Orpheus in the Mud
Towards an Analysis of Environmental Aesthetics in Modern Open Air Music Festivals in Germany
28.04.2015
Here a short abstract of Adrian Franco´s final project:
The message of this interdisciplinary study is a twofold one: first, modern music festivals in the West, as I would label the object of my inquiry, have become only recently the target of sustainable management practices. Calls for a ecological friendly transformation of the music industry appear to be more structualized and present after the 1990ies onwards and at a time of general economic success triggered by this kind of open-air events.
And yet, I did not elaborate this study, as it probably should have been otherwise, in a sense that it was built upon experiences from participant observation, empirical survey data or a long-term analysis and companionship of certain festivals. Instead, it's purpose is to highlight a presupposition that is a rather hypothetical one: what is the faith of music festivals in an age of changing paradigms? How to see music, art and crowded people when humans are becoming aware of what their actions cause to the environment? As a matter of fact, this study attempts to bring together ideas on environmental aesthetics and offers an assertion of music festivals based on interviews with seven practicioners.
In the course of two joint and public exhibitions with my fellow students at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, which we had conducted in the aftermath of our projects (on 23rd July 2015 and 18th September 2015) in Munich, I gathered more material and reflections on behalf of my research into music festival cultures. Here, I decided to assemble all commentaries and essays to expand the scope of my original findings into one project corpus. Moreover, I amended and revised the present written texts (January 2016).
For additional information on the process of my study, please visit my research blog.
Downloads
- Orpheus in the mud (658 KByte)