Heya. Performing Agency: women, networks and experimental music and sound in Cairo, Tehran, Istanbul and Beirut

本项目将探讨中东女性实验音乐艺术家的实验音乐实践与政治和社会机构之间的联系。Heya是一个基于实践的研究项目，它使用协作的方法来平衡研究者和受试者之间的角色，音乐创作中固有的非语言交流提供了传统研究方法无法获得的经验和知识的交流。女权主义音乐学家探索的主题，如性别、噪音和女权主义表演，几乎完全局限于欧洲和美国的主题。Heya将通过作曲、表演和社区建设来研究中东女性作曲家的文化和社会状况。塔拉·罗杰斯（Tara Rodgers）的女权主义音乐话语方法试图否定“现有文化秩序的再生产”。计算机文化的语言（以及音乐制作的语言）继续嵌入诸如“主人”和“奴隶”、“控制器”、“命令”、“触发器”和“砰”之类的词。对于电子音乐和实验音乐的去殖民化，根本没有一种现有的共同语言。缺乏有意义的语言意味着女性主义音乐学、民族音乐学和阿拉伯现代主义学者大多无法从西方以外从事音乐实践的女性的经验中产生本体论。欧洲的现代主义和“先锋派”往往与该地区的政治机构难以区分。现有的在线网络，在整个中东地区都很容易访问，加速了音乐的传播，在整个地区建立了跨国团结。这些网络激发了人们对“另类”音乐形式的兴趣（Anderson 2006,57）。神秘的、实验性的、噪音和金属在网络上（特别是在Youtube上）制作和传播，或者在公开或地下现场播放，都是针对流行文化（和霸权）的“反叛”和“行动主义”行为，或者是对制度“环境”的去领土化。当代ME女性研究中的跨学科话语正在不断发展和跨学科。自阿拉伯之春和伊朗绿色运动（波斯之春）在这些穆斯林占主导地位的国家（埃及、伊朗和黎巴嫩）发生以来，在不同的社会和政治背景下，对性别、革命和国家建设之间关系的理解将构成合作工作的整体基础。2019年的革命运动和当权者的反应将对这些地区的女性艺术家产生重大影响，从而对本研究产生重大影响。这个项目将探索为电子和实验音乐创作开发一种新的非殖民化的描述性语言，这将反过来为这个项目和领域内外的话语提供信息。这很重要，并且在理论上具有重要意义，因为所使用的语言和方法将产生音乐学，ME女性研究和更广泛的音乐文化（包括电子音乐制作语言）的基本知识（目前缺乏）。该项目将增加对中东地区妇女的有限比较研究，揭示现代主义和全球化对中东地区性别角色的影响，并对了解中东地区妇女及其与技术和全球网络的关系作出重大贡献。Heya的学术听众包括基于实践的研究人员，民族音乐学家，音乐学家。来自ME的音乐项目如埃及女性实验音乐、平行波斯和伊朗实验音乐已经引起了欧洲媒体的关注。Heya将通过CTM Berlin、Mutek、NTS Radio、Resident Advisor、The Wire、The Guardian和Quietus等平台吸引更广泛的受众，这些平台都有类似的项目，尽管通常以男性艺术家为主。

This project will explore connections between experimental music practices with political and social agency for Middle Eastern female experimental music artists. Heya is a practice-based research project that uses collaborative methods to balance roles between researcher and subjects, and nonverbal communication inherent in musical composition provide an exchange of experience and knowledge not accessed by traditional research methods. Feminist musicologists exploring subjects like gender and noise and feminist performance, are almost exclusively limited to European and American subjects. Heya will investigate the cultural and sociological situation of women composers in the Middle East through composition, performance and community building. Tara Rodgers' approach to feminist music discourse has sought to negate "the reproduction of an existing cultural order". The language of computer culture (and therefor music production) continues to be embedded with words such as "'master' and 'slave', 'controller', 'command', 'trigger' and 'bang'". There simply isn't an existing common language for decolonising electronic and experimental music in any real way. This lack of meaningful language has meant that feminist musicology and ethnomusicology and scholars of Arab modernism have mostly failed to merge to yield ontologies from experiences of women outside of the West who engage music practices.Modernism and the 'avant garde' in the ME are often indistinguishable from political agency in the region. Existing online networks, readily accessed throughout the Middle East, expedite the transmission of music creating a transnational solidarity across the region. These networks stimulate an interest in 'alternative' musical forms (Anderson 2006, 57). Esoteric, experimental, noise and metal produced and distributed over the web (particularly on Youtube) or played live, either publicly or underground, are acts of "rebellion" and "activism" positioned against popular culture (and hegemony) or deterritorialization of institutional "milieus". Contemporary interdisciplinary discourse within ME women's studies is evolving and interdisciplinary. An understanding of relationships between gender, revolution and state building within the diverse social and political contexts since the Arab Spring and Iranian Green Movement (Persian Spring) in these predominantly Muslim countries (Egypt, Iran and Lebanon), will form an integral basis from which the collaborative work will be done. The revolutionary movements and responses by those in power in 2019 will have a significant impact on female artists in those regions and therefore on this research.This project will explore developing a new decolonised descriptive language for electronic and experimental music composition which will in turn inform this project and discourse in the field and beyond. This matters and is theoretically significant because the language and methods used will generate essential (currently absent) knowledge in musicology, ME women's studies and music culture more broadly including the language of electronic music production. The project will add to the limited number of comparative studies of women in the ME, bring to light the effects of modernism and globalisation on gender roles in the ME, and make a significant contribution to knowledge about women in the ME and their relationship with technology and global networks. The academic audience for Heya includes practice based researchers, ethnomusicologists, musicologists.Musical projects emerging from the ME such as Egyptian Female Experimental Music, Parallel Persia and Experimental Music from Iranian have already attracted attention in European media. Heya will be of interest to a very broad audience through platforms such as CTM Berlin, Mutek, NTS Radio, Resident Advisor, The Wire, The Guardian and Quietus, which have all featured similar projects, though often with a predominantly male artist bias.