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RíT - Singing with Nature: Samband tónlistar, menningar og náttúru
09.03.2018 - 12:30 til 09.03.2018 - 14:30
Skipholt 31, flyglasal
Föstudaginn 9. mars fer fram í tónlistardeild LHÍ málstofa á vegum Rannsóknarstofu í tónlist undir yfirskriftinni Þræðir - Singing with Nature: Samtal um samband tónlistar, náttúru og menningar. Fram koma norski tónlistarfræðingurinn Tore Størvold, bandaríski tónlistarfræðingurinn Michelle Kisliuk og bandaríska tónskáldið og fræðimaðurinn Erik DeLuca en þau beina öll sjónum sínum að sambandi tónlistar og náttúru í sínum erindum.
Tore Størvold, doktorsnemi við Háskólann í Osló fjallar um viðbrögð íslenskra tónlistarmanna við byggingu Kárahnjúkavirkjunar og skoðar í því samhengi þrjú dæmi; endurvinnslu Valgeirs Sigurðssonar á Grýlukvæði, Náttúru, lag Bjarkar Guðmundsdóttur og flutning Sigur Rósar og amiinu á laginu Vöku. Þrjú ólík dæmi sem opna glugga og sýn á samband tónlistar, náttúru og sjálfsmyndar á Íslandi sem er viðfangsefnið í rannsóknum Tore Størvold.
Bandaríski fræðimaðurinn Michelle Kisliuk, aðstoðarprófessor við Háskólann í Virginíu, hefur um árabil rannsakað tónlistar- og sagnahefðir BaAka-fólksins í Mið-Afríku og veltir fyrir sér hvaða lærdóm megi draga af tónlistar- og frásagnarhefðum þeirra. Lífshættir BaAka fólksins byggja á sjálfbærni, getum við lært að hlusta og tileinka okkur? Á hvern hátt gæti sagnahefð miðlað þekkingu um hvernig hægt er að lifa á jörðinni án þess að tortíma henni?
Bandaríska tónskáldið og fræðimaðurinn Erik DeLuca skoðar fyrirbærið umhverfishljóðlist út frá hugmyndum R. Murray Schafer, John Luther Adams og fleiri og spyr hvort til sé sjálfsgagnrýnin umhverfishljóðlist? Erik DeLuca er búsettur hér á landi og kennir við Listaháskóla Íslands.
Þorbjörg Daphne Hall, starfandi deildarforseti við tónlistardeild LHÍ, stýrir umræðum að erindum loknum en nánari lýsingar á erindum fræðimannanna þriggja má finna hér neðar á síðunni á ensku.
Málstofan fer fram föstudaginn 9. mars frá 12:30 - 14:30 í Skipholti 31, flyglasal. Allir eru velkomnir og aðgangur ókeypis
Singing in a State of Emergency: Storytelling and Listening as Medium and Message
Michelle Kisliuk
University of Virginia
The voices are louder and clearer every day: We are at a tipping point for climate and environmental disaster; the anthropocene taken to its (il)logical end. But do we have the listening skills required to respond in time? This essay takes up a challenge to find new ways to dismantle barriers between areas of study, practice, and politics, seeking the language and the spaces of imagination within which we can take action. The essay looks in detail at some of the polyphonic, poly-social musical practices developed by BaAka from Central African Republic, asking how these kinds of practices matter to our collective future, and offers ideas for disseminating them while grappling with the aesthetic and political implications of doing so. What key role might nonfiction poetic narrative storytelling play in spreading knowledge of cultural practices—listening, singing, dancing practices that teach how to live on the earth without destroying it? BaAka people have developed sustainable practices, knowing how to sing and live with the forest and with each other. This essay asks how might what they know be shared through stories about learning and about living, challenging the ever-expanding borders between previously separated realms of personal and intersocial life, the creative, and the scholarly.
Selling Nature to Save It: Approaching Self-Critical Environmental Sonic Art
Erik DeLuca
Iceland Academy of the Arts
With similarities to the emergence in fifteenth-century landscape paintings, to poems by the Transcendentalists, and to the more recent 1960s land art movement, environmental sonic art is always context-based and conjointly performs as environmental activism with aims to break down the nature/culture dualism. Nature, however, is both a material object and a socially constructed metaphor that is infinitely interpretable and ideologically malleable based on one’s values and biases. Does the environmental sonic artist acknowledgethis? The theoretical framework of this essay extends acoustic ecology, first theorised by R. Murray Schafer, to include environmental history and cultural theory—ultimately problematising definitions of ‘nature’ and ‘natural.’ Through this framework, the author critiques the way composer John Luther Adams represents hisenvironmental sonic art. This analysis will illuminate a dialogue that asks, ‘What is self-critical environmental sonic art?’
Sound and Sustainability: Musical Responses to the Kárahnjúkar Hydro-Power Plant
Tore Størvold
University of Oslo
In an age of global climate crisis, “nature” is taking on new shapes and new meanings. What we mean by “nature”, and what kinds of values we attach to it, are among the most important questions of the new century. Music can function as a kind of “laboratory of environmental theory”, imagining and testing out new ways of relating to the natural environment through sound. This talk will focus on how music operates in an Icelandic debate on hydro-power development. In Iceland, successive neo-liberal governments have made a “pillar of the economy” out of selling greenwashed hydro-electricity to foreign corporations involved in energy-intensive industries like aluminum smelting. This strategy culminated in the controversial Kárahnjúkar mega-project, constructed in 2007. The heated debates surrounding Kárahnjúkar reveal the political dimension of natural landscapes, where conflicting views of nature become conflicting views of what Iceland is or should be. The hydro-power plant sparked a range of artistic and musical responses. One of them is composer and producer Valgeir Sigurðsson’s radical re-composition of the old folk tune “Grýlukvæði”. Sigurðsson’s experimental version of the traditional song is analyzed in detail in this talk, leading into discussions of Iceland’s problematic history of natural resource use and economic dependency on foreign corporations in a post-colonial perspective.
