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Simon Steen-Andersen performs Run-Time-Error at SPOR 2011 (Photo: Anette Vandsø)
MUSIC, SOUND ART AND

CONTEXT IN A POST-
CAGEAN ERA
by Anette Vandsø (/profil/anette-vands%C3%B8) Reading time: 34 minutes Like 0
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION (#title0)
I. SPOR festival (#title1)
II. The open artwork and the neo- Over the past 70 years, the idea of a stable relationship between the
avant-garde (#title2)
musical work of art and its context has been a key problem. The
III. The aesthetics of SPOR
festival (#title3) question of autonomy has always been at the core of the discursive
IV. Conclusions: Epistemology:
practices of music (Loesch 2004), but since the 1950s, the matter of
work-concept and the text versus context has been explicitly debated and negotiated in
music/sound art distinction
(#title4) both art and the theories of art, and the opposing positions are still
BIBLIOGRAPHY (#TITLE5) more radicalized.
REVIEW (#TITLE6)
KEYWORDS (#TITLE7)
On the one hand, we see a cementation of the ideas of autonomy in
this period. This can be seen, for instance, in the theoretical positions
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
(#TITLE8) within high modernism which praise the idea of music as an
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Music, sound art and context in a post-Cagean era | SEISMOGRAF http://seismograf.org/pr/vandsoe
‘absolute monade’ (Adorno 1974: 26). It can also be observed in the

institutionalization of music analysis as an autonomous category
that requires a strict distinction between 'the music itself' and
'external factors' (Bent and Pople, "Analysis") and in the development
of different, formalistic analytical approaches such as the 'Schenker
analysis', 'set-theory analysis' etc. (Samson 2001).
On the other hand, in the same period we see an overwhelming

amount of avant-gardistic experimental music and sound art that
constantly challenges the idea of a stable threshold between the
artwork and its context. In electroacoustic music and sound art,
sonic contexts are collected via field recordings and integrated in the
sonic texts, either with a focus of the objet sonore (Schaeffer, 2004) in
itself or in an investigation of the sociality of those sounds (Kim-
1 (#footnote1_sqr69qh)
Cohen 2009) . And, many artworks are disseminated into
a situative context as seen in happenings, events and social
experiments within sound art (Nyman 1974; Foster 1996).
Since the 1990s, this tension between music and context has resulted
in numerous academic considerations regarding the status of the
musical work of art (e.g. Goehr 2002; Middleton 2003; Talbot 2010).
The rise and institutionalization of popular music studies, sound
studies, performance studies etc. have also challenged the idea of
autonomy from within the academic disciplines; both the autonomy
of the work of art, the autonomy of the field of music and
accordingly, the autonomy of musicology as a discipline (Middleton
2003).
If we look at the current field of contemporary music, the

relationship between music and context seems to have developed
into a fruitful area for creative practices. For instance, in 2013 the
theme of the Danish SPOR festival for contemporary music and
sound was: “.... the relationship between sound and context –
between sound, and those things that surround the sound itself, such
as silence” (SPOR webpage: theme_2013). In accordance with this
theme, the festival presented a variety of, more or less, open works
that involved their immediate contexts in different ways.
This article asks: What are the consequences of this naturalization of

the open work? How can we understand the current situation in
relation to the tradition for open artworks, happenings, events etc. in
the avant-garde? The article claims, that with SPOR, we see a
transition to a post-Cagean aesthetic where the open work is no longer
primarily a negation of the conventional work category, but instead a
positive horizontal expansion into the social situation. The notion of
'post-Cagean aesthetics' has been introduced prior to this article
(Kotz 2001). However, in this article I wish to try and narrow down a
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more specific definition of what such an aesthetic entails. The

following analysis investigates the specific dispositions at SPOR that
have lead to this post-Cagean aesthetic, which reformulates the
correlation between text and context. In other words: How can a
festival for contemporary music and sound art not only reflect, but
also actively change the field it represents? Finally, the article
attempts to conclude how this post-Cagean aesthetic changes the
ontology of music: what is a musical work when it is inseparable
from its context? Is there any difference between music and sound
art, when music is something that constantly opens up to the world
of sounds around music? And if not, how should musicology respond
to this development?
I. SPOR festival
SPOR is an annual festival that takes place in May in Aarhus, the
second biggest city in Denmark. Aarhus has hosted an annual spring
festival for contemporary music since 1978. The NUMUS festival
(1978-2002) preceded SPOR and was organized by the Danish
composer Karl Aage Rasmussen. SPOR emerged in 2005, with some
of Rasmussen's students as the primary initiators: The Danish
composer Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen was the administrator, while the
first curator was the Danish composer Niels Rønsholt. The profile of
the NUMUS festival was to present music from both internationally
renowned composers and younger, local or national not yet
established composers. SPOR continued this profile. It presents both
the international scene for contemporary music and the cultural
growth layer (SPOR webpage: 'ABOUT SPOR'). It has even enhanced
contact with the non-established layer by introducing an ‘open call
for works’. But despite the affinities to the NUMUS festival, many
things changed when SPOR became SPOR.
In general, there is a significant change in the indefinable parameter

one might call the atmosphere: At the NUMUS festival, the audience
was a small, secluded segment including musicology students,
student composers from the academies, composers and regular
2
concertgoers connected to the local concert hall Musikhuset
(#footnote2_8ric5yk)
. The NUMUS festival took place at Musikhuset and
presented a programme with musical works. The SPOR audience
represents a broader segment. There are still a lot of students coming
from musicology and the music academy, but there are also students
from a wide range of departments such as art history, aesthetics and
cultural studies, plus a more diverse group of sound artists. Another
significant change is that the festival has moved away from the local
concert hall Musikhuset and now takes place in the urban
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environment of Aarhus. The streets are used for sound walks and
performances; alternative urban spaces such as galleries or venues
for performance theatre are used for concerts. Finally, SPOR is not
just a festival for contemporary music but also a festival for sound
art.
SPOR’s overall aesthetical profile is in line with the avant-gardistic

