Steven Feld (University of New Mexico Santa Fe)
08/02/2023, ore 17, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia
As musicians we are all familiar with the nominal and verbal "composition" (from Latin componere), to indicate the artistic practice of putting things together, of organizing elements large and small into a repeatable "work" or "piece" that can afterwords have a new life, a life as a whole that creates ongoing access to its parts. But in what way is this idea or model of composition, of composing, equally generative for "research"? In other words, can we imagine new creative practices, new syntheses, though a more explicit alignment of "research" and "composition?" And what are the risks, and the hopes, that come with this conceptual move? This lecture explores these questions with examples from my long-term anthropology of sound work across text, audio, photography, and film in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea as well as from more recent research in Ghana.