States of flux
Led by Roddy Hawkins, States of Flux is a research grouping based at the University of Manchester that explores how musical cultures are organised, experienced and transformed during periods of social, political, technological and institutional change.
The history of the last half century has been marked by rapid and often unsettling transformation. The phrase state of flux has itself become a familiar shorthand used to describe social, political, economic and ecological uncertainty, fragility and precarity.
Yet it also captures something fundamental about musical cultures themselves: the continual emergence of new practices, institutions, technologies, communities and ways of understanding the contemporary world.
States of Flux investigates how musicians, organisations, educators, audiences and cultural institutions respond to and negotiate precarity and fragility, whether today or in the past. We are interested in the infrastructures that make music possible and illuminate the material conditions on which contemporary musics and social life rely.
While rooted in music-based research, States of Flux addresses the broader questions that musical cultures raise about creativity, collective action, labour, sustainability and public life.
The group seeks to connect historical and contemporary perspectives on a range of questions, including:
- collective musical practices and ensemble cultures;
- music and political life;
- artistic labour, employment and precarity;
- collaboration and interdisciplinary practice;
- music education and cultural opportunity;
- archives, heritage and cultural memory;
- cultural institutions and infrastructures;
- partnership-based research and public engagement.
States of Flux provides a forum for sharing work-in-progress, developing collaborations and advancing interdisciplinary conversation around what contemporary music is, what it could otherwise be, and how research on and with contemporary music is carried out.
States of Flux aims to provide a welcoming environment for the development of new ideas, new conversations, collaborations and work-in-progress, and particularly encourages participation from doctoral researchers, early-career researchers and those working across academic, creative and cultural sectors.
The group does this by proudly reclaiming the status of a ‘talking shop’ (i.e. meetings that are unproductive and repetitive) in which a community can share and test out ideas in a friendly and supportive environment. Researchers, practitioners and organisations with related interests are warmly encouraged to participate in future events and conversations.