mobility locality and cultural production

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Enacting Music Scenes: Mobility, Locality and Cultural Production MANUEL TIRONI Department of Sociology, Ponticia Universidad Catolica de Chile, ABSTRACT Cluster theories assume localityto be a bounded and xed spatiality charac- terized by shared worlds-of-life, strong ties and co-presence. This paper contests the immo- bility of such a denition. Drawing on the case of Santiagos experimental music scene, in Chile, I argue for a mobile, transient and uid approach to localized (cultural) economies. The empirical evidence indicates that Santiagos experimental music scene an innovative and productive de facto cluster performs (and unrolls) a decentered, episodic and itiner- ant geography enacted by porous, technologically mediated and contingent projects. These results call for new perspectives when thinking about economic innovation in general and cultural clusters within transitional cities in particular . KEY WORDS: Experimental music, clustering, spatial enactment, Santiago Introduction The last three decades have witnessed the proliferation of territorial innovation mod- els thought to explain the stubborn resistance and the increasing importance of the local in the creation, distribution and absorption of knowledge in the global economy (Moulaert and Sekia 2003). As cultural industries and the creative econ- omy grew in importance, these models have been also applied to the cultural sector (Bell and Jayne 2004, Cooke and Lazzeretti 2008, Lazzeretti 2003, Mommaas 2004). However, there are still few critical reections on the spatial denitions mobi- lized by these models. This is not to say that they dont propose their own spatial conguration to understand the clustering of economic activities. Some debate whether localized economies conform to urban or regional scales (Cooke 1998, Mor- gan and Nauwelaers 1998), while others if the spatialities of localized economies should be assumed to be populated not only by rms but also by institutions and local features (Camagni and Maillat 2006). But these debates dont tackle a critical question: what is the denition of the local mobilized by these accounts? On the contrary, locality remains in cluster theories as an unproblematized notion. More spe- cically, it tends to be constructed as an immutable, xed and bounded spatiality. Correspondence Address: Department of Sociology, Ponticia Universidad Católica de Chile.Av. Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Campus San Joaquín, Macul, Santiago. Email: [email protected] Mobilities Vol. 7, No. 2, 185210, May 2012 1745-0101 Print/1745-011X Online/12/02018526 Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2012.654993

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  • Enacting Music Scenes: Mobility, Localityand Cultural Production

    MANUEL TIRONI

    Department of Sociology, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile,

    ABSTRACT Cluster theories assume locality to be a bounded and fixed spatiality charac-terized by shared worlds-of-life, strong ties and co-presence. This paper contests the immo-bility of such a definition. Drawing on the case of Santiagos experimental music scene, inChile, I argue for a mobile, transient and fluid approach to localized (cultural) economies.The empirical evidence indicates that Santiagos experimental music scene an innovativeand productive de facto cluster performs (and unrolls) a decentered, episodic and itiner-ant geography enacted by porous, technologically mediated and contingent projects. Theseresults call for new perspectives when thinking about economic innovation in general andcultural clusters within transitional cities in particular.

    KEY WORDS: Experimental music, clustering, spatial enactment, Santiago

    Introduction

    The last three decades have witnessed the proliferation of territorial innovation mod-els thought to explain the stubborn resistance and the increasing importance ofthe local in the creation, distribution and absorption of knowledge in the globaleconomy (Moulaert and Sekia 2003). As cultural industries and the creative econ-omy grew in importance, these models have been also applied to the cultural sector(Bell and Jayne 2004, Cooke and Lazzeretti 2008, Lazzeretti 2003, Mommaas2004). However, there are still few critical reflections on the spatial definitions mobi-lized by these models. This is not to say that they dont propose their own spatialconfiguration to understand the clustering of economic activities. Some debatewhether localized economies conform to urban or regional scales (Cooke 1998, Mor-gan and Nauwelaers 1998), while others if the spatialities of localized economiesshould be assumed to be populated not only by firms but also by institutions andlocal features (Camagni and Maillat 2006). But these debates dont tackle a criticalquestion: what is the definition of the local mobilized by these accounts? On thecontrary, locality remains in cluster theories as an unproblematized notion. More spe-cifically, it tends to be constructed as an immutable, fixed and bounded spatiality.

