Minor Compositions

For this episode we have a discussion of the book Peter Brötzmann: Free-Jazz, Revolution and the Politics of Improvisation with its author Daniel Spicer and long time comrade and fellow radical theorist / free jazz musician Richard Gilman-Opalsky. In it we discuss the countercultural and artistic milieus that shape Brötzmann as an artist, the importance of his work as an organizer and catalyst, and the weird and unfortunate way that radical politics is increasingly edited out of the history of free jazz.

More about the book. Here Daniel Spicer has written “the first ever, full-length, English-language biography of one of the most fascinating and inspiring personalities in the history of Western improvised music – and one of the key artistic figures to emerge from the socio-cultural tumult of the 1960s. Drawing on extensive interviews with Brötzmann and key associates, it traces the German saxophonist’s crucial role as a pioneer of European free jazz, his restless travels and collaborations and his eventual superstardom, examining the life and work of a fiercely uncompromising artist with a reputation for gruff intensity and total commitment. Digging deep into the history and aesthetics of free jazz in Europe and beyond, it provides detailed analysis of music by Brötzmann and other major figures, while positioning Brötzmann’s work – and the wider free jazz milieu – in the context of the revolutionary left-wing, humanist and utopian ideals that inspired and underpinned it. Both intimate and wide-ranging, it tells the story of a man and a music that changed the world.” 
Bios: Daniel Spicer is a writer, broadcaster, improviser and poet. He writes about music for The Wire, Jazzwise, Songlines, WeJazz and The Quietus. He is the author of The Turkish Psychedelic Music Explosion: Anadolu Psych (1965 – 1980). Richard Gilman-Opalsky is professor of political theory and philosophy in the School of Politics and International Affairs at the University of Illinois. He is the author of numerous books including the recently released Communist Ontologies. An Inquiry into the Construction of New Forms of Life (co-written with Bruno Gullì).

Intro / outdo music: Unreleased bootleg of the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet - Live in London, April 2011

The Minor Compositions podcast is in made in collaboration with Firefly Frequencies: https://fireflyfrequencies.org

For this episode we talk with Brixton-based textile artist Scorpio about his life and work. Last summer a quest to learn more about the 1990s militant queer art collective Homocult led us to visiting “Iconic Queer,” an exhibition of Scorpio’s work at the Lambeth Archives. Moved by the power of the work, and sensing there would be interesting stories behind these pieces, which focussed on cycles of torment, development, and personal renewal, we decided to track down Scorpio. The resulting conversation is about Scorpio’s life along with queer politics, counterculture, and art of the 1990s, and making space for the misfits who find sometimes they don’t even feel like they fit within the rules of alternative milieus. Scorpio is a delightful conversationalist, whatever words are written here will inevitably fail to adequately convey the joy and intensity brought to the conversation.

For this episode we are joined by Olimpia Burchiellaro, who is the author of The Gentrification of Queer Activism, and a part of the management committee of the Friends of the Joiners Arms, a Community Benefit Society that aims to open London’s first community-run, community-owned, queer pub. This episode was recorded at the MayDay Rooms podcasting studio,

Minor Compositions is a publisher of books and media drawing from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of everyday life: 

The Minor Compositions podcast is in made in collaboration with Firefly Frequencies: https://fireflyfrequencies.org

For this episode, in light of the current sector wide university crisis in the UK, we present the recording of a seminar with Ronald Hartz, David Harvie, and Simon Lilley about their book Shaping for Mediocrity.

In 2021, as part of a programme called Shaping for Excellence, bosses at the University of Leicester made redundant numerous scholars in what was simultaneously an attack on academic freedom and trade union organisation. The authors of Shaping for Mediocrity not only had front-row seats in the campaign against these mass redundancies, they were in the ring – both as targeted employees and as trade union officers and negotiators. Shaping for Mediocrity tells the inside story of these attacks and the campaign against them. It situates this story within a longer history of struggle to make the university a place where critical thinking is possible, showing how events in Leicester are both reflective of higher education in the UK following four decades of neoliberal ‘reform’ and a particularly egregious instance of the increasingly authoritarian management of public institutions such as universities.  