tradition of John Cage. In 2013, the thematic headline was simply
'TACET!' – the Latin word for silence – and with this slogan the
curator, Juliana Hodkinson made a subtle reference to Cage's seminal
silent piece 4'33'', because 4'33'', in the most well-known score version
from 1960 (Edition Peters), is simply notated with 'TACET' as the only
instruction. Cage’s idea with 4'33'' was that the silence from the
instrumentalist(s) would allow the audience to listen to all the
accidental noises and sounds that are present around them
(Kostelanez 2003:70). It is the 'art without work' (Duckworth 1999:13)
as Cage himself describes it. From this perspective 4'33',' is an
investigation of the border between the musical piece and its context,
between sound and silence. The reference to 4'33'' was in other words
in line with the overall festival theme that year, which was the
investigation of the relationship between sound and context.
As the apex of his otherwise diverse oeuvre, 4'33'' encompasses Cage's

general ideas on music and art, which he presented vigorously in his
many writings, lectures and interviews. Cage celebrates the open,
undetermined artwork that orientates itself towards its
surroundings. Art that is “an occasion for experience” (Cage 2004:31)
rather than an autonomous object. This seems exactly to match the
overall aesthetics of SPOR: a Cagean aesthetic that celebrates the
open artwork as an occasion for all kinds of experiences.
SPOR presents a wide range of open works: Both performances in the

tradition of avant-gardistic happenings and events, sound art
installations, sound walks and pieces using conventional musical
instrumentation.
As examples of avant-gardistic happenings, one could mention that

in 2013, a number of pieces by the Swedish Fluxus artist Sven-Åke
Johansson were presented in a concert where Johansson also
performed on stage. In 2010, Cage's 4'33' was performed in an
unannounced version for accordion, which was however quickly
recognized by the audience who afterwards politely nodded to the
3 (#footnote3_u7mkh37)
piece by applauding . As an example of instrumental
music, one could mention the British composer Benedict Mason's
Second Music for a European Concert Hall (1993- ), which was
performed at the opening concert in 2007, in an old military building
in the centre of Aarhus. This composition for symphony orchestra
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(which is actually a series of works made for different concert halls)

presents pre-composed music. However, this piece is still an open
work. It explores the specific site of the concert, as the
instrumentalists play while walking around the concert hall hereby
articulating the specific space. Another example of a piece that
explores the specific site of the performance is the Danish composer
Simon Steen-Andersen's Run-Time-Error (2009), which was
performed at SPOR in 2011. However, this piece does not feature
traditional instruments. The instructions for this piece are that the
performer (who is the composer himself) is to strike objects collected
from the specific concert venue, and that he is only allowed to strike
each object once. In order to fulfil this requirement, the collected
objects are placed in a long row that leads the performer from space
to space, down stairs, up stairs, through doors etc. etc. in a route that
depends on the specific location. A small video-recorder attached to
the performer's clothes documents the percussive performance. At
the actual concert, the composer replays the recorded video in two
tracks while remixing them with a specially designed joystick that
determines both the speed and the direction of the video tracks. This
results in an audiovisual, percussive fugue where the same
audiovisual material is played and remixed.
Simon Steen-Andersen performs Run-Time-Error at SPOR 2011 (Photo: Anette Vandsø)

(http://seismograf.org
/sites/default/files/blog_images/1/image1.jpeg)
As an example of a piece that comes closer to what we normally

perceive as sound art, we can mention the Swedish sound artist Åsa
Stjerna's installation Subaqua (2011), which presents sounds from a
number of streams in Aarhus. This installation was placed in front of
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the local art museum AROS. The audience had to walk from pipe to
pipe in order to experience the sounds. The movement of the
audience and the social situation of the act of listening was therefore
not the context but a part of the piece, as a comment on the city
where it was presented and in that sense the context and the text
were woven tightly together.
II. The open artwork and the neo-avant-garde

When I claim that the open artwork is a fruitful and playful
investigation of the context, it is an interpretation that differs from
the standard descriptions of the potential effects of such open pieces.
If we try to subsume the many different theoretical understandings
of the avant-garde we will find that there are three typical, but
fundamentally different approaches to the open artwork: one claims
that its main effect is the negation of the institution of art – as anti-
art, another that it is a rejection of art as a metaphysical category or
anti-modernism, while the third argues that the open artwork is not
mainly a negation, but instead a horizontal expansion into the social
situation.
The open artwork as anti-art

The German avant-garde
theorist Peter Bürger (1980)
argues that the historical avant-
gardes from the beginning of the
20th century (dadaism,
surrealism, futurism,
constructivism, etc.) no longer
attempted to develop the
trajected methods for
representation. Instead they
tried to break away from the
institution of art all together via
an institutional 'self-critique'
directed at the institution of art
(Bürger 1980:70-74). Bürger
mentions Marcel Duchamp's
ready-mades, where pre-
fabricated objects are exhibited
as art, as an example of such self-critique. When the artist's signature
is added to objects that are not made by the artist, the individual
production as a category – and thereby also the entire work category
– is questioned (Bürger, 1980: 78).
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A similar analysis could be, and indeed has been, made of 4'33'. In
4'33'' the singular sounds are also not individually produced. Instead,
the composer's signature is added to a timeframe with random
sounds, and the autonomous artwork is replaced by the provocative
act itself. 4'33'' has often been described as 'anti-music', which
primarily negates the bourgeois institution of art (e.g. Watkins 1995)
and as an artwork that questions the privileged position of the artist
in an attempt to escape work categories and in stead reunite art and
life (e.g. Goehr 2002).
Bürger's analysis has a negative conclusion: the historical avant-

gardes do not succeed in their negation of the institution of art.
Instead the institution of art includes them and turns them into art.
In time, the shock effect is no longer shocking, but instead is turned
into yet another artistic effect. In this process, art is denied any real
effect on the lived lives of the audience (Bürger 1980:78).
Neo-avant-garde
Cage’s aesthetical project is developed and formulated in and by the
larger 'neo-avant-gardistic' movement during the post-war period. In
the neo-avant-garde, the ideas and aesthetic strategies from the
historical avant-garde were rearticulated and reused (Bürger
1980:80). Cage’s own art is often described as neo-dadaism (e.g.
Watson 1995: 564). Cage himself embraced the term 'neo-dada' in an
acknowledgement of his heritage from dadaism although he also
stressed that there is a difference between historical dadaism and his
projects (Cage 2004: xi).
In Bürger's point of view, the neo-avant-gardes are just an empty

repetition of the original avant-gardistic movements as a further
cementation of their status as art (Bürger 1980: 80). It is common to
evaluate Cage’s aesthetical projects in a similar way and to conclude
that his art is a failed attempt to break away from or negate the
institution of art. Lydia Goehr (2002) claims, for instance, that with
4'33'' Cage attempted to challenge the authority of the composer but
failed: “Cage had obviously not succeeded with 4'33'', and other such
'works', in undermining the force of the work-concept within the
musical institution” (Goehr 2002: 264).
There is one problem with this kind of analysis: By focusing solely on

