission’, Groys writes, it must ‘include humans’. [1] The philosopher further writes that art that is devoid of active human participation is simply static and thus not really art but can be better understood as part of the self-sustaining art market. The performing arts, by its very nature, of course include the active participation of performers who are usually people, i.e., dancers, singers, musicians, circus artists, etc. However, Groys, drawing on Nikolai Fedorov, is careful to note that ‘there is no progress in art’ and composed music, instead ‘it immortalizes here and now’. [2] In other words, should during live performances, the players too adamantly restrict themselves to the musical text and live (too) fastidiously by the rules of Werktreue, [3] they then run the risk of solely defending tradition and art made in the past, and thus fail to make art now.
Above, Richter demonstrated a top-down style of active curation. De Cock suggested that the venues also demand a bottom-up kind of curation, suggesting a dialectic form of communication. Amaral, while agreeing with the dual sided approach, instead of relenting under any exterior pressure to curate to ‘get concerts’, she depicts an interior and integral urgency to curate herself and her art. Matthynssens and Prins appear to take this duality a step further, seeking dialogic discussion with partner curators (i.e. festivals and venues) while also instrumentalizing and curating their musicians. All three approaches conceivably are in the same rapidly developing arc in new music curational trend(s). However more remarkably, their active curation, for whatever lurking motivations, appears to be one key method to ensure that ‘humans are included’ and participating, and in keeping with Groys, thus creating new, living art.
Because Walshe is not a member of Nadar ensemble nor was she a performer or conductor in the piece, it may not seem an obvious choice to place the ensemble in her care. However, she is overly qualified, and Nadar was more than happy to follow her lead. Furthermore, as introduced above, this is often the way new music ensembles work. Though not a collective (or assembly) as such, Nadar often applies tactical leaders [1] for its projects. In other words, the ensemble often selects a temporary leader to run rehearsals and then re-enfolds them in the ensemble when the need for leadership has subsided. This is most often the case for rehearsals and conducted pieces. In those situations, the ensemble’s artistic directors will normally verbalize their choice as rehearsalist or appoint a conductor. The same can be said for certain set-ups, strikes, or even catering. Often a temporary leader is needed for specific projects and one will either volunteer (verbally or otherwise) or be appointed. Specifically, for the role of rehearsalist the group often appoints leaders from outside the ensemble. This is generally the situation on the occasions that Nadar premieres a work and the composer can be with them for most or all of the rehearsal process. That was the case for Walshe and so the ensemble temporarily submitted to her lead. Just recently, Nadar rehearsed splendor_solis.wav for a second performance. This time Moore lead the rehearsal process. However, the ensemble was only in his care during the rehearsals. Once finished, the mantle is discarded. For the sake of our study, it is also important to note that this apparent role of the floating caregiver and curator is not just present within ensembles. It can also be found in contemporary music festivals who employ temporary curators for all or parts of their programming.
Thomas R. Moore (1980) studied music performance at Indiana University (1998-2002) and the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp (2004-2007). He defended his PhD in the Arts at Antwerp University in 2022. Moore is now the trombonist and conductor of Nadar Ensemble as well as head of the brass department, lecturer, and chair of the artistic research group Performance Practice in Perspective at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp. His research focuses on new music, conductors, and the instrumentalizing of roles in the performing arts.
Pascal Gielen (1970) is full professor of sociology of culture and politics at the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (Antwerp University - Belgium) where he leads the Culture Commons Quest Office (CCQO). Gielen is editor of the international book series Antennae - Arts in Society (Valiz). In 2016 he became laureate of the Odysseus grant for excellent international scientific research of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders in Belgium. In 2022 he was appointed by the Flemish Government as curator of the Culture Talks conference. Gielen has published many books which are translated in Chinese, English, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Ukrainian. His research focuses on creative labour, the common, urban and cultural politics.
Rebecca Diependaele (1984) studied Musicology at KU Leuven, where she graduated in 2006 with a Master's thesis on the music historical role and significance of composer Louis De Meester (1904-1987). She has been the general coordinator of MATRIX New Music Centre since 2011. In this function, she focuses on the question of how to bring (knowledge about) new music to a wide range of audiences. Relevant publications in that context are Het Pluriversum van Lucien Goethals (ed., together with Dr. Jelle Dierickx, 2016) and Brewaeys Unfolding (ed., together with Dr. Ann Eysermans, 2022).
