Experimentalism as Aesthetic Entrepreneurialism: a (sonic) pedagogical offering

Abstract

(Hear…) Here, my sonic practice[1] navigates the nexus between aesthetics, organization and pedagogy. It does so in a curious entrepreneurial spirit. Upon encountering the essay ‘How art becomes organization: Reimagining aesthetics, sites and politics of entrepreneurship’ (Holm & Beyes, 2022), I was taken by the authors’ comparison (or conflation) of art and entrepreneurialism; particularly the reading of their “power to experiment with how the social is apprehended, organized and inhabited” (Holm & Beyes, 2022, p. 227). I considered the place of sonic experimentation in this entrepreneurial context, with apprehending, organizing, and inhabiting as necessarily pedagogical pursuits.

The relationship I envision between pedagogy and experimentalism has been shaped by both the belief that experimentalism’s inherent emancipatory impulse has direct pedagogical import, and my professional and scholarly commitment to transforming teaching and learning. My work has long been informed by the legacy of Joseph Beuys, whose radical, educational entrepreneurialism is well documented (Wear, 2009; 2010). In this instance, I employed the following model – developed by Beuys to illustrate “the passage from chaotic material to ordered form through sculptural movement” (Adriani, et al., 1979, p. 283) – as a pedagogical agenda by which to compose/organize MVMNT:

chaos

order

undetermined

determined

organic

movement

crystalline

warm

cold

expansion

contraction

(Beuys in Tisdall, 1979, p. 44)

Organized according to this model, as an entrepreneurial/pedagogical force, MVMNT aims to capture the sonic dynamism of aesthetic pedagogy, guiding the listener/learner through the apprehension, organization and inhabiting of experience. It asks the learner to shift from the textual and the visual, and contextualise as the sonic.

References

Adriani, G., Konnertz, W. & Thomas, K. (1979) Joseph Beuys: Life and works. New York: Barron’s Educational Series.

Holm, D. V. and Beyes, T. (2022). How art becomes organization: Reimagining aesthetics, sites and politics of entrepreneurship. Organization Studies, 43(2), 227–245.

Tisdall, C. & Beuys, J (1979). Joseph Beuys. London: Thames & Hudson.

Wear, A. (2009) Thinking takes form: Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the work of Joseph Beuys. In G. Pollock, & M. Silverman (Eds.) Concentrationary Memories: Politics of Representation 1945–1985 (pp. 1–18). University of Leeds. CentreCATH.

Wear, A. (2010) Concept & form: Post-philosophical studies in contemporary art (PhD Thesis). University of Tasmania.

[1] I prefer ‘sonic’, here, to acknowledge that as an experimental artist, I employ insufficient aesthetic structure typically recognised as or associated with ‘music’.