Initially, I wanted to write on music’s place within sound art, and problematise the literature on dance music. I found that when reading Simon Reynold’s Energy Flash, there was much focus on the drugs culture of early rave music; the book was written very anecdotally, yet is taken as an academic source for documentation of early rve music and culture.
However, when reading modern readings in general, I found them to be centred around the social culture of the topics in which they speak on. I came to realise that whilst I still problemetise Reynold’s writing on UK dance music, I am now in recognition that the way in which academic writing has progressed into the twenty first century, more social and cultural observations are made, and there is less of a focus on technical research.
This means that the way modern works in art are written into history from this new more culturally focussed lens. This allows us to use these resources as research into social perspectives of issues. However, it could also begin to seperate newer art forms from older ones, disallowing them to exist in certain canons.
We can problematise this particuarly in the case of black sound art. Whilst my intial interest was to write within the topic of dance music, I came to read Teklife / Ghettoville / Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century. Actress’s practice as a producer felt akin to the way in which sound artists create their sound. Well, Actress is litteraly using sound as his median, why isn’t he considered a sound artist? I thought about how the term “sound art” has been presented to me by educators and experiences as a very broad term, with sound art being able to be considered visual art in many cases. If sound art is a fluid art form, how can we explain its undeniable exclusions of certain artists from its canon? I beleive that the fundamental reasoning for this is the way that soubnd art, and art in general, have become academic practices; the study of them in order to validate oneself as an artist, the mass inaccessibility of historical readings or knowledge on practices.
When choosing to study sound art, I wasn’t sure what it even was- to be honest I’m still not sure what it actually even is. We had Jose telling us in first year that music was NOT to be created within the course, an overall feeling of dislike for structured music from the educators on the course. I thought about Actress speaking on his own music in Sonic Ecologies: “I wanna hear form, I wanna hear structure”. I thought about how I, too, want to hear form and structure. There is something about rhythm that feels like I inhabit it within my body, where music without a clear sense of direction or groove, I feel detached from. Does this mean I’m not a sound artist? Maybe. But I would like to propose the idea of sound art as litteraly any art situated around sound. And would like to further propose the idea that exclusions of partciular artists from its canon is due to sound art’s position within academia.
When chossing to study sound art, I looked to Berlin based artist Klein, from South London. I percieve her art as sound art. Maybe it is not, but then we must unpack why. I don’t have a statistic or anything to prove it, but I know that there is a clear exclusion of black artists from the sound art realm. I see artists who created very musical works, such as Harold Budd or even Brian Eno becoming main proponents on the topic, yet Actress’s avante garde experimintalism with field recordings, isn’t even considered sound art. Isn’t what he does quite litteraly the definition of ecological sound art? I believe that the barriers put in place in what is and isn’t considered sound art are institutional barriers; with instituitional racism being the root of the black exclusion. Therefore, I have decided to us ethe opportunity of writing this essay to speak on the reasons for exclsuion and highlight the issue.