    Correspondence Address: Department of Sociology, Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile.Av. VicuaMackenna 4860, Campus San Joaqun, Macul, Santiago. Email: [email protected]

    MobilitiesVol. 7, No. 2, 185210, May 2012

    1745-0101 Print/1745-011X Online/12/02018526 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2012.654993

  • This paper critiques the concept of the local utilized in cluster theories, proposinga mobile, transient and eventual approach. And it does so empirically, presentingthe results of an ethnographic research on the experimental music scene in Santiago,Chile. It will be argued that cluster theories rest on conceptual platforms that arenot fully able to grasp the complexities of localized cultural economies in contem-porary cities, especially in the global south. The case here presented indicates thatfluidity, temporality and mobility do not operate against the local but, on the con-trary, in certain circumstances they constitute it. To craft this argument, in the firstsection I summarize the generalized definition of the local in cluster theories. I spe-cifically focus on the notion of tacit knowledge as the epitome of an immobile defi-nition of the local. In this section I also present the emergent critiques of theseaccounts coming from geography, management and science and technology studies.In the next section I introduce the case study and in the third and fourth sections Ipresent the empirical results. The conclusion is that Santiagos EMS is a highlyinnovative local (cultural) economy that not only unfolds in a fluid spatiality, butthat is configured by fluctuating actors as well. Finally, the concluding remarks sig-nal to the necessity of rethinking the ontology of the local when analyzing localeconomies in developing countries.

    Locality, Fixity and Tacit Knowledge

    Within the fields of economic geography, urban sociology and innovation studies, ithas become a commonplace to situate the features of the local at the heart of con-temporary economic development (Gertler 2003, Howells 2000). To be sure, thishasnt been always the case. Rather the contrary, early modernization sociologistsusually saw industrialization and bureaucratization for example in the work ofMarx, Weber and Simmel as the processes by which traditional and parochial com-munities were being eroded in the hands of mechanization and anonymization. Inthe same vein, one century later globalization theorists argued that in an ever-grow-ing planetary economic, cultural and political system (Wallerstein 2004), the particu-larities of specific territories would lose economic importance. The informationalsociety based on ubiquitous and immaterial knowledge, financial and symbolic net-works would transform localities into functional connection hubs. Or as Kelly indi-cated (1998, p. 945), the New Economy operates in a space rather that a place,and over time more and more economic transactions will migrate to this new space(emphasis added). The specific features of cities, then, seemed of no relevanceexplaining the form and function of the global economy. Castells, for example,argued that even so-called global cities were being surpassed by the emergence of a:

    transterritorial city, a space built by the linkage of many different spaces inone network of quasi-simultaneous interaction that brings together processes,people, buildings, and bits and pieces of local areas, in a global space of inter-action. This global city is not a city, it is a new spatial form, the space offlows, characterizing the information age.

    Susser 2002, p. 372. Emphasis added

    But after a century of apocalyptic prognoses predicting the disappearance oflocality first by the hands of modernity, then by the homogenizing forces ofglobalization the local proved to be alive and playing a key role in the new

    186 M. Tironi

  • global economic order (Amin and Thrift 2002, Smith 2000). The local was notanymore a generic space of flows but appeared as a Gemeinschaft, a territorialand institutional bounded space characterized by shared worlds-of-life, strong tiesand co-presence. The (recovered) importance of locality as a fixed and circum-scribed territoriality in the context of a fluid and planetary economy was epito-mized in the concept of tacit knowledge (Polanyi 1966). Indeed, economicgeographers realized that the force of agglomeration [remained] strong eventhough transportation and communication costs [continued] to decline (Storperand Venables 2004). The answer was, they discovered, in the buzz that specialsomething in the air produced by informal, dialogic, temporary and non-articu-lated interactions. After the seminal insight of Michael Polanyi we can knowmore than we can tell (1966, p. 4) economic geography and management stud-ies then recognized that the competitive base of firms did not rely solely on codi-fied, formal and explicit knowledge, but also on tacit, experienced and practicalknowledge:

    The idea is that, in a competitive era in which success depends increasinglyupon de ability to produce new or improved products and services, tacitknowledge constitutes the most important basis for innovation-based valuecreation when everyone has relatively easy access to explicit/codifiedknowledge, the creation of unique capabilities and products depends on theproduction and use of tacit knowledge.