the critique of the institution of art it overlooks the other potential
effects of 4'33'' (and other such open artworks). It also overlooks that
some of these critical potentials are in fact constituted not in spite of
institutional framing, but because of it.
Theatrical art
A different understanding of the neo-avant-gardistic open pieces is
7 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
seen in the art historian Michael Fried's (2003) description of anti-

modernistic art from 1967.
According to Fried, all the parts of a modernistic work of art refer to

the same unity. It is therefore present at every moment in its totality
and appears to the spectator as an entity that is independent of actual
time and space. Rather than being placed in the mundane space-
time, the backdrop of modernistic art is, according to Fried, the ideal
category of Art (Fried 2003). Contrary to this, anti-modernistic
artworks insistently point out the social dimension and the mundane
time span of their own reception. Fried refers to John Cage, among
others, as an example of 'anti-modernistic art'. According to Fried,
such artworks do not appear to be a manifestation of 'Art' (With a
capital A) or 'Music' as a metaphysical transcendental category.
Instead, they come across as mundane things or objects in a
situation. They are therefore not primarily a negation of the
4
institution of art, but a negation of art as a transcendental category
(#footnote4_krzb7x1)
. They only explore the theatrical meeting between
artwork and recipient and not the ideal category of modern Art (With
a capital A).
This critical interpretation of 4'33'' is also common. For instance, the

British philosopher Stephen Davies begins his book on the
philosophy of music with the question “John Cage’s 4’33’’ Is It
Music?” (Davies, 2003, 11-29). He argues that since 4'33'' does not
limit itself from the situation in which it appears, it cannot be music
(Davies, 2003, pp. 11-29). Instead of investigating how 4'33'' and other
similar artworks change the field of music, Davies simply constructs
a category of music that does not include such 'difficult' pieces. As a
consequence, such a position cannot grasp the changes in the
current field of new music and sound art, because it simply leaves out
that which challenges the conventional definitions and categories.
Inclusion of the situation of the artwork

Fried's understanding of Cage's art is in fact not so far from the ideas
we see in Cage's own writings. Here, neo-avantgardistic art is
understood as an attempt to include the social situation in which the
piece is perceived. This is however, a good thing in Cage's point of
view. In 1957, he gave this description of the 'openness' of the
contemporary art of his time:
For in this new music nothing takes place but sounds: those that
are notated and those that are not. Those that are not notated
appear in the written music as silences, opening the doors of the
music to the sounds that happen to be in the environment. This
openness exists in the fields of modern sculpture and architecture.
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The glass houses of Mies van der Rohe reflect their environment,
presenting to the eye images of clouds, trees, or grass, according to
the situation. And while looking at the constructions in wire of the
sculptor Richard Lippold, it is inevitable that one will see other
things, and people too, if they happen to be there at the same time,
through the network of wires. (Cage 2004: 7-9).
The 'theatrical' inclusion of the horizontal, social dimension is in

Cage's point of view not just a gesture that negates the institution of
art, nor a negation of art as an ideal metaphysical category. Instead, it
is a gesture that in a generous way opens towards a broader field of
sounds and multimodal events.
Even though the negation is not the primary effect of the open work,
according to Cage, the effect is still that this development within the
arts undermines the idea of art as a metaphysical category. For
instance, Cage directly suggests that we should stop using the word
'music' altogether and instead talk about 'organized sound' (Cage
2004: 3). He also writes:
There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There

is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we
may to make a silence, we cannot (Cage 2004: 30)
This statement can be taken literally and read as a statement

emphasizing the noisiness of the world. But, it can also be
interpreted as a statement saying that the perceptual background of
music is not the neutral, empty or silent space of Art (with a capital
A), but the noisy, actual social situation – and read as such, the
paragraph is a radical break with the metaphysics of the high
modernism, which was quite outspoken among Cage's composer
colleagues in the 1950s. Such an interpretation is in line with Cage's
statement that art is simply an 'occasion for experience' (Cage 2004:
31), which is also a radically different understanding than the idea
that music is a metaphysical category.
To sum up, Cage's aesthetic favour an open work-concept: the

artwork's ontological basis is the situation and not the pure category
of 'Art'. And because the artwork is always situated it is an event or
process rather than an autonomous object.
4'33'' – three potentials

These three understandings of the neo-avant-gardes can be
understood as different potentials of the specific artworks. If we look
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at the reception of 4'33'' it obviously has all three potential effects: it

can be – and has been – experienced as institutional critique, it can be
anti-modernism that negates the metaphysical category of music,
and it can be experienced as sound art that includes the entire
situation in which the piece is perceived. How we experience 4'33''
depends on our perspective. One understanding is not more 'correct'
than the other and all understandings are seen in the current field of
music.
III. The aesthetics of SPOR festival

At SPOR, the open artwork is the norm and yet this festival does not
come across as a provocative negation of the institution of music.
Instead it appears as a permanent expansion of the social, horizontal
dimension in accordance with Cage's own aesthetics – as it is
expressed in his own writings. The overall aesthetical profile of SPOR
can therefore be described as a post-Cagean aesthetic in the sense that
Cage’s aesthetic is the naturalized, hegemonic background for
thinking about, listening to, curating, writing about, doing music
and/as sound art.
In his book Musicking (1998), Christopher Small argues that music is

not something 'out there' as a mass of objects. Instead, it is
something that we do. We perform, talk about and listen to music
and in this performance we constitute what music is. According to
Small, it would be more correct not to use the word 'music' but
instead talk about 'musicking', in order to stress the performative
quality of this category. Small analyses how we 'do' music in the
traditional concert setting, but using his line of thought we could ask
how SPOR embraces Cage's aesthetics. How is this perspective on
music performed or constituted? How does SPOR act as an agent that
'does' music or performs this 'musicking'?
If we are to understand how SPOR establishes its post-Cagean

position we have to discuss at least four different aspects: the
paratexts created by the festival, the choice of locations, the
organizational strategies of the festival and the selection of artworks
presented.
The paratexts
At SPOR festival, there are many framing statements or paratexts
(Genette 1997), such as the curatorial statements, programme notes,
presentations at the concerts etc.
The webpage serves as a platform for specific information about, for
10 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
instance, time-schedules for the planned concerts, prices etc., but it

also gives the audience a guideline as to how these artworks can be
understood or experienced.
In comparison, one can think of the Fluxus concerts that toured

