Music, Mediation Theories and Actor-Network Theory

Born, Georgina; Barry, Andrew

doi:10.1080/07494467.2018.1578107

Cited by 27 publications

(22 citation statements)

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“…' (2015, p. 3) If music as an art can only exist through the accumulation of mediators, Hennion argues, then to study music as a practice is to trace the mediations relevant to what we want to understand. The concept of mediation as it developed in the past two decades in studies of music practices informs our empirical study of participatory innovation in symphonic practice (Born and Barry, 2018).…”

Section: Symphonic Music Participation and Innovationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empty Minds: Innovating Audience Participation in Symphonic Practice

2021

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Symphony orchestras today acknowledge the need to make their art relevant again in today's societies and innovate their practices. When these innovations regard audience participation, they challenge the ritualised formats of classical music performance and disrupt normative, social, and artistic traditions. The orchestra therefore presents an interesting case to develop a better understanding of the value-laden dynamics of innovation in public participation. Implicit notions of an 'ideal public' and its desirable behaviour often structure the design, setup , and assessment of participatory innovations. Fieldwork during the Empty Minds concerts, that the South Netherlands Philharmonic organised in 2018 to innovate participation, supports this claim. The organisers aimed to assign new participatory roles to the audience. Throughout the organisational process, three forms of frictions developed. The hierarchical pattern of symphonic concerts conflicted with the plan for new audience participation, material routines were challenged, and during the actual concerts, audience members did not participate in new ways. The observed frictions show that what matters artistically cannot be separated from how the performance is organised: artistic qualities emerge in and through socio-material practice. What comes to count as desirable public participation is thus not a given, but needs to be continuously articulated, negotiated and constructed.

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Section: Symphonic Music Participation and Innovationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empty Minds: Innovating Audience Participation in Symphonic Practice

2021

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“…Recent scholarship on how politics works musically evokes part of Lefebvre´s mentioned arguments by revealing the complex links between music and politics (Guilbault, 2007;Manabe, 2015;Negus, 1997;Street, 2013;Tausig, 2019). iii Much of this work is inspired by theories of mediation (Born 2010;Born and Barry, 2018;Hennion, 2015;Hawkins & Richardson 2017;Williams, 1983) that underscore the fluidity of musical meaning within social, cultural, and political dynamics. In one sense, this notion of musical mediation resembles Lefebvre's argument that his various "rhythms" are fluid and constantly in motion, spatially and temporally.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of Brazilians agreed, and this Bolsonaro jingle mobilized broader social, cultural, and historical rhythms to emphasize the urgency of this political change-after all, it was about the very future of theBrazilian nation. 2010, Born and Barry 2018, Hennion 2015, which, among other things, draw attention to how "music mediates wider social relations, from the most abstract to the most intimate: music's embodiment of stratified and hierarchical social relations, of the structures of class, race, nation, gender and sexuality […]"…”

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confidence: 99%

Rhythm Politics in a Changing Brazil: A Study of the Musical Mobilization of Voters by Bolsonaro and Haddad in the 2018 Election

Bøhler¹

2021

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This article investigates the role of music in presidential election campaigns and political movements inspired by theoretical arguments in Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis, John Dewey ́s pragmatist rethinking of aesthetics and existing scholarship on the politics of music. Specifically, it explores how musical rhythms and melodies enable new forms of political awareness, participation, and critique in an increasingly polarized Brazil through an ethnomusicological exploration of how left-wing and right-wing movements used music to disseminate politics during the 2018 election that culminated in the presidency of Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Three lessons can be learned. First, in Brazil, music breathes life, energy, and affective engagement into politics—sung arguments and joyful rhythms enrich public events and street demonstrations in complex and dynamic ways. Second, music is used by right-wing and left-wing movements in unique ways. For Bolsonaro supporters and right-wing movements, jingles, produced as part of larger election campaigns, were disseminated through massive sound cars in the heart of São Paulo while demonstrators sang the national anthem and waved Brazilian flags. In contrast, leftist musical politics appears to be more spontaneous and bohemian. Third, music has the ability to both humanize and popularize bolsonarismo movements that threaten human rights and the rights of ethnic minorities, among others, in contemporary Brazil. To contest bolsonarismo, Trumpism, and other forms of extreme right-wing populism, we cannot close our ears and listen only to grooves of resistance and songs of freedom performed by leftists. We must also listen to the music of the right.

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“…The notion of mediation, elaborated from Adorno in different ways by Antoine Hennion (who recently abandoned it), 4 Tia DeNora, and Georgina Born, had been meant to tackle such disjuncture. Born and Barry (2018) took the mediation framework further in their recent collection on Music, Mediation Theories and Actor-Network Theory, in particular to explore anew the articulation of music mediations with other social, material and infrastructural 'forces'; and to reinscribe 'subjectivity' 'at the heart of theories of mediation' (Born and Barry, 2018: 477) as the way to attend to the material specificity of the artistic encounter. The explorations encouraged in this third current are informed, albeit critically, by Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and new materialist approaches, in which any notion of dynamic comes from matter itself, from its becoming and temporalities, thus presenting a radically different connection between mediation and materialism from Adorno's.…”

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confidence: 99%

Of Sound and Flavour – Revisiting the Notion of Material for the Cultural Sociological Analysis of Art Domains

Darmon¹

2020

Cultural Sociology

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This article proposes a possible path for a materialist cultural sociology of art, focusing on the dynamics of art(s) domains and harnessing Adorno’s dialectical notion of material anew. I seek to establish links between dynamics of the arts domains and the fostering of specific modes of engagement with them – and, potentially, stances in other domains of life. I argue that a return to Adorno’s notion of (musical) material allows for such connections to be made: the ‘material’ is where the dynamics of the specific arts domains are inscribed; but it is also what is engaged with – by composers and artists as well as by interpreters, performers and publics. A dialectical material lens seems well suited for the critical study of the dynamic of arts domains in the 20th and 21st centuries, given the multiple artistic ‘breaks’ proclaimed. Focusing on some well-known movements in music and cuisine which sought to ‘emancipate’, ‘democratise’, and ‘diversify’ sounds and flavours, I analyse the processes through which they produced sound and flavour anew. I suggest that sounds and flavours themselves have become the carriers of logics relevant to music and cuisine, and that they have come to imperiously command modes of commitment (from composers and chefs, performers, listeners and diners alike) that evince specific stances. Through this necessarily sketchy survey, I provide indications that broader, cross-cutting cultural dynamics may be at stake. Overall, I seek to make clear what theoretical steps are afforded by the joint attention to materiality and the dynamic of art domains.

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Music, Mediation Theories and Actor-Network Theory

Cited by 27 publications

References 100 publications

Empty Minds: Innovating Audience Participation in Symphonic Practice

Empty Minds: Innovating Audience Participation in Symphonic Practice

Rhythm Politics in a Changing Brazil: A Study of the Musical Mobilization of Voters by Bolsonaro and Haddad in the 2018 Election

Of Sound and Flavour – Revisiting the Notion of Material for the Cultural Sociological Analysis of Art Domains

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