Contemporary Music Research Cluster Seminar: week 8 Composition as a Hyperobject
Event details
This talk will consider compositional practice in relation to Timothy Morton’s ideas surrounding the hyperobject. The aim is not to analyse compositional practice through the prism of the hyperobject or indeed apply the concept to composition, rather, it will allude to Morton’s ideas as a way to think through some aspects of compositional practice. In particular, a move away from compositional conventions, such as ‘the work’ or the ‘singular creator’, which will be discussed in relation to some of my recent projects.
This approach understands composition as a practice that deals with the situated peculiarity of the human condition, and in a time when our world is changing dramatically, it too, must consider these changes and respond. In their writings, both Donna Haraway and Timothy Ingold propose a greater emphasis on our entanglement with the world as the basis of our sense of self, rather than the petrocapitalist idea of the individual self that is improved by consuming. This shift would allow us to respect and treat others and our environment with more respect and care, but also develop a new understanding of what it is to be a human entity. I will propose that compositional practice can be part of this endeavour.
Meeting ID: 974 1147 1887
Passcode: 030134
About the speaker
Claudia Molitor
Claudia Molitor is a composer, artist and improviser whose work hovers between music and sound art, extending across contemporary art practices, including video and installation. Embracing collaboration as compositional practice is central to much of her practice. Recent larger scale work includes Sonorama, a work for a train journey, with Electra Productions and Turner Contemporary, which received a British Composer Award in 2016; Listen to my World, commissioned by Sounds Now which is currently touring around Europe and A Thousand words for weather, commissioned and produced by Artangel and currently installed at Senate House Library, London until March 2023. She is the co-founder/director of multi.modal records and Senior Lecturer at City, University of London.