Europe in the 1960s and visited Denmark in 1962. Before or while
attending these concerts people were not given any guidelines as to
how they could understand the happenings presented. For instance,
Fluxus artist Dick Higgins played La Monte Young's Composition nr. 7
for over an hour to an audience who had no idea how long the piece
would last or how they were supposed to react (Pedersen 1968).
Composition nr. 7 is a minimal composition where a specific interval (a
quint) is to be held for a not specified 'long time'. At this specific
concert in Nicolaj Church in Copenhagen, it was played on an organ.
Later on, Dick Higgins directly stated that he attempted to drive the
audience out of the concert hall. The general public was of course
shocked, provoked and offended by these happenings (Pedersen
1968).
At SPOR, there are many experimental works of art that are very
close in nature to the Fluxus happenings. As already mentioned, in
2013 there was a performance by Sven-Åke Johansson, who was
involved in the Fluxus movement. As part of his performance,
Johansson cut a cucumber on the sharp side of a cymbal, which was a
performative action that could easily be interpreted as absurd 'anti-
music'. However, the presentation on the SPOR webpage offered a
very different interpretation.
On the webpage, there was an introduction to Johansson with a small

bio that stressed his importance in many different musical
environments. The concert was therefore not just a performance of
Johansson's music but also an experience of him as an important
historical agent or character and a tribute to him and his
achievements. The webpage also gave the reader an explanation of
Johansson's work:
By deconstructing the traditional systems in music - in his work,

new aspects of the production of sound are presented, often leaving
a very sensual and visually narrative impression for the observer.
(SPOR; webpage, artists Sven-Åke Johansson, no date)
This description does not stress the anti-art-potential, but instead

enhances the sensual and visual dimensions. According to Genette,
such a paratext is not a context on the 'outside' of the work. The
paratext is rather a threshold […] an ’undefined zone’ between the
11 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
inside and the outside (Genette 1997:1) because we cannot avoid the
paratexts when meeting a text and once read, the paratexts condition
our interpretation of the text. According to Genette, paratexts are
empirically made up of 'a heterogeneous set of practices' (Genette
1997:2) and at SPOR, the webpage is just one practice, other
dominating paratexts are the programme notes and the oral
presentations in the welcome speeches, for example.
Returning to this specific concert, I had read the description in the

programme and on the webpage, and I for one did experience the
concert as a sensuous display of sounds with visual and narrative
impressions. There were also humouristic elements in this concert,
where the audience giggled. There were elements of making fun of
the conventional roles of the composer, performer and audience, but
still the overall gesture was not a negation of the conventional
institution of art.
When comparing SPOR to Fluxus, it is obvious that SPOR does not

attempt to be a provocative, anti-music festival. It includes the
audience instead of exposing them.
Choice of venues
The idea that music is an autonomous work of art that can be
appreciated, evaluated or understood 'in itself' is not just something
that is constituted through our language(s) about music. It is also an
ideology that has structured both the ritualistic presentation of
music in the concert halls and the architecture of concert halls (Small
1998, Thompson 2004). The rituals of the concert hall dictate a
certain type of behaviour from the audience. There is for instance a
strict distinction between the way the audience is allowed to act in
the foyer and in the concert hall itself. When the music plays the
audience focuses on the sounds from the stage while they ignore the
sounds around them.
The acoustic design of the concert halls is also ideological. They are
built so that they leave out the noises from the surrounding world
and instead emphasize the sounds from the stage over the sounds
from the audiences. This gives the impression that the musical work
of art we encounter in the concert hall is in a different category than
everyday soundings (Thompson 2004). Through the architectural
and interior design and the ritualistic behaviour, the ideology of
music as an autonomous object is constituted.
When SPOR began to include the urban space of Aarhus by involving

a number of different concert venues, exhibition spaces or urban
sceneries, it not only changed location, but also moved away from
specific social, acoustic and ideological places that favour the
12 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
autonomous work-concept. The audiences were no longer placed

within the institution of Art Music. Due to this development, the
negating aspect of the open works was down-toned: When we are on
a sound walk in urban space, no one will think of this as 'anti-music'
or a negation, simply because it is not framed as 'Music' (with a
capital M). In other words: by moving out of Musikhuset and instead
choosing the smaller stage and a place for an experimental dance
company, Granhøj as a main venue, SPOR opened the doors to
investigations of other kinds of contexts than just the immediate
acoustic, ideological and social context of the musical work in the
concert hall.
With the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s statement (1991:59)

"that new social relations demand a new space, and vice-versa" one
could say that also new relations between listener and artwork
demand a new space or the new spaces ‘afford’ (Norman 2013) new
relations. In the case of SPOR festival, the change of location made it
possible for the open artworks to be something else than (just) a
negation.
The way we behave during the act of listening is not just constituted
by the concert hall but also the concert setting: the placement of
chairs facing a scene for instance. This became obvious at a
presentation of the Danish electronic composer and sound artist Ole
Jørgensen's loudspeaker installation TON8 (2011). The installation
was presented in the concert venue with chairs facing a scene. In
order to experience Jørgensen's piece the audience was supposed to
walk around the large loudspeakers and experience the differences
in sounds depending on the unique listening position, but instead
the majority of the audience sat down on the chairs that were facing
the stage. By and by, the audience realized the mistake and some
went down to listen to the sounds as intended by the composer, while
5 (#footnote5_fs8zapu)
others remained seated . This situation demonstrates that
the institutional framing or contexts that dictate our behaviour and
approach to the singular artwork are not dissolved in a festival such
as SPOR. However, they are also not invisible as a naturalized way of
engaging with art. They are visible, debatable, exchangeable and
'real' – although they are also contingent and discursively
constituted. They are conditioning the listening act and are a
dimension of the listening act.
Organizational strategies
Even though it is reasonable to claim that SPOR has an ideological
position based on the trajectory from Cage – a post-Cagean position –
it is also a heterogeneous festival that gives the impression that the
artworks are not selected, evaluated and presented from one
coherent ideological or aesthetical position.
13 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
First of all, SPOR consists of a variety of very different events: There

are concerts, sound installations, sound performances (for instance
sound walks) and different combinations of the three. There are also
talks, seminars, workshops etc. In 2014, there was a 'hackathon'
where people could develop their own 'hacks'. In other words, the
audience is involved in very different activities. These activities give
an impression that contemporary music and sound art are a
proliferating activities that has no specific limits, rather than a
homogenous field or system with set borders and distinctions.
Furthermore, SPOR is a curated festival. It is run by two directors,

