Intimate Happenings
In the process of editing and preparing for release a sudden, close, and private electronic improvisation, I was struck by a question on its ability to be classified as a kind of musical event occurring within a musical consumptive environment operating under a scheme of commodity fetishism. So much of the music business as it stands today is structured around the production of consumer content and live spectacle, wherein the relations held in the exchange of the content or the spectacle are substituted for relations held between artist and audience. I’m naturally skeptical of claims of authentic interpersonal exchange occurring between live acts and their (ideally) appreciative audiences. Concert-goers may have an impression that an artist performed to them personally and closely, though the spectacle itself and the perception of this closeness between artist and listener are products of this commodity-substitution. I believe the accuracy of this example is positively correlated to an act’s market reach and dominance.
I’m wondering how small scale performances wherein the performers are the sole audience fit into this picture. The performance mentioned at the top of this post is one in which myself and another participated in, though it was not intended for any other listener; the choice to “release” it was never part of its original conception, nor is it being undertaken to realize any pecuniary return.
Was it a concert? Was it a recording session in the way “recording session” is typically understood and framed in terms and expectations of monetary, service exchange? I’m wanting to call this gathering and music making by another name, as if to preserve it, to separate it, from other terms - I propose an “intimate happening” as a an event within a different kind of performance sphere operating under alternative rules: the performance is for the performers, and elides descriptions of authenticity as a term sullied by the exigencies of commodity exchange.
As I prepare this recording for release on this site, my mixing and mastering strategies seek to highlight the improvisatory and accidental in the happening, bringing the privacy and closeness of the exchange to the fore. Perhaps too, I wonder about the place of voyeurism in musical performance - can the closeness of a recording, as an object, withstand collective listening, collective gaze? More on this topic at a later time…