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Abstract
This article focuses on ‘do-it-yourself’ (DiY) music practices and ethics in Glasgow by exploring ethnographically how conditions of public visibility and invisibility are produced and mediated by visual and material forms. In discussing the creative practices and publicity techniques of a local promoter and a music collective/record label, I trace their seemingly contradictory endeavour to pursue recognition while attempting to remain ‘invisible’. By considering specific artefacts and media as the culmination of processes that served this paradoxical purpose, I suggest that my informants’ (in)visibility reflected their desire to cultivate and preserve an ethos based on DiY values.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to the Editors of Visual Culture in Britain for the invitation to submit an article to the journal, for insightful comments and for invaluable help and guidance throughout the publication process. I also thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are my own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 For example, see Triggs, ‘Scissors and Glue’.
2 Ingold, The Perception of the Environment, 345.
3 Atton, Alternative Media, 6.
4 All personal names are pseudonyms.
5 Kocer, ‘Making Transnational Publics’.
6 See Mahon, ‘The Visible Evidence of Cultural Producers’.
7 Taussig, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man, 10.
8 Oram, ‘Constructing Contemporary’, 179.
9 Duncombe, Notes from the Underground, 188–9; Luvaas, DIY Style, 5–6.
10 Taussig, Defacement, 3 and 5.
11 Taussig, Defacement, 5 and 2.
12 Although among my interlocutors the meaning of DiY was fiercely debated, most of them identified with its ‘ethos’ (see Chrysagis, ‘Becoming Ethical Subjects’).
13 Cohen, Rock Culture in Liverpool, 194.
14 For example, see McKay, DiY Culture.
15 See Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 223–51.
16 Steiner and Veel, Invisibility Studies, xvii–xviii.
17 Biehl, ‘Technologies of Invisibility’, 259.
18 de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 37.
19 Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 207.
20 Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 286.
21 Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, 287.
22 See Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 189–94.
23 Crosson, ‘Invisibilities: Translation’, para. 4.
24 Guerin, ‘Introduction’, 19.
25 Finnegan, The Hidden Musicians, 4.
26 Lowndes, Social Sculpture.
27 See Chrysagis, ‘Becoming Ethical Subjects.’
28 For example, see Birrell and Finlay, Justified Sinners; Brandtzæg, Glasgow; Lowndes, Social Sculpture; Lowndes, The DIY Movement in Art, Music and Publishing.
29 See LeWitt, ‘Sentences on Conceptual Art’.
30 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 419.
31 Reynolds, Rip It up and Start again, 343–60.
32 Reynolds, Rip It up and Start again, 344.
33 Dosanjh, ‘Nae Wave’.
34 Dosanjh, ‘Nae Wave’, 21.
35 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 160.
36 The venue was initially situated on Glassford Street, before relocating to King Street. For the history of the 13th Note, see Lowndes, Social Sculpture.
37 Robb, Death to Trad Rock, 285–92.
38 Robb, Death to Trad Rock, 291.
39 Retrieved from http://www.myspace.com/nutsseeds, accessed 27 May 2012.
40 Thorton, Club Cultures, 151.
41 Thorton, Club Cultures, 138.
42 See also Chrysagis, ‘A Sense of Togetherness’. Stuart later veered away from the term ‘DiY’ and towards what he defined as ‘independent’ promotion.
43 Cohen, Rock Culture in Liverpool, 67.
44 Finnegan, The Hidden Musicians, 248.
45 Cohen, Rock Culture in Liverpool, 1.
46 Schaumberg, ‘“Disorganisation” as Social-Movement Tactic’, 389.
47 Bennett and Rogers, ‘Popular Music and Materiality’, 37.
48 Bennett and Rogers, ‘Popular Music and Materiality’, 38.
49 See Eisentraut, The Accessibility of Music.
50 Sterne, MP3, 1.
51 Harrison, ‘“Cheaper than a CD, plus We Really Mean It”’, 298.
52 See also Fonarow, The Empire of Dirt, 49.
53 Bennett and Rogers, ‘Popular Music and Materiality’, 35.
54 See Benjamin, Illuminations, 224–25.
55 Lowndes, Social Sculpture, 419–20.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Evangelos Chrysagis
Evangelos Chrysagis received his PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh. His doctoral research examined the nexus between do-it-yourself (DiY) music-making and ethical practice in Glasgow. He is lead editor of an essay collection entitled Collaborative Intimacies in Music and Dance: Anthropologies of Sound and Movement (Berghahn, forthcoming 2017).