Between Work and Text: A Musical Poetics of Ambiguity

Supported by theory and practice-based experiments in various formats, the project Between Work and Text aspires to develop strategies for a musical poetics whose principal condition is ambiguity and not knowing, read through the optics of a phenomenological/post-humanist/feminist conception of western classical and contemporary art music.

The creative and modelling instant of a musical act constitutes the horizon of our research.

By orchestrating an encounter between composition (Ole Lützow-Holm) and philosophy (Jonna Bornemark) the investigation aims at articulating a potential understanding of some of the energies at work within this ephemeral, vibrant point of no return: A moment perhaps resembling an expanded lightening-like passage from a dormant latency – across wonder and hesitance – to a concentrated performance.

The project inquires into a partly forgotten capacity to navigate intuitively in complex situations, valuing a state of not knowing.

We also ask if epistemological and empirical reverberations of the dialogue could possibly instigate a philosophical conversation about elementary human terms.

The outcome of the research is expected to include artistic work and philosophical essays, a transdisciplinary symposium, workshop activities and a conference as well as an exposition on Research Catalogue.

Moreover, Lützow-Holm and Bornemark will collaborate on an experimental audiopaper configuring philosophical and musical matter in a polyphonic web.