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THE AVANT GARDE AS EXFORM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2018

Lauren Redhead
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Abstract

Peter Bürger's critique of the historical avant garde (in Theory of the Avant Garde) accounts for its ineffectual nature as a political movement because of its relationship with institutions. He argues for hermeneutics to be employed as a critique of ideology, and as a facet of the understanding of the ‘historicity of aesthetic categories’. The influence of institutions on music since 1968 has served as a central part of its critique: the work concept itself seems to enshrine political ineffectiveness and the bourgeois nature of art practice that ought to be critiqued by an avant garde. In contrast, Nicolas Bourriaud's concept of the ‘exform’ re-conceives the avant garde as outside of institutions and an idea of ‘progress’ that is aligned with a dominant capitalist ideology. He frames the task of the avant-garde artist as giving energy to ‘waste’, outside of political and ideological institutions. This type of avant-garde practice functions to ‘bring precarity to mind: to keep the notion alive that intervention in the world is possible’. This article explores the exform with respect to the work of the British composer Chris Newman and the Swiss composer Annette Schmucki, and considers how Bourriaud's approach to re-thinking the avant garde might apply specifically to contemporary and experimental music in the present.

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Type
RESEARCH ARTICLES
Information
Tempo , Volume 72 , Issue 286 , October 2018 , pp. 7 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

1 Is there a Musical Avant Garde Today? A conference held at City, University of London, 2017. See www.city.ac.uk/events/2017/july/is-there-a-musical-avant-garde-today.

2 www.city.ac.uk/events/2017/july/is-there-a-musical-avant-garde-today.ibid.

3 Dahlhaus, Carl, ‘New Music as Historical Category’, in Schoenberg and the New Music, trans. by Puffett, Derrick and Clayton, Alfred (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1964] 1988), p. 2Google Scholar.

4 Dahlhaus, ‘New Music as Historical Category’, p. 13.

5 Bürger, Peter, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. by Shaw, Michael, Theory and History of Literature, vol. 4 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, [1984] 2009), p. 5Google Scholar.

6 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, p. 6.

7 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, p. 6.

8 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, pp. 15–16.

9 Fraser's work is a particularly relevant example, because it examines the intersectional nature of power and institutional relationships in art. The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, describing a solo exhibition of Fraser's work, writes that: ‘institutional critique is concerned with the disclosure and demystification of how the artistic subject as well as the art object are staged and reified by the art institution’, and that Fraser in particular, ‘treats the institution as a set of positions and social relations rather than a physical site in which institutional power can be clearly located’. See Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Andrea Fraser, “What do I as an artist, provide?” (St Louis: Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 2007), p. 3Google Scholar. Online at www.kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/files/AndreaFraser.pdf.

10 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, p. 14.

11 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, p. 95.

12 Fraser, Andrea, ‘From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique’, Artforum, 44, no. 1 (2005), pp. 278–83Google Scholar at p. 282.

13 This was disputed, and the composer claimed that he was paid for the ‘performance’ and not the piece, writing: ‘the idea i gave GNM for free, for the performance i received a compensation. since it has nothing to do with self-publicity, it was simply a performance job’ [sic]. Johannes Kreidler, Facebook Post, 30 October 2012, archived at Ian Pace, ‘The Johannes Kreidler protest at Donaueschingen about the fusion of the radio orchestras at Baden-Baden/Freiburg and Stuttgart – a discussion (from Facebook!)’, Desiring Progress (7 November 2012) https://ianpace.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/the-johannes-kreidler-protest-at-donaueschingen-about-the-fusion-of-the-radio-orchestras-at-baden-badenfreiburg-and-stuttgart-a-discussion-from-facebook (accessed 15 February 2018). This statement implies that Kreidler believes the work concept to be preserved in the case of this protest work, since he separates the intellectual labour of composing and the physical labour of performing in this way.

14 Johannes Kreidler, Facebook Post, 25 October 2012, archived at Pace, ‘The Johannes Kreidler protest’.

15 Or a ‘compensation’; the composer's quibbling over terms notwithstanding.

16 See Johannes Kreidler, ‘Das Neue am Neuen Konzeptualismus’, published as ‘Das Neue and der Konzeptmusik’, Neue Zeitschrift für Muzik, vol. 175, no. 1 (2014), pp. 44–49Google Scholar, <http://www.kreidler-net.de/theorie/Kreidler__Das_Neue_am_Neuen_Konzeptualismus.pdf> [accessed 13.05.2017].

17 cf. Adlington, Robert, Composing Dissent: Avant-Garde Music in 1960s Amsterdam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 237–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Unsigned, ‘A Tough Week for Orchestras, The Journal of Music (28 January 2013), http://journalofmusic.com/radar/tough-week-orchestras (accessed 15 February 2018). It appears that this notice was later rescinded.

19 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, p. 58.

20 Nicolas Bourriaud, The Exform, trans. by Erik Butler (London: Verso, 2016) [ebook].

21 Bourriaud, The Exform, p. 8.

22 Bourriaud, The Exform, p. 10.

23 Bourriaud, The Exform, p. 10.

24 Bourriaud, The Exform, p. 10.

25 Bourriaud, The Exform, p. 47.

26 The precarity referred to by Bourriaud, and in the rest of this essay, is that of aesthetic categories, and not of the working conditions of the artist. The latter precarity has rightly been highlighted and protested in many recent discussions in music.

27 Adorno, Theodor, Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. by G. Mitchell, Anne and Blomster, Wesley V. (New York: Continuum, 1973), p. 30Google Scholar.

28 Lachenmann, Helmut, ‘The “Beautiful” in Music Today’, TEMPO 135, (1980), pp. 20–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lachemann notes that the avant-garde of the past, at his time of writing, had ‘led to complacent mannerism’. (p. 21)

29 Annette Schmucki, email communication with the author, 12 February 2018.

30 Annette Schmucki, repeat one (2017) music score.

31 See Wingfield, Paul, ‘Janáček's Speech-Melody Theory in Concept and Practice’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 4, no. 3 (1992), pp. 281–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 band, band (n.d.) www.bandpage.ch (accessed 15 February 2018).

33 Annette Schmucki, email communication with the author, 11 February 2018.

34 Bourriaud, Nicolas, The Radicant, trans. by Gussen, James and Porten, Lili (New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2010), p. 184Google Scholar.

35 Gronemeyer, Gisela, ‘“… ohne die Berührung der menschlichen Hand”: Chris Newman im Gespräch’, MusikTexte: Zeitschrift für neue Musik 38 (1991), pp. 3–6Google Scholar; p. 3: Es ist fast wie nichts, ich will, daß dieses material fast wie Schrott ist. So nahe am Schrott wie möglich. Wie die Reste, die am Rand des Tellers übrigblieben. So wenig und so nahe am Nichts wie möglich. My translation; Gronemeyer suggests ‘garbage’ as a translation of the word ‘Schrott’.]

36 Bourriaud, The Exform, p. 34.

37 Dan Warburton, www.paristransatlantic.com/ (Autumn 2008) quoted at Mode Records Chris Newman, Mode 201 (n.d.) www.moderecords.com/catalog/201newman.html (accessed 4 July 2017).