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Colin Tucker

@colintuckerstudio.bsky.social
194 followers 247 following 52 posts

Artist & writer. Experimental music & contemporary art. Critical excavation of whiteness and coloniality/-ism in concert music and territorial politics. Website: colintucker.studio Settler in Tkaronto/Toronto - Dish with One Spoon Treaty Territory

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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
Re: the Boulez anniversary: "This article examines the lessons that Pierre Boulez learned about sound from Antonin Artaud, suggesting that Boulez's ideas about musical writing (écriture) took shape as the composer imagined and appropriated forms of non-European expression."
cambridge.org
Ontological Appropriation: Boulez and Artaud | Twentieth-Century Music | Cambridge Core
Ontological Appropriation: Boulez and Artaud - Volume 18 Issue 2
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
re: the Boulez anniversary, look up PB's longtime friend and correspondent André Schaeffner, who founded and directed a department at the Musée de l'Homme and participated in multiple "object"-"music"-plundering expeditions in Africa fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3...
fr.wikipedia.org
André Schaeffner — Wikipédia
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
I don't think PB's casual and widespread appropriation (among other aspects of his work) is particularly separable from AS's outright plunder.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
AS participated in this expedition which looted 3500 "objects": fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission...
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
www.encyclopedia.com/arts/diction...
encyclopedia.com
Schaeffner, André | Encyclopedia.com
Schaeffner, AndréSchaeffner, André, French musicologist and ethnomusicologist; b. Paris, Feb. 7, 1895; d. there, Aug. 11, 1980. He studied composition with d’Indy at the Schola Cantorum (1921–24), eth...
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
re: the Boulez anniversary, look up PB's longtime friend and correspondent André Schaeffner, who founded and directed a department at the Musée de l'Homme and participated in multiple "object"-"music"-plundering expeditions in Africa fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3...
fr.wikipedia.org
André Schaeffner — Wikipédia
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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
Fossil fuel companies should be forced to pay the public trillions in damages for the costs of their planetary arson. Instead they are trying to shut down one of the most important and storied environmental groups in the world. It's shameless - and it's not over. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
theguardian.com
Greenpeace must pay hundreds of millions over Dakota pipeline protests, says jury
Non-profit said in statement lawsuits like this aimed at ‘destroying the right to peaceful protest’
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Amy Westervelt @amywestervelt.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
This is a corporate attempt to put an end to climate protest and *particularly* to Indigenous led climate protest. Massive 1A assault. Pretty shocking that our little outlet was one of maybe 3 or 4 that had a reporter there every day of the trial (one of the others was a fake newspaper 🙃)
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Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
They are coming for every university, if you think you’re safe because it hasn’t been yours yet I don’t know what to tell you. Join AAUP, refuse to comply, organize your colleagues
thedp.com
Trump administration freezes $175 million in federal funding to Penn
According to a White House tweet, Wednesday's decision is a result of Penn's
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
3rd image is a visual realization of "before Taste," featuring a montage of 1) a word from Wilhelm Wackenroder's (still) influential allegory that defines transcendent art music over-against the figure of a mechanized, Orientalized saint, and 2) Eugene Lami's image of concert music spectators.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Looking forward to realizing and sharing my pieces with new (to me) folks next Thursday in Seattle. Thanks to Aaron Michael Butler for playing and hosting! #ClassicalMusic #Aesthetics #ConcertHall #Artwashing #ContemporaryArt #InstitutionalCritique
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K R @kringelberg.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Also relevant (from Autry's essay in Mallory, Seidenstein, Burke, Jackson, Kéla, eds. _Art Museums and the Legacies of the Dutch Atlantic Slave Trade : Curating Histories, Envisioning Futures._ (Boston: BRILL, 2025)). (And @arunadsouza.bsky.social you came up in the Q&A, natch.)
In short, I have found that the denial of reality upheld through a brash
lack of criticality makes hegemonic museums, to use Umberto Eco’s expression, “closed texts.” As such, they become limited, self-contained worlds that legitimize their own narratives. The ability to ignore histories of conquest and parasitism sustains the ruling class that profits from that violence. Erasing and concealing reality forecloses widespread critique and potential political action against past and current extraction. The myth of neutrality, which permeates other industries, such as journalism and science, mediates how people understand not just hegemonic museums but, more importantly, the world at large. Through distracting and deluding, it contributes to a network of obscuring forces that prevent people from understanding how power operates.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Sharing new work in Seattle-Tacoma and (virtually) in England this month
Performance: Feeling as Capacity/ Feeling as Relation, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, March 20, 2025

Talk: "Primitivism and the Racialization of Sensation in David Tudor’s Rainforest series," Society for American Music, Tacoma, March 22, 2025

