ESTHESIC BECOMING AND ACTUALIZED WORK: An Artist’s Statement [2015] — Preface

This post is part of a series which will make up the dissertation I wrote alongside a portfolio to complete my PhD in 2015. It is exactly that: an attempt at an account of where I was two years ago, and many things have changed. Still, it might be useful in understanding how and why I write music.

Read Chapter 1 here.
Read Chapter 2 here.
Read Chapter 3 here.
Read Chapter 4 here.

See the bibliography here.

Find my work here, here, and here.

PREFACE

The following text is the result of being tasked to write about one’s own work in an academic manner. It is followed by six pieces that are meant to be representative of my work while pursuing this degree, and the written portion provides context and makes claims about the work. However, it is already apparent that two distinct methods of evaluation are at odds here. The value of an artist’s work, in contexts inherent or social, is obviously apart from an artist’s ability to describe, analyze, or critique that work, but the academic requirement implies the necessity of that ability. A humanities PhD, most significantly, trains scholars in methods of inquiry into human endeavor amid the context of identifying and prescribing broader socio-moral goals.i An artist’s PhD ostensibly also trains one to be a part of a faculty of this sort of inquiry.

A scholarly dissertation in the humanities should be an attempt at a significant contribution to the humanities. When the written portion of an artist’s dissertation is meant to be a contribution to the humanities, it likely takes one of two forms: an analysis of the art’s relation to current aesthetic trends (or its academic vitality), or a scholarly account of one’s own artistic techniques and output. Each of these approaches are undermined by an obvious conflict of interest. A proper analysis identifies problems along with successes in its subject, but given that the author is also directly responsible for the artistic content, it seems irresponsible to submit dissertational content that one has consciously identified as problematic. And while a scholarly account of oneself is more honest as it drops any pretense of objectivity, it is somewhat difficult to imagine a scholarly account of oneself as academically viable.

While perhaps more honest about what an artist in a PhD program does, a dissertation consisting only of art, with no written accompaniment, does nothing to demonstrate academic ability. Artists are needed to teach art, but neither their art nor their teaching is what is on display in a written dissertation (although, as far as teaching is concerned, this is also true for scholars). Pedagogy aside, it may be a boon to have a great artist on faculty as it is a great scholar, but if the artist is unable to communicate about their work or the humanities, then she would be there either to be gawked at, or simply to practice under the university’s patronage.

There is nothing inherently wrong, and in fact many things right, with a university financing an artist simply to produce art. Patronage is an admirable act in an unfriendly economic climate, but, as stated above, what qualifies one to receive artistic patronage has hardly to do with what qualifies one to write a dissertation. Also, a dissertation that contains one’s own art does not demonstrate one’s scholarly ability according to best practices. A written dissertation should show, then, that an artist has value as a member of an academic community as an artist, as well as someone who can work with others on the humanist project.

The humanities are a test kitchen for understanding the products of humanity and applying those lessons to socio-moral improvement. Artists are part of humanities departments in part as a holdover of a belief that universities should develop, produce, and improve “high culture” in a manner akin to scientific research. As the scope and type of texts in liberal arts curricula expanded and flattened, art remained a valuable resource, and artists have remained in academia (today’s programs showing minor changes that have more to do with curriculum than what kinds of artists were actually supported). It is clear that if a diversification of the subjects of humanistic study has become morally necessary, so must the diversification of the art supported by institutions of higher education. This is more a call to admissions and hiring than to individual artists to find a new style on a dime. But if the humanities are a test kitchen for socio-moral improvement, the academic arts must be a test kitchen for arts’ and artists’ roles in and integration into that socio-moral improvement. If an artist’s dissertation is in part designed to show why she would be a valuable member of an academic faculty, it would be helpful to show how her artistic practice, both as part of and as separate from the output it has produced, is a worthwhile thing to teach to undergraduate and graduate students in the humanities as well as students in the arts. It must put forth certain goals of the artist in terms of her contribution to the humanist project, and describe how the art addresses those goals.ii

While this exercise does not adequately resolve writing a dissertation about oneself, it attempts to remain a contribution to the humanities by doing and being the following:

• Becoming, rather than musicology or artist’s statement, a report on the lessons and acquisitions of thinking about one’s art academically. This has the danger of a “personal essay” tone, which must be kept in mind, if not ultimately avoided.
• It makes the music and the written ideas equally vital to the dissertation, while not tying the strength of the dissertation to one or the other. It allows for the possibility that the written ideas and the art change at different rates and in different ways. It allows for the artist to make art without regard to the size of its audience or its marketability. It allows for the art and the ideas to be critiqued together and separately.
• The artist must conceive of and articulate both the humanist project, and how that manifests in her artistic practice, so that neither are assumed.
• It is already and self-evidently a contribution to the arts and artists.
• It does not heavily favor art forms that can be represented in fixed form; the portfolio can, if necessary, be contained in its description in the written portion.
• For portfolios, it foregrounds that the pieces came at different stages of thought, rather than the assumption that all pieces are united in one aesthetic thrust. This is also implicitly true for singular “dissertation pieces.” The ‘all-or-nothing’ aspect of this product is de-emphasized.

A scholarly dissertation presents research in the context of a broader project of inquiry and morality. A strong scholarly dissertation can provide insight and instruction into those modes of inquiry and morality. If an artist’s dissertation can report effectively on an art’s practical integration with the humanities, then a strong one can provide broader insight and instruction on art’s practical integration with a project of socio-moral improvement at large, just as a scholarly dissertation does so with the object of its inquiry.

This is roughly what I will try to do here. Over six years, I wrote the music in this dissertation in order to write music, certainly not in order to take explicit moral action, nor to be a part of any specific phase of history. But this socio-moral project — my conception of it, that is — is in myself constantly in dialogue with what I do as an artist, and what I do as an artist is, obviously, constantly in concert with what I produce and how I produce it. This document will hopefully serve as a report on what goals came to formulation in the former dialogue, what actions came to formulation in the latter, and provide insight into the practical value of each.

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i I use the word “socio-moral” instead of “political,” because politics has to do with the organization of different moralities, not investigating which moralities to pursue. This is where humanities scholarship comes in.

ii This is not meant as a replacement for patronage, economic incentives, outreach, or any other means of artists subsisting on their art alone. I do not mean even for universities to end these ways of supporting the arts. This is a way for an artist to do a dissertation on one’s own artistic work and have it be a contribution to the project of the humanities.