On the fragility of sounds

On the fragility of sounds is a project designed to explore terrains of composition and contemporary music theatre as they are interwoven with feminist practice. In order to do so, this study takes the composers perspective and looks at the compositional process. Can music theatre be conceived and composed with another ear? We propose that taking a feminist position impacts ones listening per- ception: activating the feminist ear, hidden sonorities and more fragile sounds emerge. Listening to the background noises of human society brings them to the foreground of ones awareness. Rather than producing feminist works in terms of content, this project aims to understand how the artistic process is affected by feminist listening. The compositional process in music theatre begins within the composers imagination. From here, it expands, continuously integrating more artists, collaborators, and performers. Additional media may be present, from any number of contextualising disciplines. The process only comes to completion upon the works realisation and reception. As individuals, the members of the audience recreate the composition in their own creative process of listening. Looking at this cycle of activities as a model structure, our project investigates the influence of the feminist practice on the process of composing. In order to evaluate our proposals, this project will realise a number of scenic and spatial composi- tions in various formats, including a large-scale music theatre work and a minimalist lecture opera. In doing so, we will collaborate with the renowned soprano Juliet Fraser, the choreographer and per- former Paola Bianchi, with musicians of the ensembles PHACE and Schallfeld, with the festival Wien Modern, as well as with further international composer-performers, including the electronic composer Electric Indigo aka Susanne Kirchmayr and the pianist and composer Elisabeth Harnik. The research team is led by the composer-researcher Pia Palme. She will be assisted by the musicolo- gist Christina Lessiak, who plans her doctoral thesis as part of this project. Pia Palme will guide her reflection along the format of an auto-ethnography; this approach allows her to precisely and openly reflect on the artistic interactions within this exploration. Researcher Christine Lessiak will concen- trate her studies on the potential of (auto-)ethnographic ideas in the context of artistic and feminist research. In addition to the core team, three guest composers will contribute to the project, as they will be invited to realise scenic works for ensemble. We will strengthen our explorations through an inter- national exchange and a symposium and festival. The outcome of this interdisciplinary research will be disseminated through an array of performances, in festivals, lectures, presentations, scholarly pub- lications, workshops, as well as via the radio station Ö1 and the internet.