Ear | Wave | Event (Issue 3)

Art is, has always been, as Bersani suggests, a kind of alternative to “sex,” another mode of modulating the most intimate relation between soma and psyche. And the stakes of that “other” mode, those “other relational fields,” would be toward the articulation of forms of life divorced from the literal and symbolic traces of white hetero-sexist patriarchy. Our contention is that musicians such as Oliveros, as well as authors featured in this issue, have inherently understood and been working on this all along. The current political moment demands that we not only perpetually recall the radical orientation of “the experimental” (in the “left of Cage” sense Marina Rosenfeld has suggested) but likewise challenge ourselves to take the implications of our work in this sense (toward or as the formulation of “new relational modes”) as seriously as we can. We can no longer afford the play of autonomy (could we ever?). We are working on ourselves and each other, always. We think of you, Pauline.