International Conference
// Musica Femina // in English//
Given the visible proliferation of concerts, concert cycles
and festivals setting female sound artists in the foreground, we are
able to say in no uncertain terms that the strivings of feminist
producers and sound artists have been fruitful. However, it seems that
the orientation towards eventfulness sometimes triggers a lack of space
for theoretical reflection and work beyond the public stage, which is
vibrant, as well. At the conference Feminism in Sonic Arts,
prepared within the framework of the European project Musica Femina
International, lectures by female musicologists, sociologists of sound,
composers and producers will make us focus precisely on this theoretical
aspect of feminist work in sonic arts.
We shall tackle five fundamental areas of interest,
relevant for the international as well as local space: researching and
archiving lives and artwork of the composers, the potentials and
challenges in feminist museology in the field of sonic arts, the
importance of presence of sound artists on public stages, the
politicality in composing and the new approaches to sonic historiography
of female artists in the area of former Yugoslavia.
Free entrance.
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Schedule:
- 15.00: Mary Ellen Kitchens (DE): On Music Archives: Research on women composers
- 15.45: Irene Suchy (AT): Feminist musicology, music by female composers and a room of their own: Challenges and advantages
- 16.45: Bettina Wackernagel (DE): Never stop questioning: (Re)discovering female protagonists in electronic music
- 17.30: Nina Dragičević (SI): Seeking the history of women sound creators in the area of former Yugoslavia
- 18.30: Andrea Szigetvári (HU): Composing Politicality
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Summaries:
Mary Ellen Kitchens
On Music Archives: Research on women composers
The
presentation will cover the major activities of the Archives of Women
in Music (Archiv Frau und Musik, AFM in Frankfurt, Germany) and its
operating association, the International Workgroup on Women in Music, in
the 40th year of its existence. We will discuss the current projects
such as “Increasing the Visibility of Women in Music”, the “Composer in
Residence Scholarship”, the oral history project “Women activists in the
music field create visibility”, the archive and digitalization. Some of
the regular activities of the Archiv Frau und Musik will also be
presented: general collection development (collection focus: musical
compositions by women composers), the collection of press reviews and
articles regarding women in music, networking meetings for women in
music organizations throughout Germany, research services, creation of
annotated repertoire lists of works by women composers, guided tours of
the Archiv Frau und Musik, lectures on related topics, as well as
concerts featuring works by women composers.
Irene Suchy
Feminist musicology, music by female composers and a room of their own: Challenges and advantages
After ten years of looking for a venue, the MusicaFemina – From Shadow to Light
exhibition featuring creativity of women composers throughout history
finally took place in 2018 in the historical gardens of the Imperial
palace of Schönbrunn in Vienna. Visited by 56.000 people in two months,
the exhibition offered the audience an introduction to the significant
role that women have played in the making of music throughout the
centuries. Along with presenting the main exhibition topics and reasons
for it, the lecture will address questions such as the process of
researching music made by women composers; the advantages and challenges
of selecting composers for a group exhibition, taking in consideration
issues such as highlighting their visibility or enhancing omissions;
obstacles finding resources for large scale projects; and how can female
composing find a common aim with other forms of creativity, such as
poetry, film, performance and sculpture. The lecture therefore aims to
open floor for commonly discussing the tools and strategies that not
only support women in composing but also affirm the necessity of
addressing central political topics such as violence against women,
femicide, common good economy, sustainability and pacifism.
Bettina Wackernagel
Never stop questioning: (Re)discovering female protagonists in electronic music
Electronic
music and sound production are thoroughly integrated into the art world
and everyday life, yet electronic composers are pioneers who, apart
from a few exceptions such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gottfried Michael
König and Jean-Claude Risset, remain largely unknown. The same, but to
an even greater degree, is true for the female composers of early
electronic music, who appear only in the margins of music history and
whose music still has barely entered our cultural memory. Yet female
artists such as Bebe Barron, Else Marie Pade, Delia Derbyshire and
Laurie Spiegel had successful careers in the field of early electronic
music. These composers followed their own paths, away from the ideology
prescribed by the studios. They significantly shaped the sound of
electronic pop culture and influenced generations of musicians: bands
such as Add N to (X), Sonic Boom, Aphex Twin and The Chemical Brothers
have all employed references to Delia Derbyshire, and Laurie Spiegel’s
Music Mouse software was widely used in pop music in the 1980s. The
lecture will focus on early female electronic music, presenting artists
like Laurie Spiegel, Suzanne Ciani, Beatriz Ferreyra and Daphne Oram
among others, and reflect the initial objective and agenda for the
Heroines of Sound Festival, established in Berlin in 2014.
Nina Dragičević
Seeking the history of women sound creators in the area of former Yugoslavia
The following text is not a search for women sound artists within what is existent,
but an objection to the totality in which the world aims to present
itself. Drawing from sonority as immanent to society, the text grabs
absent fragments and places them in carefully structured social
realities, thereby cutting into them. But sonorities are fragile, they
become cuts through the unavoidable interpretation. Hélène Cixous
declares: “The future must no longer be determined by the past.” From
the standpoint of the subordinated groups, the past reveals itself as
inadequate, even flawed and skewed, operationalized to preserve that
very historical reality. Perhaps the question ‘Why were there no great
women composers?’ is wrong. The radical lesbian and feminist perspective
of Monique Wittig redefines it. Taking into account the political
economies, she points to the complete absence of a certain identity and
subject (in her case, lesbian) from history, in other words, from social
existence. Instead of abandoning history altogether, she suggests invention as a constant beginning and potential.
But absence always implies absence of sonority, and sonority is never
truly absent. Only through manoeuvers of political economies that take
advantage of the instability and interpretability of sonority does it
seem to be absent. The question of the absence of sound artists,
composers, and sound creators in the history of certain places is then a
result of conformity to the dominant power structures. Writing the
history of music is more than anything a matter of listening and, to be
more precise, a question: Who is listening?
Andrea Szigetvári
Composing Politicality
On
the turn of 18th and 19th century as music was freed from social and
religious functions, the idea of “absolute music” has gained popularity
and is still affecting our thoughts about music. Eduard Hanslick, for
example, argued that music needed no connotation of extra-musical
elements, for “music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks
nothing but sound”. His opponents, the composers creating program music
(Liszt, Smetana etc.) believed, that they should put into music only a
poetic extra-musical content which is noble enough to be expressed as
part of music. When we think about the possible extra-musical elements
of today’s politics, we have to realize that they are not necessarily
noble. Maybe that is one of the reasons why artistic music seems to be
too fastidious to apply political subjects, leaving it rather to mass
and popular genres. Electroacoustic music has an organic connection with
extra-musical elements being very often its own source material. Both
its new genres (e.g. soundscape) and musical tools (e.g. transcribing
speech into melody) help to provide gateways between meanings, emotions
and formal music structures. The subject of Beef Kohlrabi Cantata
is the refugee crisis. The work written for soprano and electroacoustic
sounds applies different electroacoustic music techniques to
demonstrate how musical sound – created from extra-musical materials –
can be interwoven with the bad and good things human beings are capable
of.
Concept by: Nina Dragičević, Teja Reba;
organized and produced by: City of Women in co-operation with: Bunker –
Old Power Station. In the framework of European cooperation project
Musica Femina International. Supported by Creative Europe Program,
Ministry of Culture, City of Ljubljana, Balassi Institute Ljubljana.