Escaping aesthetic control

Spanish pianists, educators, and commentators have relished passing down to following generations the performance practices of their own tradition, with the renowned institution L’escola de música de Barcelona claiming to offer specialist training in “Spanish music”. In this context, Granados’s Goyescas have inevitably become the almost-exclusive domain of native musicians, herding artists’ creativities towards sets of performance instructions familiar to them. That we should continue to consider this repertoire as a specifically separate entity, fully knowable only by local artists or those trained within their tradition, is worthy of attention, as it places anyone outside this educational background and performing tradition as ‘other’ in need of acceptance. While the study of Granados’s output has recently been enriched by analytical investigations, recording projects, and new critical editions, it is the still unfamiliar early-recorded legacy by the composer/pianist that will be the catalyst for insights in this article. His Welte-Mignon roll recordings show a dynamic and flexible artistry, unsurprising in pianists of his generation, together with a lack of highly articulated ornamental inflexions and the rhythmical rigour we might expect in performances of such repertoire. The question that I wish to raise is whether at some point during the twentieth century there was a cultural shift that shaped ‘Spanish music’ to sound as distinctively national as possible. Such a shift would have occurred, in the minds of players, in parallel to wider changes in performance styles taking place throughout the continent. Exploring these aesthetic ideals through the lens of the country’s cultural history during the troubled years across the middle of the last century may hint at the subtle but meaningful ways that defined a canon flavoured with local folklore, both within and without the Spanish borders. The aim throughout is to challenge these orthodox approaches controlling the repertoire, resulting in my own renewed performance of El amor y la muerte; the hope will be that of empowering pianists to make different choices, diversifying performance options in the future.

Proposing a checklist for aesthetic control and management in a city under neo-liberal influences: Istanbul case

PurposeThe increased flexibility in urban planning practice under neoliberal policies had impacts on urban aesthetics, such as causing cities to lose their unique character and identity, especially in developing countries. However, importance of the control and management of aesthetics has not been adequately addressed in the current planning legislations in the literature. Conventional legislation devices (such as zoning ordinances, building codes, etc.) provide little effect on aesthetic control for the flexible planning era. The aim of the study is to examine how a supplementary legal tool (a checklist) can be developed to provide urban aesthetics control and management for a city under neo-liberal influences by taking into consideration the relationship between urban environmental aesthetics and related legal regulations.Design/methodology/approachThe research focusses on the Istanbul case. In this study, the aesthetic parameters with factor analysis using urban design parameters that affecting urban aesthetics are determined, how inclusion into the planning laws and regulations of these aesthetic parameters are examined and a checklist for aesthetics control and management are proposed.FindingsThe findings reveal that although there are different and fragmented legal sources that directly or indirectly deal with the aesthetic control and management for urban design and there is a lack of a supplementary legal tool as control management.Originality/valueChecklists in the aesthetic control area can be a practical legal tool, which can establish a routine by giving proper attention to aesthetic quality and its related parameters of planning for all developing countries under the influence of neoliberal policies.

Merzbau, the grave of the logocentric self: He who screams becomes the space

This article will discuss the Merzbau in Hannover as a "para-architecture" experience and as a doctrine on environmental comfort, connected to intense mnemonic feeling and relaxation. The Merzbau, the Gothic cubic "Traumhaus" (dream house) by Kurt Schwitters, is depicted here as a laboratory of sensory stimuli where an aesthetic control of oblivion, and of annoyance, has been practiced.

Curating popular music: authority and history, aesthetics and technology

The practice of curation in popular music may be seen as a form of historical enquiry that works in a similar way to the critical projects of the ‘new museology’. Self-curation can be employed by musicians to re-present their work as a historiographical project of popular music and as an intervention in dominant critical accounts of the musicians' creative practices. The challenge to conventional historiography can be understood as a project of archaeology in the Foucauldian sense, where discourses surrounding objects and their histories may be contested and reinvigorated through a process of recollecting/re-collecting that also recalls Walter Benjamin's challenge to historicism. Using the work of Robert Fripp and King Crimson as an example of musician-curated recordings, I argue that legal and economic control may become a basis for aesthetic control, through which histories of creativity may be rewritten. The act of recollection/re-collection becomes a route through which musicians are able to engage with critical contexts and genre formations, and to contribute actively to the material culture of their own history.

Sonja Alhääuser's Sweet Installations

Don't we visit museums to look at art, not 'heaven forbid' to smell it, salivate at it, and eat it? Don't we arrange our sculptures on pedestals, and contemplate aesthetic at arm's length? German artist Sonja Alhuser thumbs her nose at such convention. She makes sculptures from sweets, and gleefully invites us to devour them. Soon, chocolate crumbs litter the gallery floor and her sculptures are reduced to rubble. There's an alluring naughtiness to this endorsed destruction-by-consumption of art in such an elegant setting. But as we nibble, aren't we contradicting the museum's mission to preserve and honor art? Haven't we dismantled the museum-goer's role as observer? Alhuser's gradually disappearing sculptures prompt us to question traditional beliefs and expectations about art's immortality and its function in museums. By instructing us to eat (and alter) her work, Alhuser relinquishes aesthetic control, and denies the dictum that great art is perfect as is. Instead, she lures us with chocolate's evocative and nostalgic aromas, and asks us to participate in her work and its destruction. We are no longer mere observers, but have been invited inside.