Virtual Talk: "'Like an empty glass, nothing but wheat:' John Cage’s Chance Systems and/as White Possessive Logics," Composing (with) Systems, University of Sheffield, England, March 27, 2025
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
Photo on the right features my installation piece "before the spectator's capacity," a site-specific intervention in gallery and performing arts spaces around similar issues.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
Presenting at @caavisual next week in Lenapehoking/"NYC" on apocalyptic c0l0nizing logics deeply embedded in Aesthetic philosophy and practice, as a step towards a decolonial dismantling of the Aesthetic and a closer aligning of art pedagogy and practice with decolonial social movements.
"Art History and Apocalypse: 
A Decolonial 
Re-Orientation:"

on the unthought yet deep influence of Spanish conquist-adors' writings on Immanuel Kant's aesthetics, and what this means for a decolonial reckoning with the Aesthetic

College Art Association
Feb. 13, 2025, 11am
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Presenting artwork & talks in Tkaronto and Lenapehoking over the next few weeks. For details and links, visit my website.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
Writing today about Kant's extensive debt to the writings of Spanish Conquistadors, and what that means for decolonial approaches to all modern Western artistic disciplines. I'll be presenting this writing at the College Art Association conference in "NYC"/Lenapehoking on February 13.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
colintucker.studio/projects/wake/
colintucker.studio
in the wake of the santa maria
for audio and Global North carbon-producing infrastructure Overview: in the wake of the santa maria is a work that positions global warming within long histories of imperialism, through audio inter…
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Next week in Tkaronto. Features my piece "in the wake of the santa maria," presented for the first time in a video version.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Tkaronto: I will be presenting prose and an installation from my book in progress on the politics of sensation in the concert hall Feb 6, 12noon, Luella Massey Playhouse.
cdtps.utoronto.ca
FOOT 2025
Learn more about the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies 33rd FOOT Conference taking place from February 6 to 7, 2025.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Delighted to be contributing to this exhibition at York University, curated by Aftab Mirzaei. Runs Feb. 3-7; opening reception is Wednesday, Feb. 5, 5-7pm.
ndstudiolab.com
Speculative Meteorology: Weather Channeled
nD::StudioLab, Digital Media, School of the Arts, Media, Performance, and Design, York University, Toronto, On.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Events coming up in Lenapehoking ("NYC"), "Seattle," and Tkaronto/Toronto-area.
colintucker.studio
Events
“The Relational Spectator: Marking Racializing Relations in Concert Music Protocols,” Festival of Original Theatre, Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, Luella Massey Play…
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
nullpointseries.wordpress.com/words/disman...
nullpointseries.wordpress.com
Dismantling the Whiteness of Concert Music: a Reading List
This list compiles writings which examine how concert music’s protocols engage in racializing work, with a view to dismantling these protocols. While the critical study of racialization is widespre…
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Null Point's 2023 publication is now updated, with sections on new topics. Feel free to copy and paste into your syllabus; but study should be followed up by action to change infrastructures (certain texts on the list take up what this might entail). L|nk |n comments.
Dismantling the whiteness of concert music: a reading list. Now updated, with new sections on policing, media, musical instruments, and tuning.
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Lainna Fader @lainna.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Holy cow. Just woke up to this view from mid-Wilshire looking downtown
Wildfire in Los Angeles
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
New text. 2024 was a Significant Anniversary of composer Charles Ives. I trace how this could have been an occasion for decolonial, abolitionist reckoning with a problematic figure, and yet US settler music institutions instead doubled down on an anti-Black, colonial status quo.
colintucker.studio
Reckoning with the Legacies of Charles Ives
content note: written discussion of relations of settler colonialism and anti-Blackness During 2024, a profusion of discourse was produced to mark the passing of a Significant Anniversary of compos…
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
Currently finishing a short piece about this. Drops tomorrow on my website.
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Infrasonic Press @infrasonicpress.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Null Point has published “De-normalizing ‘Wide Open Spaces:’ Notes Towards a Decolonial Performance Practice” Written by @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social, it concerns their realization of Yoko Ono’s “Hide Piece,” from Rust Belt Artists Against Gen*cide. nullpointseries.wordpress.com/words/de-nor...
nullpointseries.wordpress.com
De-Normalizing “Wide Open Spaces:” Notes Towards a Decolonial Performance Practice
an essay introducing the audio track Hide Piece by Null Point, based on the score by Yoko Ono, released on the compilation Rust Belt Artists Against Genocide (Infrasonic Press) by Colin Tucker (set…
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
On these investments, see the scholarship of David Hunter.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
It is "Messiah season" and, yet again, there is a deafening silence from presenters on the composer's investments in human trafficking. In this 2023 piece, I argued that these investments were inseparable from "purely musical" aspects of the composer's work. colintucker.studio/projects/bef...
colintucker.studio
before the empire lives long
for musical sample and annotation May 6, 2023 content description: verbal descriptions of racializing stereotypes, references to slavery, colonization, and environmental destruction Statement: “lon…
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
