Rootedness and Transcendence as the Telos of Artistic Action in Place

Abstract

In this paper, I seek to inhabit the space between two modes of being: that of the researcher, driven by an enduring preoccupation with interpretation and critical analysis, and that of the musician, inhabited by lived experience and artistic practice. My discourse will therefore oscillate—at times through a metaphorical register—between the states of presence and absence within place. Hence, I trust I shall not be faulted if I address you in the language of the academic while speaking as a musician, or in the language of the musician while speaking as an academic.

Such a position opens a common horizon of reflection, inviting us to engage with a series of conceptual dualities that emerge in the search for what binds us together in place—by which I mean the place, or rather the space, of art. It is precisely this in-between condition that has compelled me to raise a number of questions rooted in a lived experience, one that many of us perhaps share within the contemporary city, where what we call the place—or the space—of art remains deeply problematic. The most pressing of these questions is the following: Must we still search today for a place for art?