Performing Centrifugal Sound (original) (raw)

What kind of sonic methodology does not depend, however tacitly, upon the concept of medium? Whether materialist, idealist, or based on affect, sound (art) theory seems axiomatically subject to a kind of centripetal pull towards a medium-specific ontology of art based on the formal division between mediums. The notion of sound as an independent artistic medium first emerged during the 1950s and 1960s, just as contemporary art began its radical critique of medium in works of canonical conceptual art, which further contributed to what Krauss (2000) labeled the ‘postmedium condition’. Against medium-specific formalism, contemporary art proposed, and in many ways achieved, a radically generic art whose governing concept was no longer based on the division of materials bound to discretized sense modalities. In addition to conceptual art, performance participated in this shift away from centripetal medium and, along with music, paved the way for intermedia, Happenings, Fluxus, and other heterogeneous forms such as social practice. This chapter proposes the category of ‘centrifugal sound’ as a way to understand art practices that include sound but reduce its centrality through extra-sonic materials deployed in performance. Through readings from art history, contemporary art theory, musicology, and sound art theory, alongside a consideration of Adrian Piper, John Baldessari, and Vito Acconci, the chapter listens from the periphery and finds not an absence but a movement towards conceptuality and the social.