Gordon Mumma: Cybersonic Arts: Adventures in American New Music (2015)

“A candid account of a broad artistic community by an active participant and observer

Composer, performer, instrument builder, teacher, and writer Gordon Mumma has left an indelible mark on the American contemporary music scene. A prolific composer and innovative French horn player, Mumma is recognized for integrating advanced electronic processes into musical structures, an approach he has termed “Cybersonics.”

Musicologist Michelle Fillion curates a collection of Mumma’s writings, presenting revised versions of his classic pieces as well as many unpublished works from every stage of his storied career. Here, through words and astonishing photos, is Mumma’s chronicle of seminal events in the musical world of the twentieth century: his cofounding the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music; his role in organizing the historic ONCE Festivals of Contemporary Music; performances with the Sonic Arts Union; and working alongside John Cage and David Tudor as a composer-musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In addition, Mumma describes his collaborations with composers, performers, dancers, and visual artists ranging from Robert Ashley and Pauline Oliveros to Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg.”

Edited with Commentary by Michelle Fillion
Foreword by Christian Wolff
Publisher University of Illinois Press, November 2015
ISBN 9780252039430, 0252039432
xxxiv+339 pages

Reviews: Eric Smigel (Intersections, 2015), Daniel Barbiero (Avant Music News, 2016), Aurelio Cianciotta (Neural, 2016).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (updated on 2022-11-21)

Over Borders (2021)

“This collection began as an idea to share some of our own scores* connected to the act or effects of borders, which we then expanded to include work by others in our creative communities. Artists / composers were asked to send scores that, in some way, referenced borders; social, political, virtual, perceptual, environmental or between species.”

Curated by Jez riley French and Pheobe riley Law
Self-published, April 2021
[52] pages

Publisher

PDF (20 MB)

Jonas Staal: Propaganda Art in the 21st Century (2019)

“Propaganda art—whether a depiction of joyous workers in the style of socialist realism or a film directed by Steve Bannon—delivers a message. But, as Jonas Staal argues, propaganda does not merely make a political point; it aims to construct reality itself. Political regimes have shaped our world according to their interests and ideology; today, popular mass movements push back by constructing other worlds with their own propagandas.

Staal shows that propaganda is not a relic of a totalitarian past but occurs today even in liberal democracies. He considers different historical forms of propaganda art, from avant-garde to totalitarian and modernist, and he investigates the us versus them dichotomy promoted in War on Terror propaganda art—describing, among other things, a fictional scenario from the Department of Homeland Security, acted out in real time, and military training via videogame. He discusses artistic and cultural productions developed by such popular mass movements of the twenty-first century as the Occupy, activism by and in support of undocumented migrants and refugees, and struggles for liberation in such countries as Mali and Syria.

Staal proposes a new model of emancipatory propaganda art—one that acknowledges the relation between art and power and takes both an aesthetic and a political position in the practice of world-making.”

Publisher MIT Press, September 2019
ISBN 9780262042802, 0262042800
230 pages

Interview with author: Pierre d’Alancaisez (New Books Network, 2021, podcast).

Reviews: Christoph Chwatal (Third Text, 2020), Hailey Maxwell (The Drouth, 2020), Joerg Bader (Critique d’art, 2019, FR).

Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF (12 MB, updated on 2024-4-23)