Luxa M. Schüttler

Luxa M. Schüttler–in conversation with Alexey Munipov

 

How did the idea or »Noise Is a Queer Space« begin? What does »queer space« mean for you in a sonic sense?

 

The first idea behind this project was to find a different approach to what a concert environment can be–something in between an installation and a composition, but first and foremost an environment for people: a social space. I wanted to try something that works on different levels of how people come together as a community.

 

This already relates to the title, The Queer Space. For me, this sonic environment is about building a kind of shelter–a safe space. It’s not necessarily only for queer people, but it comes from a queer perspective: how to create a space that feels different, and, above all, feels like a place where people can connect and feel good together.

 

That was the initial approach, and as the piece developed, we made several decisions that reflect it. Many of those decisions could be understood as forms of queerness–for example, queering authorship by not having just one person as the author of the piece.

 

Instead, it’s a collective development. It started as a work in progress with a group of queers who sent suggestions, sounds, and stories. They contributed a lot of material. That’s one aspect. Another is building a composition, or a frame, that doesn’t follow a score–but also isn’t improvised.

 

We achieved this largely through a very elaborated Ableton Live patch. It’s very precise and can reproduce the piece, but the live situation is more flexible than following a written score. There’s no need for sheet music or paper to follow, because the score is inside Ableton Live.

 

I know you used snare samples from many different people. From an outsider’s perspective, a snare is just a snare. Do you hear individuality in these sounds? Can you hear the people behind the samples?

 

Yes, of course–because I know them very well. In a specific situation, when you know the sound, or you know the person who sent it, you can hear that. But the piece isn’t so much about recognizing each one. It’s more about diversity.

 

What I had in mind was a very large amount of different colors of snare sounds, so that you get a broad variety: a diversity of sound, even though the instrument itself is very limited. It’s just one sound with one function, usually, in pop culture and pop music.

 

The idea was to experience a huge range of snare variations–a real sonic diversity.

 

Why does »noise« become a queer space in this piece? The idea of noise has a long history–for centuries, noise was positioned against music. Dictionaries often describe noise as »unstructured sound« and music as »structured sound«–sound with intention. You clearly approach this differently. How exactly?

 

There are different layers of meaning to the word »noise«. One layer is noise as something that disturbs us. And there’s something genuinely queer in noise, because it is disturbing. Being queer in society means disturbing normativity–and in that sense, noise is a perfect metaphor for something that is queer in itself.

 

Then again, there’s another meaning of noise–like white noise, which is the presence of all frequencies at the same time. For me, that’s also a very beautiful idea. You can say: all frequencies in one sound. It’s a perfect image for diversity. How could something be more diverse than literally having all frequencies together in one short sound?

 

So it’s a spectrum. And then there’s another layer when you come to noise in the sense of electronic music, percussion beats, and so on. Using snare drums is definitely a percussion environment, a drum environment. That brings you to the pleasure of noise–something you can easily feel when you go clubbing, when you go dancing.

There’s something very joyful in this noise, in this sound. And it has a strong physical impact as well–a very direct, physical feeling in your body.

 

And this also raises a question of authorship, right? You share authorship with dozens of people–and this question of distributing authorship, and also of open form, seems important in your work more broadly. How easy is it for you, as a composer, to let control go?

 

Yeah, that’s a very good question.

 

Maybe surprisingly, it was easier than I thought at first. I assumed it would be more difficult. But having fellow queers, and having people who were so generous and connected, it felt really different–and also liberating. There was this feeling of, oh wow, okay, we’re sharing something that’s much more than just having a proper piece.

 

People having their share, and me losing control: it felt different. It was more like a relief somehow, that it’s okay. We have a completely different environment here. That surprised me.

 

I’d like to talk about queerness in music. The title points there, and it’s present in your work–for example, last year you wrote a piece for a gender-fluid voice. How do you see the representation of queer artists today? Do you still see the contemporary music scene as a fairly normative, homogeneous field–something you need to push against with your work?

 

I think it’s always necessary to be present. It’s not something you can fix and then it’s done. Representation of groups that are not normative, or that bring different angles of listening, isn’t something you achieve once and for all.

 

It’s more like an additional perspective. And it’s not up to me to decide whether people find it interesting or not. I’m happy if people enjoy it, follow it, and come–but I don’t feel it’s against anything, or that it’s a confrontation for me.

 

It really feels like trying a new approach: what does it mean if those experiences–this queerness–become musical, artistic, a frame for a concert? In that sense, the title is quite literal: how could a queer space feel, sound, be, if you’re in it? It’s not so much about changing contemporary music, changing society, or anything like that. It’s about offering a physical representation of an experience other people might not have.