The crisis in our universities has only worsened since 2021. Three-quarters of institutions are predicted to face financial problems in 2025, dozens are undergoing some form of restructuring and thousands of university workers risk losing their livelihoods.   In this recordings, three of Shaping for Mediocrity’s authors – Ronald Hartz, David Harvie and Simon Lilley – will be discussing their book and exploring the possibilities for resisting mediocrity and remaking the university.   

Ronald Hartz is Research Assistant at Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany. He is interested in organisation and management studies, alternative forms of work and organisation, and the discursive constitution of organisations. Recently, he became interested in the critical exploration of the transformation of higher education.

David Harvie was, until 2021, associate professor of finance and political economy at the University of Leicester and Communications officer and, for nine days before his dismissal, vice-chair of Leicester UCU. He is now a deprofessionalised intellectual and a founding member of inCommons. He’s approaching the end of a two-year term as UCU’s (national) honorary treasurer.  

Simon Lilley is Professor of Organisational Studies and Management and Director of Research for Lincoln International Business School, University of Lincoln, U.K. Simon has a first degree in Psychology from University College London and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. He has previously taught at the Universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, Glasgow, Keele, Lancaster, Leicester, the University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht and the International Business School, Budapest. His primary research interests are around Organisation Studies, Social Studies of Science and Technology, Social Studies of Finance, and Digitalisation.

Intro / outdo music: Mission of Burma - Academy Fight Song (1980)

The Minor Compositions podcast is in made in collaboration with Firefly Frequencies: https://fireflyfrequencies.org

For this episode we have a conversation with Bernard Marszalek and Peter Bloom about Bernard’s new book Jobs, Jive, & Joy: An Argument for the Utopian Spirit. In it we cover a wide range of topics including tech bros, the place of Bernard’s mum in labor history, and the ongoing quest to have our lives be filled with radical hedonism, collective joy, and non-alienated time.

“Utopianism arose in the 19th century as a response to industrialism. Today a new culture needs to address the immanent disasters of climate catastrophe and resource depletion. Foundational to this new culture is the desire to live a life of joyful collectivity that seeks individual satisfaction and group accomplishments. The faux luxuries that today tempt submission to toil soon won’t be an option. In the not-too-distant future, we will have no choice but to align our pleasures with goals that center on friendship, on playful production for use and enjoyment, and on the exploration of our better selves. I call this option, to transcend miserablism, radical hedonism.”

More on Bernard’s book here: https://charleshkerr.com/books/jobs-jive-and-joy-by-bernard-marszalek

Intro / outdo music: Gid Tanner - Work Don’t Bother Me (1930), from the collection Hard Time, Good Time & End Time Music : 1923-1936, Cargo Records, 2012

As part of previewing and preparing for a larger project with Penny Rimbaud, this episode revisits a conversation with Penny from 2017. This was part of the “Stop the City… Revisited” installation which was part of “Discipline the City” exhibition and event series at the Substation in Singapore. It’s an interesting, if somewhat strange conversation, where Pen, as is his wont, answers questions in a way that might seem a bit flip or glib at first, but are actually quite insightful after some further reflection. Señor Rimbaud is, as much as ever, true to his own nature, in the sense that, to borrow an old anarcho-punk piece of wisdom, there is no authority but yourself, and there is no self.

Materials from this exhibition & event were released in 2019 as Entry Points. Resonating Punk, Performance, and Art.

The intro music is from the performance that night with Awk Wah & Dharma. 

