Georgina Born: Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avantgarde (1995)

“Anthropologist Georgina Born presents an ethnography of the renowned Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. As a year-long participant-observer, Born studied the social and cultural economy of an institution for research and production of avant-garde and computer music. She gives a unique portrait of IRCAM’s composers, computer scientists, technicians, and secretaries, interrogating the effects of the cultural philosophy of the controversial avant-garde composer, Pierre Boulez, who directed the institute until 1992.

Born depicts a major artistic institution trying to maintain its status and legitimacy in an era increasingly dominated by market forces, and in a volatile political and cultural climate. She illuminates the erosion of the legitimacy of art and science in the face of growing commercial and political pressures. By tracing how IRCAM has tried to accomodate these pressures while preserving its autonomy, Born reveals the contradictory effects of institutionalizing an avant-garde.”

Publisher University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1995
ISBN 0520202163, 9780520202160
xvi+390 pages

Reviews: Tia DeNora (Am J of Sociology, 1996), Eduardo de la Fuente (Culture and Policy, 1996), Simon Emmerson (Review: J Royal Musical Association, 1997), Timothy Dowd (Contemporary Sociology, 1997), Paul D. Lopes (American Ethnologist, 1998), Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner (Computer Music J, 1999).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (17 MB)

Pauline Oliveros: Anthology of Text Scores (2013)

“This anthology contains over one hundred pieces that span four decades of creative work of Pauline Oliveros. Collected in one comprehensive volume, these individual and group meditations, as well as solo and ensemble performance pieces are invaluable resources for performing musicians, music students, and anyone interested in the life work of one the most unique voices in modern music.”

Foreword by Brian Pertl
Edited by Samuel Golter and Lawton Hall
Publisher Deep Listening Publications, Kingston, NY, 2013
ISBN 9781889471228, 1889471224
vii+211 pages
via Gramsci

Reviews: Douglas Cohen (Women and Music, 2014), Jay M. Arms (Tempo, 2014).

Publisher, Lulu
WorldCat

PDF (removed on 2022-11-1 upon request from Paul C. Rapp)

Rab-Rab: Journal for Political and Formal Inquiries in Art, 2 (2015)

“The second issue of Rab-Rab is in two volumes, all together in 500 pages. The focus of the second issue is ‘noise against culture.’ The contributions deal with the formal theory of noise, politics of contradictions, the device of estrangement, materialist film, music and violence, Futurism, Russian avant-garde, improvisation, void, heterophonies, swearwords, communism, ideologies of marriage, class wars and electricity.

Departing from our programme based on the understanding of art practice as a confrontation between formal and political inquiries, our aim in this issue is to use noise as the name for this difficult, disturbing, loud and coercive exploration. In many cases the formal and political aspects of noise are two separate things: the former is seen as an issue of information or perception, whereas the latter is usually reduced to a metaphor of spontaneity. But if we change these parameters of discussing the noise from measurable coefficients of failed communication, or from elusive metaphors of contingencies, towards the conceptual references related to ideology and class struggles, then what is understood as noise turns into something else. It can become a valid concept of inquiry, refusing to be pinpointed to conventional academic banalities silly phenomenological artistic fantasies immersed in.”

Contributors to volume A: Dror Feiler, Mazen Kerbaj, Ozren Pupovac, Ben Watson, Michel Chevalier, Jean-Claude Moineau, Taneli Viitahuhta, Henrik Heinonen, Grégoire Rousseau, Bruno Besana, Ivana Momčilović, and François Nicolas.

Contributors to volume B: Darko Suvin, Anthony Iles, Grupa za Konceptualnu Politiku, Mattin, Jyrki Siukonen, Rahel Puffert, Martin Krenn, Jaakko Karhunen, Max Ryynänen, Antti Eskelinen – Eze, Gert Raeithel, Aeron Bergman, Alejandra Salinas, Milica Tomić, Christine Delphy, Peter Gidal, Giovanna Esposito-Yussif, Kari Yli-Annala and Sezgin Boynik.

Edited by Sezgin Boynik
Publisher Rab-Rab Press, Helsinki, Sep 2015
ISSN 2342-4885
278 & 278 pages

Publisher (Issue 2A)
Publisher (Issue 2B)

Issue 2A: PDF, PDF
Issue 2B: PDF, PDF