Sonic Fabrics – Rethinking Aesthetics Beyond Cultural Aestheticization

Olivier Duport, co-founder of FLEE, an independent publishing house, record label and curatorial platform dedicated to the documentation and artistic reinterpretation of hybrid cultural phenomena.

Sonic Fabrics – Rethinking Aesthetics Beyond Cultural Aestheticization

Olivier Duport will conduct a master class focusing on the use of archival materials in the creation of contemporary music, drawing in particular on FLEE’s most recent recording and companion book, Pasé Bél Temps: Fancophonies and Creolities in Louisiana. The class will explore various topics related to archives and music, including

• The need to situate our listening, recognizing sonic otherness and our participation in often invisible power relations
• Alternatives to the dominant Western tropism in approaches to archives, which too often refers to a form of immobility and museumification of cultural phenomena and objects
• The need to deconstruct the idea of “authenticity” that is often invoked in representing and marketing cultural products
• The process of heritage-making: Who decides what is part of cultural heritage and according to what criteria?