    Gertler 2003, pp. 789

    Tacit knowledge, moreover, is intrinsically spatial: it has strong agglomeratingeffects. The scholarship on the subject has elaborated three interrelated argumentsin this respect. First, since tacit knowledge defies codification and is acquired andproduced in practice by interacting or doing (Maskell and Malmberg 1999, Howells2000), it is difficult to exchange over long distance: tacit knowledge is produced inco-presence. Second, tacit knowledge is spatially sticky, since two parties can onlyexchange such knowledge effectively if they share a common social context[and] important elements of this social context are defined locally (Gertler 2003).And third, innovation itself is increasingly supported by socially organized learning(Gertler 2003, Lundvall and Johnson 1994, Camagni and Maillat 2006); that is,through a network of interactions between economic entities, research institutionsand public agencies operating locally or regionally (Morgan 1997). Locality pro-pinquity, interpersonal interactions and fixity became, in sum, the locus of innova-tion and economic development in the new global era.This line of research grew in popularity. Alfred Marshalls ideas about industrial

    districts and the industrial atmosphere were revived, originating a new breed ofconcepts clusters, milieus, quarters, districts thought to capture the benefits ofthe being there (Gertler 2003) for innovation-driven firms and competitive regions.The success of place-specific, knowledge-intensive economies such as SiliconValley reinforced this new localism (Amin and Thrift 2003).

    Cultural Production, Musical Scenes and the City

    The newly discovered features of proximity and boundedness were especiallyrelevant for cultural industries (Castillo and Haarich 2004), a key sector in the

    Enacting Music Scenes 187

  • knowledge economy for its increasing economic size (Hesmondhalgh 2002, Pratt1997, Scott 2000), but also for its symbolic relevance as an image-making catalyst(Evans 2003). If cultural entrepreneurs clustered in urban spaces, it was not due tothe gentrifying forces of real-estate developers (Deutshe and Ryan 1989, Mele 2000,Podmore 1998, Shaw 2006, Zukin 1989), but to the need of firms and agents intheir quest for innovation and creativity (Florida 2002a) to produce and absorb tacitknowledge (Scott 2000, 2004) and tap into the untraded interdependencies created intight production networks (Storper 1997). The reason behind the notable tendencytowards clustering of creative industries was, then:

    [i]n the cultural industries, we typically find relatively small companies whichare very dependent on extremely specific high-quality knowledge and which,in addition, have to deal with rapidly fluctuating demand [and on] the devel-opment of dedicated suppliers and the creation of an atmosphere.

    Kloosterman and Stegmeijer 2004, p. 2

    Moreover, the locational logic of creative industries is highly sensible to urban fea-tures, it is argued. For example, Florida (2002a, 2002b and 2005) suggests the cre-ative class the engine of the new creative economy is attracted to bohemian,authentic and culturally dense places (Clark, Lloyd, Wong and Jain 2002, Florida2002b, Lloyd 2004, 2006, Markusen 2006, Sabat and Tironi 2008). In otherwords, cultural entrepreneurs are pushed into proximity by the new forces of theknowledge-intense economy, while driven into enclosed and fixed spatialities by theattraction of site-specific, embedded and topographic elements of (creative)neighborhoods.The scholarship on localized cultural production, then, has reproduced without

    contestation a version of the local as a static, bounded and representational entity.The local appears as the site of informal and primary relations, use values and com-munity; the local is the place of propinquity and parochial, face-to-face interactions.It is the place of the immobile. Not surprisingly, field research on creative industrieshas heavily focuses on the (inner-city) neighborhood as the primary object ofstudy (see for example Crewe 1996, Crewe and Beaverstock 1998, Hutton 2006,Indergaard 2003, Sabat and Tironi 2008). Paradoxically, then, artistic milieus, crea-tive clusters and bohemian districts are simultaneously the epitomes of creativity,flowing ideas and dynamic knowledge, and the last resorts for traditional fixity,motionlessness and closeness.Students of music scenes, although more aware of the complexities of the local,

    have also mobilized a rather immobile and bounded notion of localities. For exam-ple, Bennett and Peterson (2004) define three types of music scenes: local, translo-cal and virtual. A local music scene is a:

    social activity that takes place in a delimited space and over a specific span oftime in which clusters of producers, musicians and fans realize their commonmusical taste, collectively distinguishing themselves from others by usingmusic and cultural signs often appropriated from other places, but recombinedand developed in ways that come to represent the local scene.

