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spectatorship is not neutral

site-specific interventions for concert halls by Colin Tucker

Installation open 10am-3pm daily, April 23-26 and April 29-May 3

all events free

Canadian Music Centre—Ontario, 20 St. Joseph St., Tkaronto/Toronto, occupied land of the Wendat confederacy, Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation/Anishinaabe confederacy, and Haudenosaunee confederacy

spectatorship is not neutral presents new and recent installation works for concert halls by Colin Tucker. The installation focuses on marking the politics of often unmarked defaults of spectatorial concert (“classical”) music, particularly those of silent, seated, focal listening, and of organizing musical practice around closed, immaterial works. 

Grounded in methods of Black and Indigenous studies, the installation investigates how the concert hall’s central subject-position, the Spectator, is always-already relational, and specifically how the Spectator’s sensory capacity depends axiomatically upon the discursive displacement of the exteriority of sensation onto racially-marked figures of sensory incapacity. The featured works map how seemingly routine protocols of concert music are not easily separable from protocols of empire, as a necessary step towards a politicized dismantling of concert music. As the artist is read as white, the installation deliberately limits the scope of its critical inquiry to white positionality (and whiteness’s (re)production in and through concert music), while prioritizing methods of interrogating whiteness learned from Indigenous and Black studies.

Featuring works for print, images, audio, projection, piano, and more, the program features installations throughout the CMC’s Chalmers House space, as well as related performances and a live-streamed artist talk.

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Public Programs:

Breaking up with The Aesthetic, participatory performance for speaking voices, facilitation, interactive audio, classical music samples, and bust. Works by Colin Tucker, Yoko Ono, and Colin Tucker + Hala El Ouarrak. Monday, April 22 (300th Birthday of Immanuel Kant), 3pm.

Spectatorship Has Never Been Neutral, Artist Talk (live-streamed here and in person), Thursday, April 25, 7pm

Sensation Is Not Neutral, participatory performance for spectators with objects, images, audio, piano, speaking voices, and lights in a concert hall. Works by Colin Tucker and Yoko Ono. Thursday, April 25, 8pm.

The Concert Hall Is Not Neutral, participatory performance for objects, images, audio, piano, and concert hall. Works by Colin Tucker, and an against-the-grain, critical performance practice for Dennis Johnson/Max Neuhaus LISTEN. Tuesday, April 30, 3pm.