Anna Berit Asp Christensen (b.1971) and Anne Marqvardsen (b.1977).
Every year, a new curator, selected by the board on the basis of a
curatorial proposal sets out the programme in collaboration with the
two directors. Consequently, the programme is specifically
conceptualized and presented not as 'THE current scene of
contemporary music and sound art' but as the scene perceived from
one specific perspective, namely that of the curator. The chosen
artworks are presented as part of a curated programme and not as a
direct representation of a homogenous art scene. The curators have
mostly been younger composers such as Niels Rønsholdt (b. 1978),
Juliana Hodkinson (b.1971), Joanne Baillie (b. 1973), Jennifer Walshe
(b. 1974) and Lars Petter Hagen (http://http//www.lphagen.no/) (b.
1975) who were all under or close to 40 when they took on the role as
curator. The only exception was Bent Sørensen’s participation in
2009, as he is one of the established Danish composers. However,
curators have also been other agents in the field of contemporary
music and sound art. In 2011, the curators were three institutions
from Berlin: Kammerensemble Neue Musik, Singuhr Hörgallery and the
concert venue Ausland.
Due to this heterogeneous character, the linking of sound art and

contemporary music does not appear as a composition between two
different elements belonging to distinct institutions, scenes or
systems of fields. Instead, the festival appears to be a festival for a
heterogeneous or expanded field of sounding arts, where no one tries
to define whether a chamber orchestra composition is sound art or
music, or a sound walk is music or sound art.
Choice and presentation of artworks

The festival is curated in a way that links these different expressions
together in a very direct manner. For instance, in 2011 a composed
sound walk led the audience to a performance of the British
composer Joanne Baillie's Analogue (2011) for amplified string trio
and tape. This concert took place inside a completely darkened room
with a small hole in it where light from the next room could enter,
and therefore it functioned as a large camera obscura. The musicians
14 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
were placed in the opposite room and as they started playing, their
image slowly appeared on the dark wall inside the camera obscura.
This example shows us how the festival juxtaposes very different
sonic acts. One example is closer to what we normally conceive as
sound art, namely the sound walk, while the other is closer to what
we call music, since it uses conventional musical instruments and
live performance of a material notated in a score (albeit in an
unconventional installation). However, the sound walk audiences
were blindfolded and thus the aesthetical listening act was enhanced,
while Baillie's composition was a very visually and conceptually
orientated total installation. A pre-recorded voice discussed the
possibilities of taking sonic pictures in the same way that we take a
photo while the audience was sitting inside this large camera
obscura. Even though it was a performance piece, performed on
conventional instruments, the dark room and the slow appearance of
an inverted image of the musicians on the rear wall gave it an
atmosphere closely resembling some of the American artist Bill
Viola's audiovisual installations.
In effect, Baillie's composed piece of contemporary music resembled

an audiovisual installation in its expression, while the sound art walk
emphasized the act of listening and potentially allowed the audience
to experience the musical qualities of everyday sounds. With the
juxtaposition of these two artworks the line between sound art and
contemporary music was impossible to draw.
Instead of juxtaposing fundamentally different sonic expressions,

the curators and directors could also have chosen to group the
artworks and present all the more conventional pieces of
contemporary music on one day and present the typical sound art
installations on another day or at another site. But instead, the
festival chooses to mix and blend these categories. Consequently, the
festival does not create an impression of stable genres and categories,
but instead celebrates sonic art as a heterogeneous field. The festival
does not create one new style for examining context but presents a
very differentiated line up of ways of examining different contexts.
Although I claimed that institutional critique is down-toned due to

the choice of venues, institutional critique is still part of the festival,
as some pieces examine and expose their own institutional context.
In 2010 for example, the Norwegian composer Trond Reinholdtsen
performed his 13 Music Theatre Pieces. In one part of this assembly of
works, the composer himself gives an expressive talk using a power
point show about the piece he is about to compose. The whole piece
evolves around this music that struggles to become music, and
focuses in particular on the role of the composer.
15 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
In Jeppe Just Christensen's Der Jäger presented in 2011, the composer

is also on stage. Christensen plays on a homebuilt percussive rag
where metal objects hang from strings while a computer plays music
that goes up and down in intonation and tempo. Throughout the
piece, the composer struggles to bring the two very different parts of
the piece together. As he pulls the strings of the percussive rag it is
clear that he cannot control this device, and at one point, some of the
metal objects simply fall off the rag.
In these two compositions, we are not listening to music in its

finished form, but to music in its ‘becoming’. In Reinholdtsen's work,
the role of the composer as creator invades the piece that never gains
a form, but is constantly presented as an idea. Christensen's piece
emphasizes and problematizes the act by which the composer
appropriates a specific materiality in order to create music. Here, it is
as though the material resists such an appropriation. It does not want
to or cannot be controlled. Both pieces question the category of
individual production and the idea of the musical work of art as an
autonomous entity, and in that sense they both present a 'self-
critique' (Bürger, 1980) directed at the institution of music, to which
they themselves belong.
Other pieces examine quite different contexts in completely different

ways. Simon Steen-Andersen's Chambered Music (2007) for chamber
orchestra investigates the borders between 'insides' and 'outsides' as
spatial, sonic and conceptual phenomenon. The transparency of the
composition makes it impossible for the listener to hear the sounds
as one self-reliant, autonomous form. Instead the see-through
instrumental texture functions as an openness that leads us to
experience the immediate social and sonic context around the
music. The piece establishes several layers of such surrounding
contexts, of 'insides' and 'outsides': A small box is at one point
opened and then closed. We will never know what the world sounds
like inside this box – it is a secret; a place the audience cannot enter.
Outside the box, is the specific scene and audience seats, which is a
room shared by both audience and musicians – another 'inside'. The
fragile musical texture does not fill the room with a musical object,
but creates an intimate small sphere around the musicians. A
trombone player begins to play in the room next to the stage, which
indicates that there is an 'outside' to the room of the audience and the
musicians. This enhances the feeling of being 'inside' a room, or
perhaps even inside 'the black box'. At one point, a bus drives by on
the street next to the concert hall, and it could be heard very clearly
6
through the thin windows of the concert venue Granhøj Dans
(#footnote6_0737oa9)
. With the sound of the bus, a third space was added,
namely the outside of the building. The bus sound revealed that the
concert hall as a whole is also a box, with an inside, that is sonically
16 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
very different from the outside. The latter effect was powerful
because of the thin windows of the unconventional concert venue. At
the local concert hall, Musikhuset, the scene is larger and removed
from the audience and one cannot hear the sounds from the outside
world. If Steen-Andersen's piece had been played at Musikhuset these
delicate differentiated feelings of insides and outsides would not
have been present in the same manner. This example demonstrates
that when it comes to these open pieces the actual sonic, social and
institutional contexts are of importance to the specific potential
experiences and meanings of the artwork.
A third example of how different contexts are explored is the

