Sound Mass v. 2 - a Writing and Sonic Meditation on the “Individual,” the “Collective,” and the Sociopolitical Nature of Music Practice

Sound Mass PDF

Sound Mass is a text based score presented as a zine that includes a reflection on how individualism shows up in the arts, and an exercise for any group of people to sonically meditate as a collective unit. Original Version was written c. February 2018. This version was created (rather quickly, over the course of 5 or 6 hours) in July 2022, and presented at a show with Jamie Branch (RIP to an absolute real one!!!) & Jason Nazary. Excerpt and videos below.

Full text in the above PDF. Excerpt below:

There is a particularly insidious brand of bootstrap individualism that permeates various art and music communities. This is characterized by a belief that the “best” naturally rise to the top, that music and art production exists above socioeconomic processes, and that the fundamental way to grow culture is to compete and economically succeed as an individual.  

There are also insidious and misleading faux-radical reactions against bootstrap individualism. These reactions can be characterized by an ironic artistic practice and detachment from the human need for culture / ritual; individual / identity based representational politics that do not take into account flows of resources and fail to challenge the fundamental nature of institutional power; and/or the reduction of political ethics to artistic aesthetics (i.e. where the most radial artistic practice is judged by the characteristics of the artistic product, rather than by the efficacy of organizing for democratic power against structures of oppression).

While superficially different, these both enable uncritical relationships to how art and music function and are valued under capitalism. Either implicitly or explicitly, they validate the reified notion (i.e., abstract idea falsely made to be real) that maximizing exchange value is the best way to nurture artistic practice. This turns the necessities that capitalism imposes on cultural activity into virtues…

These tendencies are insidious because they generally appear as obvious, yet unstated underlying assumptions — “of course this is the way things are and should be… he’s really telling it like it is…” The full implications of these modes of practice are psychologically repressed in the practitioner as unconscious beliefs. This is the definition of ideology.