Becoming with curatorial performance practice. Emergence of perform(ance/er) agencies, subjectivities, and artist(ic) haecceity in curatorial music performance

Abstract

Abstract - This dissertation interrogates the processes by which differential subjectivities and artist(ic) haecceity emerge in and with encounters of curatorial performance practice. It asks (a) How are entangled agencies and subjectivities articulated by local apparatuses of curatorial performances? and (b) How do curatorial performers and curatorial performances become with one another? These research questions are supplemented with a third research question that is addressed through practice-based inquiry: How can interrogating my own subjectivity in curatorial practice affect artist(ic) haecceity in and becoming with curatorial performance practice? The transdisciplinary nature of this dissertation supports multiple, related aims. First, this dissertation aims to develop a situated theoretical approach for addressing agency, subjectivity and musical performance practice as entangled and mutually constitutive, through a diffractive reading of poststructuralist philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s (1987/2013) philosophy of assemblages and quantum physicist and feminist new materialist Karen Barad’s (2007) agential realism. Second, this dissertation aims to expand to live music curation discourse, offering conceptual development with its proposition of curatorial performance practice, as well as an in-depth exploration of the subjectivity processes of performers who invoke curatorial strategies as a form of creative agency in their own performance practice. This dissertation addresses these aims in four case studies. Three case studies generate data from performance observations and interviews, while the fourth case study addresses the study’s aims with artistic research. The agential realist assemblage logic employed to interrogate the observational cases emphasizes the entanglement of curatorial performers and performances, figuring them as curatorial perform(ance/er) assemblages. The analysis addresses the differential subjectivities that emerge in performance, as well as the mutual becomings of curatorial performers and performances, mapping these transformations as an entangled processual mode of individuation termed artist(ic) haecceity. The fourth case study inverts this logic, using artistic autoethnography to document the effects of exploring subjectivity and agency in the process of composing a curatorial performance using agential realist assemblage logic. This final case study further aims break down a dichotomy between academic and practice-based artistic research. Following the insights gained from the case studies, this dissertation proposes that curatorial performance practice might offer an entry point to a respons(able) mode of performing artistry that emphasizes both agency and accountability. Additionally, it may offer one way to respond to pedagogical calls to cultivate creative and critical practices that better serve student and societal needs, on the one hand, and practices that support feelings of self-efficacy, agency, and intrinsic motivation on the other. Finally, this dissertation serves as an example of how cutting transversals across research areas and theoretical approaches may support complex understandings of the entangled relationality of situated, partial views, as well the processes by which research apparatuses produce their segmentation. The theoretical propositions made in this dissertation may support a commoning of discourses and an embrace of liminality by attending to the generative ways in which conjunction and disjunction spark new ways of thinking. Keywords: performance practice, music curating, performer subjectivity, performer identity, assemblage theory, new materialism, agential realism, post-qualitative inquiry, artistic research