Steve Tromans / Mike Fletcher - Alone/Together: Simulacral “A-presentation” in/into Practice-as-Research in Jazz
(last edited: 2016)
author(s): Paulo de Assis, Steve Tromans
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Steve Tromans / Mike Fletcher | Birmingham City University, UK / Birmingham City University, UK
Day 2, 10 November, De Bijloke Kraakhuis, 19:00-19:45
This lecture-recital, interposing live music making and spoken word is concerned with our understandings of the creative processes by which musicians make music with the core repertoire in their particular disciplinary field, and with how research in/into such processes can best be undertaken and communicated. It will draw on, as an exemplar, my ongoing practice-as-research in a duo capacity with the saxophonist Mike Fletcher—a fellow member of the contemporary jazz scene in Birmingham (UK). In this research, expert music making with the standard repertoire in jazz forms the basis for a range of “theoretical practices” (Melrose 2005), including (as will be discussed in the presentation) notions primary to the Deleuzian canon.
In Deleuze’s well-known attack on what he called “the failure of representation” (2004, xvii), he proposed the collapse of the Platonic model/copy concept of identity in favour of an ontology of difference grounded in heterogeneous “a-presentation” (ibid., 27) that privileges “no prior identity, no internal resemblance” (ibid., 372–73). Deleuze refigured Plato’s own term “simulacrum” to indicate this internally differentiated “positive power which denies the original and the copy, the model and the representation” (2004, 299). Resonating with Deleuze’s concerns, my own research has explored the theorisation of the ontology of musical works (in this case, jazz standards) with regard to the simulacrum, beyond the limitations of the model of the original and the copy that remains prevalent, however implicitly, in how we tend to think of the relationship between works in a canonical repertoire and performances of “the same” (see Brown 2011).
Through a series of practice-as-research enquiries, Fletcher and I have experimented with ways of playing jazz standards from multiple different perspectives, in the simultaneous performance of key aspects of the pieces in question. In so doing, we have sought to investigate a deconstruction of the original/copy model of the identity of the jazz standard via the apparatus of a simulacral “a-presentation.” “Simulacra are not perceived in themselves,” wrote Deleuze (2004: 313), “what is perceived is their aggregate in a minimum of sensible time.” By means of performing multiple perspectives of the same jazz standards in “aggregated” form, we will argue that my practice-as-research enables listeners—and, crucially, fellow researchers—to experience a temporally-grounded “sense” of the internally-differentiated, simulacral ontology of jazz standards, in terms of the complex manifold nature of their utilisation by jazz musicians.
“Nietzsche 5 The Fragmentary” is an excellent contribution to the field of artistic research in music; a thoroughly enjoyable and informative exposition. Its key point of resonance with the theme of the issue is that of the fragmentary as research gesture. The exposition is a beautiful example a fragmentary presentational format, which encourages its readers to perform and to articulate, in a multi-modal engagement, the gestures suggested by the research. Further, this kind of openness to presentational freedom highlights the question of the relations between the various media (writing, audio, visual) and the multifarious gestures and trajectories to be traced through these by the reader. The reader is allowed to partake in the research process – to be more than just a recipient of the knowledge-project of the authors’ (ongoing) research. In so doing, the research exposition is kept open and fragmentary in a positive and creative way, in a manner that is not achievable via more traditional fixed formats of research presentation.
The encouragement and opportunity for the reader to engage with the exposition in an unlimited number of ways – anything from a more straightforward left-to-right and down the page approach, to a fragmentary “nomadic” singular trajectory of one’s own choice – suits the object and focus of this particular research admirably. The exposition’s fragmentary layout on the (web)page resonates effectively (and affectively) with the theme of the research. I took particular pleasure in accessing multiple elements at the same time – for instance, triggering an audio excerpt and a video clip of one of the authors talking to camera while reading one or more of the written texts.
The artistic practice carried out here is fundamentally grounded in the research project that this exposition is part of. This makes the exposition exemplary of the possibilities and benefits of artistic research as a relatively new epistemological paradigm. The theme of the research – the fragmentary in Nietzsche’s music and philosophy and, in wider context, the fragmentary as a means of exploring early romanticism and contemporary artistry – provides both a focus for the enquiry and also a method of operation and presentation.
The exposition is itself a fragment of an on-going research project (Nietzsche N), and this particular portion of the research (Nietzsche 5) is, in part, itself a multi-modal blueprint for a future research event (Nietzsche 6). This demonstrates the authors’ complex practice-as-research gesturing. The reader is able to garner a sense of the eternally returning, fragmentary nature of the theme/s under investigation, and to experience first-hand (through interaction with the diverse materials presented on the page) his/her own historical perspective as an active (though fragmented) part of the temporal flow/s of the Nietzsche N research project.
The authors’ research is grounded in artistic practice, and therefore the relationship between the two (practice and research) is from the outset a complex one. This is, of course, one of the benefits of adopting a practice-as-research approach: utilising such complexity in the service of engaging with the multifaceted relationships operative both in music and philosophy, via the metaphor as well as the theoretical/practical/presentational tools provided by the fragmentary.
The fragmentary as a method of research enquiry, presentation and artistic practice has important implications for other fields of artistic practice as well. For instance, in my own areas of expertise – jazz and improvising music – I can clearly envisage potential applications and further developments of the fragmentary approach presented here.
Steve Tromans