German artist David Helbich's sound walk, Aarhus SoundWalk, 2010.
Århus SoundWalk took place in the urban environment of one of the
deprived city areas in Aarhus, Gellerup-parken. With very specific
instructions, Helbich led the audience on a listening walk that
allowed the audience to experience a part of Aarhus that is otherwise
often stigmatized as a problematic 'Ghetto' area. Aarhus SoundWalk
did not investigate the immediate context of music but instead our
actual, social environment. The sounds were not composed, but the
act of listening was. The sounds were framed, presented or brought
to our attention via the collaborative performance between composer
and audience.
As a final example, I would like to mention Kirsten Reese's

installation No Voice Audible but that of the sea on the far Side (2013).
Here, we are presented with the voices of fish. This installation was
placed inside a cofferdam in Aarhus harbour. The cofferdam is a
prototype construction built to reduce the noise level during offshore
wind turbine pile-driving. This installation allowed the listener to
listen to a non-human context we cannot understand and that we can
never enter. The framing paratexts, such as the curatorial notes and
title are of key importance to this investigation of a non-human
context. The paratexts connected to this piece are very specific as to
what it is we are listening to while the sounds themselves are very
open. This encounter between a determining title and an open or
under-determined sound is a characteristic of Reese's installation,
but also to many other sound art pieces that use field recordings
(Vandsø 2011).
These very different examples are all examples of sonic art that
investigate their context. However, it is impossible to subsume them
all under one new genre or style. They are simply 'occasions for
listening' (Cage 2004) – they instigate acts of listening. In these acts
they investigate their contexts, but they are also conditioned by these
contexts: by the institutional, sonic, non-human, para and
intertextual contexts.
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IV. Conclusions: Epistemology: work-concept and the

music/sound art distinction
The post-Cagean era
Even though we can trace an aesthetical position that favours an

open work-concept back in time, for instance, back to Cage’s (2004)
numerous statements and lectures from the 1950s or perhaps even
further back to the Italian Futurist Luigi's manifest Art of Noise from
1913 (Russolo 2005), it is only in more recent years that this position
has become a hegemonic, naturalized way of talking about,
experiencing or presenting sounding arts and sound art in particular.
This can be seen in the many festivals, exhibitions and publications
that discuss sound art as an art form in constant dialogue with its
context (e.g. LaBelle 2007; Voegelin 2010).
The art historian Hal Foster claims that it was the neo-avantgardes'
rearticulation of the historical avant-gardes that made them what
they are today:
Did Duchamp appear as ‘Duchamp’? Of course not [...] The status

of Duchamp as well as Les Demoiselles is a retroactive effect of
countless artistic responses and critical readings, and so it goes
across the dialogical space-time of avant-garde practice and
institutional reception (Foster 1996:8).
The same might be said about John Cage and the neo-avantgardes.
His aesthetics were also not fully realized in its own time. It was not
until the 1990s, that a general reorientation towards the 'relational'
(Borriaud 2002), the 'open work' (Eco 1984), 'performative aesthetic'
(Fischer-Lichte 2004) and towards 'sound art' (Motte-Haber 1999;
Licht 2007) made it possible for a wider acceptance and
understanding of Cage's ideas as something more and other than a
counter-position that only served to consolidate the naturalized ideas
of what music was.
Music/sound art in the expanded field

Even though we can see evidence of a post-Cagean position in the
field of sonic arts, the Cagean aesthetic are not the naturalized norm
in all institutional contexts. Although the more culturally orientated
parts of musicology no longer subscribe to a conceptualization of
music as an autonomous object (Middleton 2003), a large part of
musicology still adheres to a rather strict division between text and
18 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
context. This applies particularly to the academic sub-discipline that

describes and analyses music. In the renowned work of reference
New Grove, the British Musicologists Ian Bent and Anthony Pople
directly describe analysis as an activity that “takes as its starting-
point the music itself, rather than external factors” (Bent and Pople,
n.d.), which according to Bent and Pople includes the “interpretation
of structures in music, together with their resolution into relatively
simpler constituent elements [...]” (Bent and Pople, n.d.).
Such an autonomous work-concept falls short when applied to the

contemporary music presented at SPOR festival. In this new post-
Cagean era, we require other and more adequate modes of inquiry.
Here, the naturalized hegemonic offset cannot be that music is an
autonomous structural object. Instead music is process, it is
relational. It is not media-specific – dedicated to exploring its own
medium of art (for instance "Music"), – but 'post-medial', because it
uses any available media (Krauss 1979). In Rosalind Krauss' (1979)
analysis of the changing conditions of sculpture, she claims that:
“sculpture is no longer the privileged middle term between two things
that it isn't. Sculpture is rather only one term on the periphery of a
field in which there are other, differently structured possibilities”
(Krauss, 1979:38). Based on the analysis of SPOR, music also seems to
be part of an expanded sonic field and not the privileged middle
term. This is already suggested elsewhere, by for instance Seth Kim-
Cohen (2009:155). The recent developments within the field of
contemporary music therefore not only require that musicology
rethinks its work-concept, but also that it rethinks the nature of its
subject area. If we want to understand the conditions of
contemporary music, we have to understand contemporary music as
something that exists in an expanded sonic field, where there are no
clear-cut borders between music and sound art.
The sonic artwork as an act of listening

