Sounding Kin: A Queer-Feminist Thinking of Free Improvisation
Author(s)
Primary Supervisor
Tomlinson, Vanessa
Other Supervisors
Kallio, Alexis A
Year published
2021-11-16
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This artistic research is an emergent, situated thinking of freely improvised musicking through the lens of queer and feminist theory. It pursues a post-qualitative inquiry founded in collaboratively thinking-with a series of companions: myself as an artist and as a queer feminist, my musicking and thinking communities, six conversation companions, and six companion texts. Along with these companion-thinkers, I explore three entangled points of inquiry: “unmastering” the habits of institutional musicking and the persistent presence of the master-Man; interrogating the notion of “freedom” in free improvisation, its history ...
View more >This artistic research is an emergent, situated thinking of freely improvised musicking through the lens of queer and feminist theory. It pursues a post-qualitative inquiry founded in collaboratively thinking-with a series of companions: myself as an artist and as a queer feminist, my musicking and thinking communities, six conversation companions, and six companion texts. Along with these companion-thinkers, I explore three entangled points of inquiry: “unmastering” the habits of institutional musicking and the persistent presence of the master-Man; interrogating the notion of “freedom” in free improvisation, its history and its situated meaning for a queer-feminist white settler musicker on stolen, unceded Aboriginal land; and the possibilities of collaboration founded in notions of contamination, interdependence, changing and being changed. Thinking-with companions and with musicking is explored as a curious and iterative practice, with voices and ideas arising recurrently throughout the text. Free improvisation is a generative site for soundmaking as kinmaking—musickin: intimacy formed via contact and exchange. The sweaty concept of “free”, however, becomes a prompt to reckon with complicity. By staying with this trouble, the queer-feminist free improviser practices response-able musicking in contaminated human and more-than-human collaborations.
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View more >This artistic research is an emergent, situated thinking of freely improvised musicking through the lens of queer and feminist theory. It pursues a post-qualitative inquiry founded in collaboratively thinking-with a series of companions: myself as an artist and as a queer feminist, my musicking and thinking communities, six conversation companions, and six companion texts. Along with these companion-thinkers, I explore three entangled points of inquiry: “unmastering” the habits of institutional musicking and the persistent presence of the master-Man; interrogating the notion of “freedom” in free improvisation, its history and its situated meaning for a queer-feminist white settler musicker on stolen, unceded Aboriginal land; and the possibilities of collaboration founded in notions of contamination, interdependence, changing and being changed. Thinking-with companions and with musicking is explored as a curious and iterative practice, with voices and ideas arising recurrently throughout the text. Free improvisation is a generative site for soundmaking as kinmaking—musickin: intimacy formed via contact and exchange. The sweaty concept of “free”, however, becomes a prompt to reckon with complicity. By staying with this trouble, the queer-feminist free improviser practices response-able musicking in contaminated human and more-than-human collaborations.
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Thesis Type
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Degree Program
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School
Queensland Conservatorium
Copyright Statement
The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise.
Subject
unmastering
freedom
history
queer-feminist
musicking
feminist theory