Diffracting Alto Saxophones

Abstract

This article presents a study that utilises a performative research approach, contribut ing to our comprehension of music making by grounding it in Karen Barad's theory of agential realism and expanding upon Donna Haraway's use of the concept of diffraction. The starting point is a lecture performance held in 2022 at the Arts in Action: Urgencies in Art and Art Education, where a piece of music for alto saxophone was coming into being, while the saxo phonist partly played and improvised and partly talked about what she sensed and imagined. With saxophones as a pivotal point, a diffractive field is established by the lecture performance and a concert that took place in 2019. Effects that cross time and space are analysed through two agen tial cuts in the concert in the form of two pieces of music. Empiric material is gener ated through sound and video recordings of the soundcheck and concert, supplemented by research notes and a concert review in the Danish daily newspaper, Politiken. The study aims to contest the anthropocen tric tendency to centre human subjects in the making of music. Instead, it asks what human and nonhuman bodies and materi alities do in the study's music making.