 

In that sense, maybe the title should be attractive, but also a bit opaque. Then, once you’re there, in the performance, you might have an answer–on a very physical, emotional, or social level. It’s not about a clear meaning or a clear message. It’s more like translating one experience into another kind of experience.

 

Could we say that the contemporary music scene is a safer space than other music fields today? From the outside, questions of gender and queer perspectives seem highly visible at many contemporary music festivals.

 

It’s definitely better than a couple of years ago, or decades ago. But I don’t know if there’s ever a moment when I can feel safe at all–and that’s a very personal statement.

If you have experiences of being non-normative socially, it’s very rare that you feel truly safe. Usually that happens only within very small queer bubbles.

 

But it doesn’t matter. It’s not the aim to expand this to the whole society. No, no, no. It just feels good to be seen.

 

You often bring what you call »pop remnants«–quotes and references–into your music: Milli Vanilli, drum and bass, shoegaze, and so on. Have there been cases where this caused misunderstanding or resistance in new-music circles? And how does the audience react?

 

What do you mean by misunderstanding?

 

There are contemporary music clichés that you’re not following; you’re clearly following another path, using material that’s not often used in that field.

 

Yeah, I agree. Over many years of working in this field, it didn’t always fit well–but I had no choice. Those were my references. But I think it’s not only about queerness, or a specific kind of queerness. It also has to do with different kinds of experiences.

 

Growing up in a different generation, pop culture was much more present than it was for earlier generations. And in this sense, it’s also very personal. I come from a working-class background, so there wasn’t much education–including in classical music.

 

The music I grew up with was mostly Deutscher Schlager and, for me at the time, very cheesy pop music–and maybe also queer pop music. That kind of music always felt much more connected to me.

 

And I think this is something that isn’t spoken about very often in contemporary music: what is your musical heritage? You learn from your social class–and it’s not classical European music. So do I have to pretend it isn’t there? Or how do I refer to other experiences in my life? I think there are several layers to that.

 

So there’s also the urge to reflect on your heritage in your compositions.

 

Yeah. And it’s not only personal. I want to write music I feel connected to. I don’t want to deliver something for a specific expectation. That’s how we think about composition: it’s not production for a specific expectation. It’s an art form. So I need to deal with a specific kind of experience I’ve had.

 

How do you choose these »pop remnants«? Is it only about a personal connection, or is there some meaning behind them–values, musical ideas?

 

There’s always a personal meaning. You can’t get rid of that. And I think it’s important, because it keeps the work connected to me, and not pretentious. But there’s another aspect. Over the last years I’ve made a few statements about this: it’s not only about pop culture and references from pop culture–it’s also about a sonic turn.

 

What pop music brought, starting in the 1960s and 1970s, but definitely from the 1980s onwards–when I grew up–is a different way of dealing with sound: produced sound, studio sound, electronic sound, the mixture of instrumental and vocal sounds with electronics, and so on.

 

None of this is new. But it has had an impact in the sense that our sonic expectations have become much broader than pure instrumental sound. And I’ve always been interested in bridging that experience: the big sonic experience you have in pop culture, with its refined, highly complex networks of meaning and reference.

 

Take the snare drum, for instance. This snare might come from shoegaze–and it’s just noise, maybe half a second long–but it can immediately point to a specific song, an album, an entire genre. So how can I integrate this kind of experience into contemporary music?

 

Not only because it’s my own experience, but because it reflects a larger shift in how people listen. When I was studying–twenty or thirty years ago–I felt there was a lack in contemporary music. I kept wondering why this whole dimension of music that fascinated me so much wasn’t represented in contemporary composition.

 

Another long-term theme in your work is ecology–pieces like Wald, and your interest in tech ecology and posthumanism. How do you work with extra-musical ideas in music? There’s a traditional claim that music resists external ideas–that it can’t express anything because it’s too abstract.

 

I think the idea that music isn’t capable of something extra-musical is itself an extra-musical idea. The most successful extra-musical idea is probably the idea of absolute music. And I think it was made up–which is totally understandable. Composers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries came up with the idea of absolute music because they wanted to be taken seriously as artists, and to move away from writing primarily for patrons, courts, or the church.

 

They wanted to be bourgeois artists and composers. I understand that. But it’s still a constructed idea. I think music is always both. It has abstract qualities, of course–it’s sound, sonic information. But then again, so is language. So is painting: is that just colours?

 

Things mean something. And I think you get closer to this question when you stop looking for literal meanings–as in, this sound means this, this piece says that. That’s boring, and it doesn’t work. You can’t reduce music to one meaning.

