micro.culture musings @ IASPM International, Montrˆ©al


.. // word games @ IASPM Montrˆ©al

Hear be: the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) is rocking its international conference-- hosted by my own Department of Communications here at McGill University in Montrˆ©al. Here's the website [designed to be simple by me and Carlen Lavigne, of note] & the schedule .

I'll be giving a talk on the shift from subcultures to micro.cultures on Sunday, July 6th at a panel entitled: "Playing on Repetition (Chair: Stephen Amico)." Other panelists include ...

Rethinking the Wheel: The Semantics of the DJ
Gavin Kistner (University of Western Ontario)

FinalScratch: Inaugurating a Virtual Authenticity?
Sara Wei-Ming Chan (York University)

Production as practice: The politics of DEEP HOUSE in New York City
Kai Fikentscher (Ramapo College)

Here's the abstract for my own blurbage:

Hearing Difference: The Seme.
tobias c. van Veen

The study of resistant musical practice has often theorised its status as a "subculture." Since the advent of global capitalism, however, underground anarcho-theorists and political philosophers alike have been struggling with theorising the new position of resistant subcultures. This new position is, by default, the opposition. No longer able to practice a politics of disappearance in the mode of a liberatory invisibility, "subcultures" have shifted through the same terrain as capital: networked globalisation. Hand-in-hand with the spread of tele-technologies, electronic music cultures have shifted from the practices of the Temporary Autonomous Zone to what we can begin to theorise as a network of "microcultures." No longer invisible, but weaved into the same global fabric as capital, the very terrain of politics is remixed as microcultures move from resistance to positive and affirmative ontological projects. At the same time, musical trends play out this shift as the postmodern aesthetic of sampling is complexified through the resurgence of computer music, including the digital processes of granulation and a return to an avant-garde aesthetics of failure. Spin that again, and we could say: from memes to semes.

posted. Thu - June 26, 2003 @ 11:22 AM           |

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