Introduction

The introduction contextualises the question of institutional critique in New Music in three steps: first, it proposes an understanding of institutions that accounts for the fundamental and pervasive character of institutions in human society, their tenaciousness, and their mechanisms of exclusion, drawing on Arnold Gehlen and Sara Ahmed. On this view, denormalisation and/or displacement are a prerequisite for critique. Second, it traces the development of institutional critique in the arts guided by the development of the avant-garde and the questions of critique’s relation to its object, its possible complicity and radicality, and the relation of the different arts. Third, it considers the specific situation of New Music, finding it relatively isolated and fixated on the dispositive of the concert but still identifying numerous artistic and institutional initiatives that point towards a more open understanding of musical practice and call for or practice institutional change.