Beyond the unnecessary self

In my 2013 paper The (un)necessary self (Frisk 2013) I explored the concept of giving up of the self in my artistic practice in improvisation as an important step towards the dismantling of the romantic idea of artistic creation and individuality as something firmly rooted in the self. Instead I wanted to approach an understanding of creativity that is entangled with the other in a way that emphasizes relations: the ambition was to move the focus from the creator to what is created, and to better understand the roles of the various actors involved in the process. The other in this context should be understood as anyone or anything in proximity to the artistic practice: a co-creator, a listener, a participant, an instrument, a remote collaborator, or anything with a similar impact on the artistic practice. In this article I will discuss this departing from a practice of improvisation with obsolete electronic instruments.¹

This attitude has some resemblance to the flat ontology and the theories promoted by the French sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour, such as actor-network theory (ANT), but this is a bigger discussion beyond the scope of this short paper. However, at a later stage it would be interesting to make an ANT-oriented analysis of the material I am discussing below.

An aspect that I did not scrutinize in my 2013 paper was that of the various transactions that take place in artistic production and which complicates the relation-oriented analysis proposed. The hyper-capitalism of the twenty-first century is eager to commodify any musical output as well as the artists and the listeners as objects for consumption. Though this may not at first appear to have a big impact on experimental art practices my claim here is that it still influences some key factors that contribute to how artistic practices in music may develop and, more importantly, how the self develops through them. One crucial component is the opaque nature of the relations among commodified objects in commercial media. For example, the primary interest of the big media streaming platforms is not necessarily to deliver music or movies but is rather the eternal collection of data happening in the background that represents real value in this system.

This is not a new phenomenon. The main point of commercial media has always been to sell space for advertisement, and the role of the content is commonly to draw attention to the right demographic groups—those to whom the advertisement is directed. Capitalism promotes itself by emphasizing the freedom it claims to offer—granting some individuals the liberty to choose and consume as they please. However, the significance of this freedom is debatable when core economic transactions are concealed from the user and frequently occur in unrelated spheres. Furthermore, even the concept of freedom itself—what it means and what it provides—is difficult to untangle. Given its complexity, this area demands a thoughtful approach, as the differing notions of freedom in capitalism and artistic practice can easily result in conceptual ambiguity. There is also a connection between freedom and ethics that shapes how the self is positioned—or more accurately, re-positioned—which significantly influences this discussion.²

Against this backdrop I will attempt to describe how a practice of improvisation with obsolete electronic instruments can use a different conception of freedom to deconstruct both the concept of the unnecessary self and the powers of commodification. Exploring the ethics of an artistic practice is a necessary part of this process which will be discussed later in this paper. Both here, and in my original essay from 2013, American writer David Henry Thoreau’s famous notion of the absent speaker has served as an inspiration: “The peculiarity of a work of genius is the absence of the speaker from his speech” (Thoreau 1854, 264). Leaving the notion of the genius aside, this absent speaker could be seen to be related to the unnecessary self: only the aspects of the self necessary for the performance need to be present, the rest may become a distraction. The disruptive tendencies of hyper-capitalism, driven by its emphasis on self-realization through consumption—impacting all facets of society, as previously noted—tend to place the commodified self at center stage. A grasp of this force, combined with the nuanced challenges of working with obsolete instruments, underscores the necessity of transcending the unnecessary self.