Masterclass Yngvar B. Steinholt: Art, Noise, and Popular Music in Russia

For: PhD and Research Master students
Type: Masterclass
ECTS: 1
Date: June 10, 2015
Time: 2:00-5:00
Place: University of Amsterdam, Oudemanhuispoort 4-6, room 1.08.
Organizer: S.R. Amico
Registration
More information: poposocon@gmail.com

Over the last few years Russian protest art, activism, and popular music have featured regularly in Western media, the protest art collectives of Voiná group and Pussy Riot being the most prominent examples.  Yet popular music often makes our headlines as well, especially in relation to protest and/or censorship.  As the world inches its way back into cold-war mode, the way we read Russian culture sinks back into stereotypical molds of oppression and resistance. Surprisingly to a western outsider, contemporary Russian popular music scenes are still largely indifferent to politics, even if their musical genres and aesthetics would suggest otherwise.  What, then, are the insider views and what can they tell us about the scale of cultural differences between Russia and the West? How do we approach and analyse Russian popular music and what can its sounds and words tell us?  The master class offers a closer look at popular music in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, challenging established Western views of its functions and features.

Yngvar B. Steinholt is Associate Professor of Russian Culture and Literature at the University of Tromsø, Norway. He has published numerous articles on popular music in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, as well as on art activism, protest culture and contemporary Russian society. Steinholt is co-author of Punk in Russia: Cultural mutation from the ‘useless’ to the ‘moronic’ (Routledge 2014). In his first book, Rock in the Reservation: Songs from the Leningrad Rock Club 1981-86 (MMMSP 2005), Steinholt’s reserach applied Philip Tagg’s method in popular music analysis for ‘non-musos’. Currently he is embarking on a study of auditive signifiers of Russia in literature and film.

Students must register in advance.  To register, and receive the required readings (and/or for any questions), please send an email to poposocon@gmail.com.