Stop the City… Revisited: https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=832
Discipine the City: https://www.substation.org/discipline-the-city-exhibition
Entry Points: https://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=949

Also available on Bandcamp: https://minorcompositions.bandcamp.com/album/entry-points-resonating-punk-performance-and-art

In this episode we chat with Pil and Galia Kollectiv to explore their new book, Subversive Performance in the Age of Human Capital. Stevphen was originally to take part in the book release event last autumn in London but was unable. So instead we’ve turned that missed event into an excuse for a conversation around Pil and Galia’s work. Topics covered include intersections of performance, labor, and neoliberal culture, examining how artistic expression resists and reframes the commodification of human potential. 


"Contemporary art relies on an expansionist, modernist ideal and still progresses through a critique of earlier forms of democratisation. But beneath this democratic drive, lurks a creeping crisis. Under neoliberalism, criticality has become a zone of value production. A self-deprecating irony, exposing and re-enacting this position of impotence, is one of the few gestures left in the arsenal of critical art. Against this irony, this book pits overidentification. This term has been taken to mean a kind of parodic mimicry of institutional power. Using a broad tapestry of sources, from political philosophers to art theorists, from post-Marxist critiques of labour to ethnographic studies, it proposes an interpretation of overidentification that does not collapse into ironic posturing. The authors differentiate this from bad faith flirting with taboo aesthetics by focusing on practices grounded in a genuine identification with power that ushers the kind of excess implied by overidentification. It is these forms of overidentification that destabilise the metastasis of liberal-democracy. Staging forms of critique not so readily absorbed into the structure of the present, these subversive performances herald a future beyond the democratic paradox."

Bio: Pil and Galia Kollectiv are artists, writers and curators working in collaboration. They lecture in Art at the University of Reading, Royal College of Art and University of the Arts London.
Subversive Performance in the Age of Human Capital Pil & Galia Kollectiv

In this episode of Minor Compositions we delve into the complex intersections of gender, power, and contemporary alt-right and neofascist politics with Jack Bratich and Ewa Majewska. Drawing on Bratich’s On Microfascism: Gender, Death, and War and Majewska’s Feminist Antifascism: Counterpublics of the Common, the discussion unpacks how gender dynamics are central to the rise of fascist ideologies in the 21st century. The conversation explores how microfascist tendencies operate in everyday life, particularly in the realms of social reproduction, and examines the ways feminist antifascism offers tools for resistance and building counterpublics. 

Bio: Jack Z. Bratich is professor in the Journalism and Media Studies Department at Rutgers University. He is author of Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture as well as coeditor of Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality. 

Ewa Majewska is a feminist philosopher of culture and an affiliated fellow at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry (ICI) in Berlin, Germany. She was Adjunct Professor of Gender Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of Warsaw and Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and has held positions as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley; Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, Austria; and as a fellow at the ICI Berlin. 

Intro / outro music: Test Department & the  South Wales Striking Miners Choir - Gdansk / Comrades from “Shoulder to Shoulder” (1984)

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 20 The Arts of Logistics with Michael Shane Boyle & Elaine W Ho  

This episode is a conversation around the new book The Arts of Logistics: Artistic Production in Supply Chain Capitalism by Michael Shane Boyle. For this conversation we are joined by Elaine Ho, who artistic practice explores similar areas to those explored in Shane’s work. Through this conversation explore how artistic practices intersect with the global logistics systems that underpin contemporary capitalism. Today the dynamics of logistical capitalism both shape dynamics of artistic and cultural production as well as arguably are shaped by their being intertwined those very forms of artistic production. How might forms of art produced in the logistical mode offer us a space for viewing infrastructure otherwise?

“We live in a world where nothing is untouched by supply chains—art included. In this major contribution to the study of contemporary culture and supply chains, Michael Shane Boyle has assembled a global inventory of aesthetics since the 1950s that reveals logistics to be a pervasive means of artistic production. The Arts of Logistics provides a new map of supply chain capitalism, scrutinizing how artists retool technologies designed for circulating commodities. What emerges is a magisterial account of the logistics revolution that foregrounds the role played by art in the long downturn of global capitalism.”