Case – Balancing love and entrepreneurship
As we study the workings of the above cited curating ensembles and artists, we began to feel a compelling need to also consider their practical needs alongside any driving and urgent artistic motivations. As laid out in the 2010 article Curating with Love, for the fine arts ‘the current existing order is dominated by project-oriented thinking’. [1] That has now also become the norm for classical music and most certainly for new music ensembles. Though these ensembles have fixed members, these are only (semi)permanent artistic arrangements, not financial or even time-connected commitments. [2] Ensembles come together to rehearse the specific project for which they have been engaged. Only the musicians and technicians on that project will be present and the goal of each rehearsal is project-driven, namely the specific piece(s) on the program. Within the ensembles cited above, the members of these groups will often float between roles (and sometimes ensembles), too. For example, in Nadar ensemble the clarinettist will often play game-controller or light-switches. Moore is the ensemble’s trombonist, but often conducts it and plays composer made object-instruments. The violinist writes the scenography, and the artistic director is its cellist. In other words, the members of Nadar are flexible in their engagements to the group. This is a typical working arrangement for other ensembles who also work in the same genre (see Sound Initiative in Paris, Musikfabiek in Cologne, and Mosaik in Berlin).
This project-oriented MO can also be found in the way (freelance) composers navigate and network in this field. For example, Jennifer Walshe, an internationally renowned composer and performer has made it a key component of her professional life to float between ensembles, coaching them, and communicating her pieces. Her work is entirely project-driven and reflects another previously demonstrated point, namely, ‘mobility and networks have become part of the doxa of the contemporary art world’. Walshe temporarily joins ensembles, rehearses them on her pieces, and then departs after the premiere, allowing the piece to live its own life, developing further and together with the ensemble.
One of Walshe’s piece, titled splendor_solis.wav (2022) was written for Nadar ensemble. It plays with the established relationship and perceived hierarchy of conductor and ensemble and how that may be deployed artistically. We, the three authors, had the chance to study this piece from three different by close perspectives and are convinced it offers an excellent opportunity to study the ensemble, its interior curation, as well as the Walshe’s temporary role and the care she offers when the ensemble is in her hands.
In a paper on ‘curated concerts’ researcher and pianist Heloisa Amaral detailed a discernible shift in concert curation. Her standpoint, however, was from the perspective of performers and ensemble artistic directors instead of from the organisers’. According to Amaral, performing ensembles have relatively recently progressed ‘from an interpretive tradition of musical performance’ towards ‘an understanding of performance as relational, critical and, ultimately, performative practice‘. [1] Furthermore, ensembles and soloists have moved from a reactive approach to a proactive style of playing and, by extension, programming concerts. She cites several examples of musicians and performers who ‘[take] more responsibility for the content of what they present’, including the quartet, Nikel’s current programming as well as the Belgium based Nadar ensemble. According to Amaral, these ensembles reject traditional models such as ‘[waiting] for a call from a programmer in need of a performer for this or that work’ or ‘[commissioning] pieces by composer X to get a concert at festival Y’ in favor of more cohesive and comprehensive self-curated projects or initiatives developed in close dialogue with composers, concert organizers, and other interested parties. Amaral views this with a sense of urgency not simply as a requirement to be booked by a concert venue, but as something integral to the whole. From the standpoint of an artist, she expressed a deep need to be critically reflective of the society within which she lives and plays and observed the same urgency in the two ensembles cited.
Tom De Cock also offers nuance to the top-down, godlike curatorial vision presented above. During an interview, the percussionist, conductor, and concert curator, declared that, ‘everyone is a curator’ these days, ‘for good or for ill – and whether you like it or not!’ De Cock described an observable and general need within the new music sector to curate concerts, a need that he distinctly felt not only as a receptive concert organizer (for the Wilde Westen in Kortrijk, Belgium and G.A.M.E. at the Conservatoire of Ghent) but, like Amaral, as an artistic advisor for the ensemble ICTUS as well. In other words, both the venue and the performer are now required to actively program and ‘curate’ their performances.De Cock noted that this shift towards two-sided concert programming had become dominant in a relatively short time span, using as an example a concert he played with Nikel at the 2009 Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music. (Remember Richter’s comments were made nine years later in 2018.) He characterized their concert as noteworthy and relevant ‘because the pieces were [individually] interesting’. Nikel played five pieces in ‘five different styles’. Upon reflection, he indicated that should he propose (or receive) a concert like this now, ‘they would just laugh at’ him. For De Cock, ‘the curatorial approach is much more based on fixed ideas for one concert; where you propose one idea with a package of music that comes with the idea’. [2] In other words, any other type of concert programming and, but especially the promotion thereof would be ill suited.
