Late breaking information

MUSICOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

19/02/2016

Resilience, precarity and counter publics in Beyoncé’s audiovisual oeuvre

Colloquium Musicology
dr. Kristin McGee (University of Groningen)

Thursday 17 March, 15:30-17:00
Nieuwe Doelenstraat 16, room 3.01

Abstract
In an age of self-fashioning, audiovisual music performances, as meta-texts, remain powerful vehicles for promoting neoliberalism’s resilience discourse. Currently, pop stars commandeer not only top down media, but more informal platforms to promote their celebrity status and consequently alter the terms of musical performativity. In her self-titled video-album Beyoncé (2013), super star Beyoncé challenges the conventions of both film and music genres to promote her resilient artistic voice while expanding her international celebrity status. Her recent work also elevates the status of music video as the essential facet of the new visual album genre. This presentation conceptualizes Beyoncé’s self-fashioning as both artistic engagement with the public sphere and as a continuation of the repetitive performance aesthetics of an increasingly dominate black music ideal. Ultimately Beyoncé exploits old and new media to perpetuate her mega star status; yet her multifaceted artistic oeuvre prompts non-essentialist corporeal negotiations of black culture, which productively contribute to recent debates about feminism and sexuality within the music industry.