Modern & Im/material Things

I’ve recently been given an interesting (and challenging) task at work: create a training program that teaches people how to think critically about research, data, consumer insights and media strategy. The idea is that this program would be used as a kind of directional guide to help people evaluate the research they use at the core of their media strategy. Create a guide to act as a strategy litmus test, something like: “This smells like bullshit: a pocket guide.”

For some context, I work as a search media planning strategist. I draw on primary and secondary research sources to find demographic and psychographic insights about consumers, their media consumption and their online search behaviors. Between this and my penchant for critical theory, I’m somehow suited to lead the aforementioned task. Sarcasm aside, I’m trying to approach this task as thoughtfully as possible. Admittedly I’m enjoying the way the project is forcing me to think about how I think  critically. But in true nerd fashion, I am struggling with how to articulate my approach into concrete practices, partially because I keep focusing on the implications of trying to universalize my own perspective into larger, general practices. 

I’ve got some rough ideas about how to approach this powerpoint presentation but I’m throwing the question out to all of the you. How would you approach this task? How would you create a theory of critical thinking? What would you ask? Tips? Remember this is a guide that has actually be put into practice, so it has to have some kind of grounding. I’m tempted to begin the deck with a high level overview of epistemology, ontology, and Bourdieu’s “Habitus.” Too much? 

Although I agree with Nitsuh Abebe’s observation that ideas aren’t always sounds and sounds may sometimes be ideas, I’d like to suggest that there is a third option as well: sounds can create contemplative spaces for ideas (revolutionary ones or otherwise). In short, there is some kind of alternative, third space between ideas and sounds that can be created or afforded by beautiful or pleasant music. 

“Most music lovers carry around some shred of a very powerful myth that says the opposite, that pleasant music can never really be where the meaningful ideas are.” This sentence in Abede’s post really struck me as a strange observation. Perhaps I run in very limited circles but I’ve never known anyone to say anything close to the statement above. Defining what constitutes pleasant music might be useful. For example, I find Burial’s music incredibly pleasant but someone may find Skrillex’s music more pleasant to listen to instead. The stylistic difference between Burial and Skrillex is massive but I think it boils down to restraint versus excess. I assume pleasant music for Adebe is music that demonstrates some kind of restraint or almost minimalistic quality, as his examples of Cocteau Twins, The Mountain Goats and The Chap generally suggest.  But it remains an assumption until he defines “pleasant” for readers. 

I favor music that demonstrates restraint. For me, restraint typically, but not always, suggests a higher level of sophistication, thought and attentiveness by the producer or songwriter. Subtraction and absence can create interesting spaces for communication, affect, and contemplation. Conversely, excess tends to obliterate those spaces in almost an imperialist, colonial like fashion: excess (i.e., over production) can result in kind of hand-holding between the artists and the listener, as if to say that everything is important so that nothing is actually important.

Saying more with less is hard. Saying something interesting and thoughtful with less is an art. That being said, there are times where I react to all of the minimalist, restrained music I listen to and actively seek out something more maximalist in its approach. If anything, this is exactly why I love Florence and the Machine.  A song like “Cosmic Love” is so massive, so epic and grand that it borders on obscenity. And in a way, it is obscene because it is so big. It’s brave in its boldness, in its willingness to be grand because it knows it has to be: an Aphex Twin style piano ballad would be kind of a let down for a song about love that’s as massive as the goddamn cosmos. And yet, the excess affords some breathing room for you, the listener, to consider your own thoughts on ‘cosmic love’ or at least appreciate Flo’s magnificent pipes.  So maybe this means I am more of a hypocrite than biased. Or both. 

Those who have read my blog for awhile know that I have a real love and deep appreciation for Foucault’s essay “Of Other Spaces.” He discusses (and defines) heterotopias as place-less spaces that engender alternative modes of being or knowledge production. They allow for re-imagination which may or may not be political in nature. Lately I’ve been thinking about how music can act as a heterotopia in Foucault’s framework, especially as it relates to the music I write. On some level, music as a contemplative space is a bit self-evident insofar as people often discuss their personal relationship to a song or music in terms of evocation (e.g., “this song makes me feel x” or “I think about y differently because of this band”). But usually that kind of contemplation has its roots in something personal and emotional and often in relation to universal experiences of love or grief. Restraint in music creates enough breathing room for this level of contemplation because there is less competition between sounds, beats, ideas and feelings. You can hear yourself think and feel.

A few years ago, I went through a phase where I started combining my love of critical theory with the art I made. I tried to use the art I made as a way of explicitly explaining the theory through the medium of fine art in almost a pedagogical sense. Part of it was an exploration of how to resituate theory and part of it was about making theory accessible in different ways. Sometimes this was successful and sometimes it was not. Now I find myself wanting to do the same thing with music. While I won’t go into the project too much, I’ve started working on something that begins to scratch at the surface of this a bit. 

A few months ago I wrote a post-dub song that sampled Zizek discussing the nature of love, which a few folks seemed to appreciate. As a result of that experiment, I ended up connected with another critical theory and electronic music loving producer based in Paris. Over the past 6 or so weeks, we’ve been ‘remixing’ Zizek’s Occupy Wall Street speech. The process has been really fantastic on a lot of levels. Our project initially started as an attempt to turn the speech into a protest jam for the club kids and evolved into something more like sound art. We realized that as much as we wanted to create something dance oriented, the ideas Zizek was communicating were being lost to the dance music. So it became about, I think, creating music that created space for both Zizek’s ideas to be resituated but also creating something like a heterotopia for the listener. 

We’re in the process of wrapping up the mix, creating cover art, etc for the track. We’re also drafting a statement about it and deciding on what kind of political life we’d like it to have. I can’t say if I think it’s successful or not because on some level I don’t think that it’s my place to make that call. But maybe, just maybe, the end product will be a solid effort to articulate that space between politics, ideas, beauty and sounds. 

Note: This is a link to the completed Zizek remix