 

At the same time, this doesn’t mean music can’t create an environment of associations or experiences. Meaning in music just works differently. What I’ve always been interested in is using sonic material that is charged–material that carries a kind of scent, like a memory. And some of those memories can collide, sit in juxtaposition, contradict each other.

So the meaning isn’t in the vocabulary, or in the sonic item itself. It emerges in the clash, or in the combination. That’s a different way of saying something.

 

Today, ecological thinking feels almost omnipresent. Many composers speak about music as an ecosystem, and the forest has become a recurring source of inspiration. It’s noticeable in this year’s ECLAT programme, too. Why do you think this theme is so urgent–or useful–for composers today?

 

I’m not sure I can answer that, because every composer has different ideas and approaches. But there are some aspects of our time that might lead people in this direction. It’s not only climate change and climate catastrophe. It might also be a longing for connection–and a new relationship to networks, to the internet, to how we experience connectivity.

 

And we’re asking ourselves what remains when things change so dramatically–politically, globally–and how we connect differently. Music can be a way of connecting people, but also a way of thinking about how sounds and ideas connect. So I think there are debates and pressures we’re dealing with now anyway, politically, that make this perspective attractive.

 

That said, as you mentioned, I wrote »Wald« fifteen years ago. And ecological, posthuman, post-internet, post-digital thinking–those are ideas from the 1980s and 1990s. I’ve been with them for a long time. I’m glad they’re more present now, but for me it’s been ongoing. It’s part of the foundation of where I started composing from.

 

I often hear criticism of this approach–using music to engage with very current topics. Some composers say: »It’s all agenda–gender, climate crisis, refugees–just a way to get grants.« Have you encountered this attitude toward your own work?

 

Honestly, not so much. Maybe people just don’t say it to your face–I don’t know. But I also disagree with the critique. There are a few points here. One is fashion: of course there are things that enter the discourse at a given moment. But I don’t think that’s a big problem.

 

That’s also how art works. It’s discursive. These are attempts and approaches–and I think that’s what’s beautiful in art: an artistic discourse through and within experience. You have an impulse–something bothers you, something belongs to you, and you want to deal with it in your composition. So you do.

 

Then we need to talk about whether it becomes an original piece of art, an original composition–because you can deal with these things in a very interesting way, or in a less interesting way.

 

And that’s completely natural. It has been like this for centuries. You can look at composers from the sixteenth century and say: yes, you can see the fashion of the time–and there’s counterpoint–but it’s simply not original, or not well done, or the composer didn’t find a good solution.

 

That’s a different debate. Do you use a topic only as a surface, as a frame to appear important, without any point beyond it? That becomes a problem, because then you reduce everything to keywords, to the buzzwords of your time, without a real artistic vision behind it.

 

And part of this discussion also concerns institutions–and social media–and their role. Because this works very well: you can put a label on something, rotate it, hashtag it, spread it. It becomes easy to say: this piece is about this and this. It’s easy to label, and easy to advertise.

 

It doesn’t always work. Once everyone starts using the same hashtag, it turns into information noise.

 

After a while. In the beginning it does work. It works for a specific moment, and then it changes. But that’s human beings, right–trying to catch attention.

 

You’ve been teaching composition for around twenty years. How did your teaching methods change over time? And how did your students change? Are aspiring composers today different from twenty years ago?

 

Of course it changes–dramatically. A lot changes, and yet some things, surprisingly, stay exactly the same. Giving space, being patient, giving young composers the opportunity to try things and to sense what’s right for them–that stays the same.

 

Creating a safe environment–a frame in which young students can try things without feeling too much pressure–also stays the same. The difference is that the pressure has become more intense. I think it’s connected to the internet, and the constant availability of information. A composition student today can easily listen to thousands of pieces on YouTube and elsewhere.

 

Twenty years ago, that was completely different. Almost nothing was available. You had to go to a library, or to a special place–or, of course, to concerts. It was hard to get access to many works. Now everything is there.

 

That creates pressure. And it intensifies the question of what the hot topics are, what people are doing, how you compare yourself. So in my teaching it has become more and more important to take that pressure away.

 

How do you help them take this pressure away?

 

It’s very individual. It depends on personal issues and questions. But one strategy–just as an example–has proven effective, and it’s actually the opposite of what I thought ten years ago: giving very clear tasks.

 

A composition task that simply says: do this. I give you a clear framework, and you do it–to have an experience. Ten years ago I would have said: that’s too much information, I’m imposing too much on the students. But now I realise that a clear frame can also protect them from the expectation that they already have to write a masterpiece.