Pieter Matthynssens and Stefan Prins, the artistic co-directors of Nadar ensemble, have both described a collective ‘pressing need to take care of their audiences’ in their concert programming. This is very much reflected in their self-designated ‘curated concerts’, in which each piece is ‘representative of its author’ (composer, writer, improviser, etc.) while maintaining ‘the whole presentation as one event’, one arc of tension. [3] In previous research, we have described Nadar’s style of programming as integrated concerts, meaning all aspects of a performance are taken into account, including but not limited to the pieces, video, light design, staging, costumes, and even the performers, both their traditional and customised roles. More specifically, we have shown that these artistic directors are more than willing to instrumentalize traditional roles, such as a conductor to meet their artistic aspirations. For example, Prins and Matthynssens have on several occasions described the conductor as ‘a visual element’, stating:‘if you program concerts in which you think the visual element is really important, then putting it simply, with a conductor, you have a dancer on stage’ [4] – a component, a role and a person, flush with tradition, and thus ripe for customization and instrumentalization. [5]
Based on both the authors of Defragmentation and the additional depictions cited in this section, we can begin to form a working and perhaps more nuanced definition of ‘curation’ (at least for the sake of this paper). Music critic and researcher, Holly Tessler, offers a good starting point, ‘Modern curation work is narrative in nature: telling a compelling story not just through a static collection and presentation of artefacts to a single, monolithic audience but through dynamic and multiply iterated discourse with a range of audiences, communities and stakeholders’ [1]] Especially the words, ‘Dynamic discourse with stakeholders’ strikes us as relevant to our research today. The artistic directors of Nadar call their programming style, ‘Curated Concerts’. Drawing inspiration from this practice, we can add the following to Tessler’s definition: Curating is also found in the active choice of (and manner in which they are are utilised, i.e. instrumentalized) tools and people as they are applied to the narrative (those pieces and artefacts) as well as the manner in which they are presented.
This can lead us at this point to conclude, like the authors of Defragmentation, that instrumentalization of not only pieces and locations, but people and roles is inherent to curation today. However, the reality as presented by Amaral, Prins, and Matthynssens, suggests that curation should take place in dialogue with the affected parties.
ASIDE 1
In handling a role (and person) as an instrument, it is conceivable that their implementation results from a foregone strategy. When looked at it in this manner, the instruments are tools, tactics, who when defined by business analysts Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan Enric Ricart, are ‘residual choices open to [an artistic director] by virtue’ of its strategic choices. [1] Instruments, who again are people, and in the case of the conductor also a leader, who are to be ‘wielded and discarded when no longer required’. [1] In an earlier study, we showed that conductors, when treated in this fashion are tactical leaders, deployed ‘à la carte’ for specific pieces and programs based on strategic and (sometimes) specified motivations of a utilizing actor. (That actor is usually an artistic director and/or composer.) [3] For example, composer Alexander Khubeev required a bound conductor to tell the story of the rise and fall of a dictator in his Ghost of Dystopia (2014, rev 2019); his strategy was the story, and his residual weapon of choice, an instrumentalized conductor. [4] Another example can be found in Nadar’s artistic directors’ instrumentalization of the conductor in their ‘curated concert’ program “Extensions” (2015) in which in each piece distinctly questioned the role of the performing conductor. As the performing ensemble, Nadar’s artistic directors took the active decision to curate the concert in such a fashion that not just the works and the order of presentation were arranged, but the role, its instrumentalization, and apparent tactical deployment of one of its musicians as well.
[1]Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Joan Enric Ricart, “From Strategy to Business Models and onto Tactics,” Long Range Planning 43, no. 2–3 (April 2010): 195–215, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2010.01.004.
ASIDE 2
Groys suggested another perspective on care that could be helpful to understand and further develop a dialogic concert curation:
[Hanna] Arendt draws a distinction between ‘work’ understood as the productive process, and ‘labour’ understood as the unproductive work of care. Further, Arendt argues that it was [Karl] Marx who reversed the relationship between work and labour and subjected productive work to unproductive labour – labouring activity – by introducing the notion of ‘labour power’. The labour of care is unproductive, but it produces ‘labour power’, which produces everything else.
If we substitute the word care with curation, then this suggests that the labour behind curation is itself unproductive. However, curation thus produces ‘labour power’: handmade human power. It is this power which creates art.
ASIDE 3
Musicologist Rebecca Diependaele describes splendor_solis.wav as follows in her program notes:
Of particular note is the focus on the conductor's hands, which [Walshe] literally and figuratively highlights with a projection on several screens. Concept and structure of the composition are loosely based on the Magnum Opus or The Great Work, an alchemic ‘recipe’ for the creation of the Philosopher's Stone, the mythical substance necessary to turn lead into gold. In a metaphorical sense, The Great Work also refers to processes of personal or spiritual transformation and artistic creation. The title of the composition, splendor_solis.wav, refers to the almost eponymous Splendor Solis, a voluminous manuscript containing 22 allegorical miniatures from the early 16th century, attributed to the alchemist Solomon Trismosin (who, by his own account, possessed the Philosopher's Stone). Walshe's conductor-alchemist appears as a motley collection of contemporary archetypes, each of whom performs magic with hand movements. From magician or hand model to stylish waiter, manicurist, or celebrity chef: each of them tries to make the impossible possible for the astonished mortal. Therein lies the parallel with the classical image of the conductor, who with a mysterious personal touch makes an orchestra shine like gold. Splendor_solis.wav thus dismantles and restores the magic of the moving hands that do not make music themselves, but - who knows - perhaps can make the music. [1]