Bio: Michael Shane Boyle is Senior Lecturer in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London.

Elaine W. Ho works between the realms of art, social practice and language — and since 2015, also a co-conspirator of Display Distribute, a thematic inquiry, distribution service, now and again exhibition space, and sometimes shop founded in Kowloon, Hong Kong. Seeping via the capricious circulation patterns of low-end globalization into other subaltern networks and grammars, Display Distribute’s recent activities include the experimental infrastructure LIGHT LOGISTICS, poetic research and archival unit Shanzhai Lyric, and a peripatetic radio programme of hidden feminist narratives known as Widow Radio Ching.

Intro / outro music: Bow Gamelan Ensemble - Massed Percussion (1988)

Episode 19 Emergent Assemblages of Relationist Football with Jamie Hamilton 

For this episode we talk with Jamie Hamilton, a football coach and tactical writer based at Ayr United in Scotland. Hamilton is best known for coining the idea of relationism in football, which is an approach that emphasizes emergent patterns of play discovered by the players themselves rather than fitting into a set plan determined by the manager in advance. It is an approach that draws from a wide range of philosophical and aesthetic concepts, from the work of Deleuze and Guattari, to the anti-colonial politics of Brazilian football. In what ways might ideas and approaches developed within a football resonate beyond that context? How might looking for emergent dynamics rather than set plans change out patterns of perception and attunement with the environments we operate within and the people with interact with?

“Relationism differs from Positionism in that it does not believe future possibilities derive from fixed, known, established concepts. Rather, Relationism proposes (by way of concepts borrowed from French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze) that novel future states emerge to be actual through the establishing of contacts with an infinite set of virtual possibilities which are as yet unknown to us. The virtual is a realm of potentiality – the kindling is already pregnant with the potential of fire, all it needs to actualise it is a spark… 

The purpose is not to replace Positionism with Relationism in Europe, but nor should European Positionism entirely reject the validity of Relationist systems. Rather, an environment must be nurtured where these contrasting strains of football tactics can be studied, merged and cross-pollinated. Relationist tactics propose that new and unpredictable connections emerge from within the chaotic interactions between players. The routes of ball progression are not pre-meditated through set patterns and repeated automations. New orders emerge from the instability of disordered environments.” 

Bio: Jamie Hamilton is a coach (UEFA A) at Ayr United in Scotland and a football writer focusing on tactical theory and coaching practice. His writing can be found on Medium. 

Intro / Outro Music: Ken Vandermark, Eddie Prevost, and Guillaume Viltard, Improv Set Live at Cafe Oto September 2014

Minor Compositions Podcast Episode 18 Anxiety as Vibration with Ana Minozzo 

For this episode we talk with we chat Ana Minozzo about her new book Anxiety as Vibration: A Psychosocial Cartography. What can anxiety do if approach anxiety not simply as a problem to be solved, but also as a potential site of rupture and transformation? And what tools might we find in a rethought version of psychoanalysis, embedded in community based practices?

“This open access book draws on the work of Deleuze and Guattari alongside Lacan and Freud to offer a radical psychosocial survey of the status of anxiety. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, the book examines key issues in contemporary diagnosis and points towards possibilities for forging a more creative clinic. Departing from a feminist, non-Oedipal positioning towards psychoanalytic texts, the author invites art theory, medical humanities and philosophy into a conversation that seeks to answer the question: What can anxiety do? Here, Ana Minozzo explores the possibilities of an encounter with the Real as a sphere of excessive affect in psychoanalysis, and terms this meeting a ‘vibration’.”

Bio: Ana C. Minozzo is a psychoanalyst and researcher based in London, UK. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher in Psychosocial Studies at the University of Essex where she is part of the FREEPSY collective research on the legacies of free psychoanalytic clinics.
Intro / Outro Music: The Observatory - Everything is Vibration
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