Based on the analysis presented above, we can suggest a few
conclusions with regards to the ontology and epistemological
consequences of a post-Cagean aesthetic.
First of all, the musical work seems to be an occasion for listening or

an act in a situation rather than a structural object. However, these
acts are not 'pure' listening acts dissociated from the discursive,
ideological, social, para and intertextual contexts. Such contexts are
not the neutral background for the act of perception, but instead
conditioning – and consequently a part of – the unique and singular
act of listening.
A new performative work-concept, and a new approach to analysis

should therefore not be focused solely on listening as a pure event or
19 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
on sound as a non-linguistic, non-discourse medium. On the other

hand, the act of perception is still essential and therefore not at all
irrelevant to the understanding of these artworks.
I therefore suggest an approach that is in between the two

predominant positions in the current field of sound art studies: The
one emphasizes the pure phenomenology of the act of listening
(Voegelin 2010) and the non-discursiveness of sound as an artistic
medium (LaBelle 2007), where as the other emphasizes the
linguistic, symbolic and intertextual dimension of sound art while
down-toning the act of perception (Kim-Cohen 2009). According to
the material presented in this article, a combination of the two
positions seems more adequate, which means that we should
understand the act of perception as something that is always already
conditioned by the discursive formations. In other words, the
singular act of perception is a performance that is performative,
following Judith Butler's (1993) distinction between the two
concepts. Performance is, according to Butler, a 'bounded act' while
performativity consists of a "reiteration of norms which precede,
constrain, and exceed the performer and in that sense cannot be
taken as the fabrication of the performer’s 'will' of 'choice'.” (Butler
1993:234). One way to regard the above mentioned artworks and their
interrogation of context is that they investigate these conditioning
discursive contexts that in one sense reduces them to a reiteration of
existing norms. However, at the same time, such artworks also
investigate and unfold the singularity and uniqueness of their own
becoming or appearing. An investigation of such artworks (as events)
should therefore take into account the uniqueness of the aesthetical
performative act while keeping in mind that this performativity rests
on the reiteration of norms and not on the singularity of the events –
which is a paraphrase of Jaques Derrida's (Derrida 1988) critique of J.
L. Austin's description of the performative utterance.
Conclusively, the relations between the sounding material inherent

in the artwork are just one set of relations conditioning the act of
listening. The act of listening is also conditioned by the social,
discursive, material relations etc. it is a part of.
Secondly, 'music' is not an absolute category out there. Instead, it is

something we do (Small 1998). This act is not just carried out by the
artwork or the listener, or the interaction between the two, but by a
multitude of performative acts. The festival is also an agent that does
not only present music, but conditions what music and sound art are.
Furthermore, the question of categorization or institutional framing
is not rendered obsolete with a festival such as SPOR. Even though
there might not be stable borders between music and sound art, the
categories are still functioning. They still have an effect, because
20 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
when we assume that we are listening to music, we act differently

than when we think that we are listening to sound art, which for
instance was the problem in the exhibition of Ole Jørgensen’s
loudspeaker installation. Due to this relational condition, we cannot
conclude one new ontology of the work of art, or present the new and
adequate definition of 'music' or of 'sound art'. Instead it seems as
though there is a multitude of local ontologies in the field. Such
conclusions call for what Georgina Born (2010) refers to as a
relational musicology that is “alert to the diversities of the musical
ontologies of the world” (Ibid: 38).
1. While Schaeffer’s (2005) idea of an acousmatic music can be said to separate the objet sonore from it’s source and
therefore also the sonic text from its context, it also constitutes a new aesthetic sensibility that allows us to listen to the
(#footnoteref1_sqr69qh)
world in new ways. This acousmatic sensibility transcends the singular musical piece and therefore the line between
text and context is again challenged.
2. Based on my own experiences as a regular participant at the NUMUS and SPOR festivals since 1995. In the article "Exit
Numus" (Information 2007) the audience is described as 'senior citizens'.
(#footnoteref2_8ric5yk)
3. Based on my own observations.

4. Such an understanding of Cage is also quite common, for instance, see the British philosopher Stephen Davies' (2003).
(#footnoteref3_u7mkh37)
5. Based on my own experiences.

(#footnoteref4_krzb7x1)
6. This is based on my experience of the concert in 2011.

(#footnoteref5_fs8zapu)
(#footnoteref6_0737oa9)
GO BACK TO FOCUS:
Bibliography
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Review
Review I:
The content of the article on SPOR is as a whole on the one hand extremely
interesting, and thus it definitely should be published. The discussion on the changed
position and place of “cagean” aesthetics, and the slightly but crucially different
perspective this also gives to the materials presented, makes the discussion highly
thought-provoking, and is likely to spur continued discussion on the subject.
On the other hand the general structure of the text definitely can and should
be improved. It starts and ends in the guise of a sort of promotion text for the festival,
while the salient discussions on sound and aesthetics are sequestered in the middle.
The text starts out as being a rather conventional and moderately interesting overview
of a number of performances and/or artworks at the SPOR festival in Aarhus since
2005, reiterating selected discussions on cagean aesthetics in a very competent but not
very original manner. The text however changes tracks and suddenly becomes full of
critical and original thought, finally taking issue with the quite fundamental themes
and statements that has much too fleetingly been touched upon in the first half
of page 2. The reader who has stayed on this far gets rewarded and possibly provoked
and certainly will keep on reading.
The discussion from hereon makes excellent use of both Cage and SPOR as levers
to wage a more generally salient and critical discussion on the position of the artwork,
22 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
on the dimensions of performativity in staging the act of listening, on several