 

»I’m in the second semester of my bachelor’s, and I already feel I need to write the masterpiece of the future.« When you frame it as an exercise or a study, some students–not everyone, but many–experience it as liberating.

 

Many people say composition teaching has shifted from craft toward more philosophical reflection on what a composer can or should do. How is it in your class?

 

I’m not sure. For me, that shift already happened fifty years ago, so I don’t see it as something new. The idea of craft first and then composing feels outdated. What remains a very important question, though, is this: if you have theory, philosophy, these debates and topics–how do you translate them into an actual artistic experience, an artistic outcome?

And then, in a different way, craft comes into play. This doesn’t mean there isn’t such a thing as craft you have to learn–but the idea that there is a universal craft, and once you learn it you’re capable of doing everything, is just Central European bullshit. It’s the attitude that says: we know what the canon is, this is what you need to know, and with this you can do everything.

 

That way of thinking goes back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But once you reach a point where–whether through film, philosophical questions, political questions, or anything else–you know what you want to do artistically, the question still remains: how do I do it? The difference is that there isn’t a universal craft.

 

For a long time we pretended there was, and that we could do everything. Now it’s the other way around. First you have to be clear where you’re heading–which direction you’re looking in. Even if you don’t know where you’ll end up. And then you develop a very unique craft of your own. That’s something you have to do.

 

Even if you just write on paper something like: »I’m out,« or »I quit,« as a concept piece–fine. But then: what kind of paper? What color of ink? Do you do it on a computer? These are already micro-decisions about representation. So I think craft has changed completely. But it’s not done.

 

There was a Deutschlandfunk Kultur radio programme about your composition class in Stuttgart, titled »What do we talk about when we talk about composition?«. I’d like to return to that question. What does it mean now to compose music? What do you and your students talk about when you talk about composition?

 

That’s a big question–and it changes. Maybe that’s already part of the answer: it’s necessary to ask this question again and again. Every semester I ask myself: what changed? What do we need to reframe? What is composition again? Staying flexible and being aware of shifts–of what’s happening, what’s changing–is maybe the crucial part of the job.

And it’s also something to discuss with the students. I believe that because they’re younger, they know much more than I do about the future. They’re closer to it, from my perspective. They’ll also have to live with it longer. So in that sense, it’s a question we have to discuss together.

 

It’s not that I come in and say: this is what you need to learn, and here is the answer.

 

I’ve also heard a lot about you being a very influential teacher. Do you feel you influence your students as a person, too? In a way, do you see yourself as a role model for them?

 

I don’t think I can help it. I try to be as aware as possible that I will influence them–but I think it’s unavoidable. There will be influence. It’s close; it’s connected. And of course, there aren’t that many students.

 

I think the best way to deal with it is to encourage the students to see each other as colleagues and as a group, rather than as a class I’m speaking to. To create more debate between them–within the group–instead of preaching.

 

So yes, I know there will be influence. I don’t know any other way to deal with it. When you’re younger and you’re starting out, you look for orientation. The most important thing is to give orientation without creating limitation. For me, orientation means giving someone the security to feel insecure.

 

You once said: »To me the composer’s role is to comment on the things that surround us in the here and now.« Is it still relevant?

 

Yes and no. It’s quite an old quote. Part of it is still relevant–maybe even more now, as we’re entering the times of AI. And this also connects back to the question of craft.

For decades we’ve been moving into a situation where it’s not so important to craft things, to do things from scratch–not only because of digitalization, but because we’re in a development where these possibilities are simply there.

 

In that sense, »commenting« is much more than being smart about something. It’s a way of dealing with plurality–a plurality of artefacts. We’re surrounded by so many productions. That was the origin of the quote: to say that when there are already so many artefacts around us, I don’t see a strong need to place something completely new on top of them.

 

It’s more about thinking on a meta level: what’s happening in between all those things? How can I work as a musician by referring to what already exists in a different way than fifty years ago–or even earlier?

 

But what has changed is that our time has dramatically shifted into something dangerous and threatening–more unstable, more insecure. And what has become much more important for me is another question: can different connections between people happen with and around music–something like, I don’t know, solace? Comfort, maybe. Love, connection, desire.

 

Not producing this with music, necessarily–but thinking about the circumstances around music. This goes beyond simply »commenting,« even though it’s still connected to that idea for me. It can’t be the same way of dealing with things as, say, Pergolesi did–or as eighteenth- and nineteenth-century composers could do it.

 

But the question remains–on a different level: how can music create spaces, connections, environments, social groups? And maybe love.

 

What a perfect way to end this conversation–on love.

 

Yes. It’s always good to end on love.