I might write something about this. But the overwhelming institutional silence on this needs to be marked in and of itself.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
Despite Charles Ives's explicit misogyny, anti-Indigenous rhetoric, and anti-Blackness (he participated in minstrel shows), I have yet to see anything resembling a critical take on his work or discourse during this anniversary year. (Please let me know if I'm overlooking something).
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
with @ethayden.bsky.social
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
New essay available: nullpointseries.wordpress.com/words/de-nor...
"The present project ... [takes] as axiomatic that all fashionings of Indigenous Land have a constitutive relationship to sovereign Indigenous nations. While this principle is foundational to contemporary Indigenous politics and critical theory on Turtle Island and elsewhere, its implications for US colonizer-settler art musics are extremely unsettling..."
-Colin Tucker, "De-normalizing 'wide open spaces:' Notes Towards a Decolonial Performance Practice"
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Soraya Nadia McDonald @soraya.press · 13/12/2024
Lorraine O'Grady lifted me up with her intellect, her wit, her nerve. This assignment came at a point in my life when I needed it and didn't even know. She was a blessing. I am saddened to know Lorraine has passed, and I am endlessly grateful to her. She lit flames that will never go out. 🖤
harpersbazaar.com
The Audacity of Lorraine O’Grady
In wake of her tragic passing today, we revisit our 2024 interview with the renegade and eternally punk-rock conceptual artist.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Published a year ago and sadly still relevant...
nullpointseries.wordpress.com
Tchaikovsky’s Land of Plunder
Last month, countless people—particularly in the Global North—made an annual outing to hear the ballet The Nutcracker (1892) with music by Peter Illich Tchaikovsky. This ballet continues to be so p…
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
New newsletter going out soon. Sign up here. It's monthly at most.
colintucker.studio
Contact
To contact me, please write to ColinLTucker [at] gmail [dot] com. To subscribe to my sporadic (at most monthly) newsletter, please enter your email address below:
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
As I argue in detail in my new essay, Americana art music's institutional history indexes how large/legacy (settler) concert music institutions have been chronically unable to even notice the colonialism-imperialism being enacted right in front of their own eyes/ears.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
New essay out, which is both a critique and proposal for a critical & otherwise performance practice. Please share widely with concert music networks, especially those on occupied Turtle Island. For the record, I am happy to chat with anyone (formally or informally) who will engage in good faith.
nullpointseries.wordpress.com
De-Normalizing “Wide Open Spaces:” Notes Towards a Decolonial Performance Practice
an essay introducing the audio track Hide Piece by Null Point, based on the score by Yoko Ono, released on the compilation Rust Belt Artists Against Genocide (Infrasonic Press) by Colin Tucker (set…
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Congratulations! Looking forward to reading it.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
The essay introduces an album in progress, one track of which has been released here: nullpointseries.wordpress.com/projects/de-...
nullpointseries.wordpress.com
De-Normalizing “Wide Open Spaces”
With grief, anger, and solidarity, Null Point announces the release of three related decolonial projects. In opposition to the recent intensification of Zionist violence in Palestine and Lebanon, w…
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
New essay out today on reckoning with settler imperial logics in Americana art music through critical performance practice grounded in Indigenous & decolonial studies analytics; I also reflect on how this project relates to present-day struggles against the Zionist outpost of US empire
nullpointseries.wordpress.com
De-Normalizing “Wide Open Spaces:” Notes Towards a Decolonial Performance Practice
an essay introducing the audio track Hide Piece by Null Point, based on the score by Yoko Ono, released on the compilation Rust Belt Artists Against Genocide (Infrasonic Press) by Colin Tucker (set…
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 06/12/2024
Photo details: www.loc.gov/item/2023781...
loc.gov
Aaron Copland in Israel, 1968
Location: Box Number 483/12. For information about this resource, refer to finding aid available at https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/eadmus.mu002006 Record created through migration from the Performing A...
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Aram Sinnreich @aramsinn.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
This is a really valuable tool to evaluate environmental cancer risk, block-by-block in the USA. If you're looking to buy a home, check the address first.
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
For more context on the project: nullpointseries.wordpress.com/projects/de-...
nullpointseries.wordpress.com
De-Normalizing “Wide Open Spaces”
With grief, anger, and solidarity, Null Point announces the release of three related decolonial projects. In opposition to the recent intensification of Zionist violence in Palestine and Lebanon, w…
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Colin Tucker @colintuckerstudio.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
Drops Monday: new essay introducing the broader project of which this track is a part. Through a grounding in Indigenous studies, the essay locates how colonial dispossession is foundational to Americana art music, and proposes a decolonial performance practice for/against this music.
infrasonicpress.bandcamp.com
Hide Piece, by Null Point
from the album Rust Belt Artists Against Genocide
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Daniel Rück @danrueck.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
After a decade of empty reconciliation talk, we're still pretty much in the same place, except now facing a fascist backlash to all things progressive
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