Christopher Williams

Germany (residence), United States (citizenship) °1981
research interests: Experimental music, improvisation, notation, phenomenology, Fluxus, sound and space
affiliation: University of Music and Performing Arts Graz
en

Christopher A. Williams (1981, San Diego) makes and researches (mostly) experimental music. From 2021-2025 he will lead the research project (Musical) Improvisation and Ethics (Austrian Science Fund ZK 93) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.

 

As a composer and contrabassist, his work runs the gamut from chamber music, improvisation, and radio art to collaborations with dancers, sound artists, and visual artists. Performances and collaborations with Derek Bailey, Compagnie Ouie/Dire, Charles Curtis, LaMonte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music, Ferran Fages, Robin Hayward (as Reidemeister Move), Barbara Held, Christian Kesten, Christina Kubisch, Liminar, Maulwerker, Charlie Morrow, David Moss, Andrea Neumann, Mary Oliver and Rozemarie Heggen, Ben Patterson, Robyn Schulkowsky, Ensemble SuperMusique, Vocal Constructivists, dancers Jadi Carboni and Martin Sonderkamp, filmmaker Zachary Kerschberg, and painters Sebastian Dacey and Tanja Smit. This work has appeared in various North American and European experimental music circuits, as well as on VPRO Radio 6 (Holland), Deutschlandfunk Kultur, the Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona, Volksbühne Berlin, and the American Documentary Film Festival.

 

Williams’ artistic research takes the form of both conventional academic publications and practice-based multimedia projects. His writings appear in journals such as the Journal for Artistic Research, Critical Studies in Improvisation, TEMPO, Contemporary Music Review, Journal of Sonic Studies, Open Space Magazine, and diverse anthologies. Williams has received scholarships, grants, and prizes from the University of California, the Darmstadt Summer Courses, the Arts Council of Catalunya, Goethe Institut, Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin, Festival Acanthes, and the American Documentary Film Festival.

He co-curates the Berlin concert series KONTRAKLANG. From 2009-2015 he co-curated the salon series Certain Sundays.

Williams holds a B.A. from the University of California San Diego (Charles Curtis, Chaya Czernowin, and Bertram Turetzky); and a Ph.D. from the University of Leiden (Marcel Cobussen and Richard Barrett). His native digital dissertation is Tactile Paths: on and through Notation for Improvisers <www.tactilepaths.net>.

 

<www.christopherisnow.com>

<www.improv-ethics.net>

research

research expositions

  • Tactile paths : on and through notation for improvisers (last edited: 2022) author(s): Christopher Williams connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
    Tactile Paths: on and through Notation for Improvisers is an artistic research project that articulates and expands the nexus of notation and improvisation in contemporary and experimental music. The project interweaves direct artistic experience with insights from improvisation studies, the social sciences, philosophy, and various scholarship in the arts to reveal methodological connections among diverse artists such as Richard Barrett, Cornelius Cardew, Malcolm Goldstein, Lawrence Halprin, Bob Ostertag, Ben Patterson, and the author. By focusing on how notation is used, rather than on what it represents in an abstract sense, the author shows how written scores emerge from and feed back on ongoing improvisational processes. Thus, it is argued, they are not fixed texts whose primary purpose is to prescribe and preserve, but rather tactile paths in the improviser’s ever-crescent musical and social environment. This practice-based approach aims to lay the conceptual groundwork for theorizing and broadening the creative relevance of work whose importance to practitioners belies its marginal presence in academia and institutions.
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  • Tactile Paths: on and through Notation for Improvisers (2017) author(s): Christopher Williams connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts published in: Research Catalogue
    Tactile Paths is a native digital, media-rich PhD dissertation. It aims to articulate and expand the nexus of notation and improvisation in contemporary and experimental music. The project interweaves direct artistic experience with insights from improvisation studies, the social sciences, philosophy, and various scholarship in the arts to reveal methodological connections among diverse artists such as Richard Barrett, Cornelius Cardew, Malcolm Goldstein, Lawrence Halprin, Bob Ostertag, Ben Patterson, and the author. By focusing on how notation is used, rather than on what it represents in an abstract sense, the author shows how written scores emerge from and feed back into ongoing improvisational processes. Thus, it is argued, they are not fixed texts whose primary purpose is to prescribe and preserve, but rather tactile paths in the improviser’s ever-crescent musical and social environment. This practice-based approach aims to lay the conceptual groundwork for theorizing and broadening the creative relevance of work whose importance to practitioners belies its marginal presence in academia and institutions.
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  • Anarchiving (in) Ben Patterson's Variations for Double-Bass (2018) author(s): Christopher Williams published in: Journal for Artistic Research
    Here I employ techniques of anarchiving to explore the dynamics of notation, improvisatory performance, and analysis in Fluxus artist Ben Patterson's Variations for Double-Bass (1961). Coined by process philosophers Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, the concept of the anarchive refers to "a repertory of traces of collaborative research-creation events. The traces are not inert, but are carriers of potential." Variations' proto-anarchival qualities drive the structure of the exposition, which includes superimposed video documentation from my own performances, as well as brief analytical texts and performance instructions for the reader. I hope that this meta-anarchival process both sheds light on Patterson's work, and shows how documentation and analysis in the spirit of the anarchive can propel experimental (musical) practice forward in unexpected ways.
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  • Anatomy of a (Musical) Ethics Lab SAR 2023 submission (last edited: 2022) author(s): Christopher Williams This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
    Supplement to the presentation proposal 'Anatomy of a (Musical) Ethics Lab'
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