earlier discussions on these matters, and on the historical changes in the conditions
for different aesthetics positions – and it does so in a manner that at the same time
also manages to vitalize the discussion on Cage and to highlight values of various
positions taken at SPOR. This is the obvious core of the text; this is what makes the
text important reading and it is the major part of the text also in length. Also the
internal structure of this part of the text is mainly coherent and clear, and it leads up
towards a concluding discussion on p. 16 – although this discussion unfortunately is
not really conclusive but mainly presents a reiteration of the statements hinted at
already on p. 2.
The highly interesting and well-structured discussion is however not really what
the introductory pages (including the short abstract) give the impression of leading up
to. I therefore recommend a slight reworking, primarily of the introduction (with a
more throughout presentation of the actual aim of the article without giving away
conclusions before they have been grounded in the discussion), with a slightly
stronger emphasis on presenting the conclusions at the end of the article, and with an
abstract that better mirrors the qualities of the text.
The discussion sometimes comes across as a little bit provincial (who is the author
e.g. really addressing while claiming that it would be “a misunderstanding to say that
SPOR [or NUMUS, for that matter] is the first festival for new music where Cage is
taken seriously”?), and sometimes the strict limitations to the traditional “art” world
appears a bit strange in an article that among other things obviously sets out to
problematizes the concept of art (was there for example no popular music at all
present in the social and sonic context of Gellerup?). This might be due to the texts
external guise as a promotion text for SPOR.
In short: rework the introduction, straighten out the language a bit, and put
more substance to the concluding discussion. The substance of the discussion is more
than worth the trouble.
Review II:
This article argues convincingly that the Danish SPOR festival takes up the aesthetic
project of John Cage and “naturalizes” the position from which new musical works
become an occasions for experience of context. Taking Cages pivotal work 4’33 as a
radical moment in the history of music, the article investigates 1) the historical and
institutional framing of SPOR 2) a number of sound related works displayed at SPOR
and 3) the reception of John Cage’s work within a discourse of the neo-avantgarde.
There is an underlying argument that SPOR and other related artistic and curatorial
initiatives form a model from which academia and the more general field of
contemporary music can learn.
Though it is hard not to agree with the author that SPOR has proved to be an important
institution in new music and sound art and that Cage is a defining force within this, I
will take the chance here to raise a few points to be discussed in relation with the
arguments made. First it seems there is a displacement in the beginning of the text
from the theme of SPOR 2013 "the relationship between sound and context” and Cages
investigation of ” the border between music and noise, between artwork and its
context”. One might ask if investigations of sound/context does not allow for a wider
field of investigations than the work-based aesthetic that is found in Cage? Secondly it
seems that the second area of focus for the SPOR festival, namely sound art, remains
somewhat enigmatic in the text. It would be interesting to see a discussion of how the
two different disciplines (mew music and sound art) are kept in dialogue through the
display of works and in the organizational and conceptual (paratextual) framework of
SPOR. It could be argued that the break with the containers of music (spatial,
institutional and conceptual) is already realized within fields like sound art, sound
studies and soundscape studies – and that the theme for SPOR 2013 opens up towards
that. On the other hand the institutional and conceptual liberation of sound may to
some extend have been reterritorialized within the confines of visual art in sound art.
Furthermore it could be asked whether the orientation towards a contextual aesthetics
23 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
in the article – though functional as a critique of high modernism – downplays the

potential political implications at play in works mentioned. These questions are not
raised to undermine the validity of the arguments made, but only to add further
perspectives to the interesting discussion.
Keywords
PEER REVIEW ARTICLE TEXT AND CONTEXT SPOR FESTIVAL
POST-CAGEAN AESTHETICS CONTEMPORARY MUSIC AND SOUND ART
About the author(s)

Anette Vandsø (*1973) is a post doc fellow at the Department of Aesthetics and
Communication at Aarhus University. She completed her PhD in 2010 with a
dissertation titled ‘Music and Enunciation’, and in 2012 she received an elite postdoc
grant from the Danish Council for Independent Research for the project "Listening to
the world", which investigates contemporary sound art, in particular its medial
aspects. Vandsø teaches courses in aesthetic and cultural theory, with a focus on (inter)
mediality, contemporary experimental music and sound art. Among other things she
has contributed to developing a course in Intermedial Analysis. Vandsø is part of the
Danish research project ‘Audiovisual Culture and the Good Sound’ (2009-2013), led by
Ansa Lønstrup, and she has contributed to establishing the local research group
‘Mediality, Materiality and Aesthetic Meaning’ Vandsø writes about contemporary
music and sound art for several Danish journals.
24 of 25 12/4/17, 2:36 PM
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Vandso - Music, Sound Art and Context in A Post-Cagean Era - SEISMOGRAF

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Simon Steen-Andersen performs Run-Time-Error at SPOR 2011 (Photo: Anette Vandsø)

MUSIC, SOUND ART AND

I. SPOR festival (#title1)

‘absolute monade’ (Adorno 1974: 26). It can also be observed in the

On the other hand, in the same period we see an overwhelming

If we look at the current field of contemporary music, the

This article asks: What are the consequences of this naturalization of

more specific definition of what such an aesthetic entails. The

In general, there is a significant change in the indefinable parameter

SPOR’s overall aesthetical profile is in line with the avant-gardistic

As the apex of his otherwise diverse oeuvre, 4'33'' encompasses Cage's

SPOR presents a wide range of open works: Both performances in the

As examples of avant-gardistic happenings, one could mention that

(which is actually a series of works made for different concert halls)

Simon Steen-Andersen performs Run-Time-Error at SPOR 2011 (Photo: Anette Vandsø)

As an example of a piece that comes closer to what we normally

II. The open artwork and the neo-avant-garde

The open artwork as anti-art

Bürger's analysis has a negative conclusion: the historical avant-

In Bürger's point of view, the neo-avant-gardes are just an empty

There is one problem with this kind of analysis: By focusing solely on

seen in the art historian Michael Fried's (2003) description of anti-

According to Fried, all the parts of a modernistic work of art refer to

This critical interpretation of 4'33'' is also common. For instance, the

Inclusion of the situation of the artwork

The 'theatrical' inclusion of the horizontal, social dimension is in

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There

This statement can be taken literally and read as a statement

To sum up, Cage's aesthetic favour an open work-concept: the

4'33'' – three potentials

at the reception of 4'33'' it obviously has all three potential effects: it

III. The aesthetics of SPOR festival

In his book Musicking (1998), Christopher Small argues that music is

If we are to understand how SPOR establishes its post-Cagean

The webpage serves as a platform for specific information about, for

instance, time-schedules for the planned concerts, prices etc., but it

In comparison, one can think of the Fluxus concerts that toured

On the webpage, there was an introduction to Johansson with a small

By deconstructing the traditional systems in music - in his work,

This description does not stress the anti-art-potential, but instead

Returning to this specific concert, I had read the description in the

When comparing SPOR to Fluxus, it is obvious that SPOR does not

When SPOR began to include the urban space of Aarhus by involving

autonomous work-concept. The audiences were no longer placed

With the French philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s statement (1991:59)

First of all, SPOR consists of a variety of very different events: There

Furthermore, SPOR is a curated festival. It is run by two directors,

Due to this heterogeneous character, the linking of sound art and

Choice and presentation of artworks

In effect, Baillie's composed piece of contemporary music resembled

Instead of juxtaposing fundamentally different sonic expressions,

Although I claimed that institutional critique is down-toned due to

In Jeppe Just Christensen's Der Jäger presented in 2011, the composer

In these two compositions, we are not listening to music in its

Other pieces examine quite different contexts in completely different

A third example of how different contexts are explored is the

As a final example, I would like to mention Kirsten Reese's

IV. Conclusions: Epistemology: work-concept and the

Even though we can trace an aesthetical position that favours an

Did Duchamp appear as ‘Duchamp’? Of course not [...] The status