    Bennett and Peterson 2004, p. 8

    188 M. Tironi

  • Then local scenes either correspond to particularized local features and sensibilities,or construct particular narratives of the local via global networks. Either way, theyrefer to specific and geographically bounded localities, to a certain location or set oflocations that are understood to be where members of the scene hang out and are wel-come (Haunss and Leach 2004, p. 3). This understanding of the local can beobserved in most of the literature on music scenes, for example in Cohens (1991)study of rock music in Liverpool, in Bennetts (2000) analyses of youth culture andpop music and in Crossleys (2009) analysis of Manchesters post-punk music scene.However, Bennett and Peterson argue that in many cases scenes are in contact

    with similar local scenes in distant places, interacting through the exchange ofrecordings, bands, fans, and fanzines (2004, p. 8). These are what Bennett and Pet-erson call translocal scenes because, while they are local, they are also connectedwith groups of kindred spirits many miles away (2004, p. 8). Finally, Bennett andPeterson indentify virtual scenes in which participants, like those in translocalscenes, are widely separated geographically, but unlike them, virtual scene partici-pants around the world come together in a single scene-making conversation via theInternet (2004, p. 11).With this threefold definition of music scenes, Bennett and Peterson acknowledge

    the spatial and sociocultural heterogeneity of these entities. However, their defini-tions dont disturb at least substantially the epistemological principles of thelocal mobilized by conventional analyses of cultural production. First, Bennett andPeterson recognize that localities may exchange information and knowledge withone another and across latitudes, but this exchange is always done from the spatialand cultural fixity of locality. Local scenes interact, and even globally, but this inter-action doesnt affect the internal constitution of these scenes. The notion of thetranslocal speaks precisely of this configuration: localities that communicate withdistantiated localities, but without losing their local nature. Similarly, Bennett andPeterson acknowledge the relevance of new technologies shaping music scenes. Butinstead of describing how these new technological mediations might be reconfigur-ing the local defining new spatial hybrids and crafting new forms of situated net-works in the city they view these technologies as building a separated virtual,online scene altogether. In short, it would seem as if local scenes were aboutplaceness, face-to-face contacts and community bonds and about the exchange offanzines and other objects when they reach distant kindred spirits. If these parochialelements are replaced by sociotechnical mediations, the constitution of the localdoesnt mutate, it stays untouched, but a new form of scene emerges, a virtual scenethat operates in a totally different spatiality,although reproducing the very sameparochial characteristics that has surpassed.

    Contesting Fixities

    These arguments have not gone without criticism. The turn to practice theories(Reckwitz 2002), relational perspectives (Savage at al. 2005) and mobility para-digms (Sheller and Urry 2006) has evidenced that the local cannot be reduced tomonolithic and static definitions (Appadurai 1996). It has been argued that theontology of the local has to be revisited and be (re)understood as an event that can-not be fixed in time and space. In this vein, traditional communities of practice(Brown and Duguid 1991) are complemented by epistemic communities (KnorrCetina 1999) and heterarchic organizations (Stark 2000, Grabher 2001) in which

    Enacting Music Scenes 189

  • knowledge is created and distributed across distanciated nodes. Moreover, localknowledge-creation seems to be increasingly structured not around fixed institu-tional arrangements, but on temporary organizations (Lundin and Sderholm 1995,Maskell, Bathelt and Malmberg 2004). Building on these insights, Amin andCohendet (2004, see also Savage et al. 2005) have claimed for a relational under-standing of locality in which heterogeneous networks and relations enact spaces oflearning, collaboration and sharing without resting necessarily on face-to-faceinteractions. Evidence suggests, say Amin and Cohendet (2004, p. 96), that corpo-rate organizational architectures:

    through complex network formation and network management devices [havemanaged to] find ways of being there through regular and frequent contactbetween distributed communities, the formation of task forces and projectsteams dislocated from their sites of regular work, the travels of tacit knowl-edge carried by executives, scientists, and technicians, the movement andtransmissions of knowledge embodied in varied technologies, the insightsgenerated during occasional meetings, teleconferences, and telephone conver-sations, or in e-mail messages sent in transit.

    Co-presence, in short, far from being a measure of topographic proximity is aknowledge-creation situation that admits multiple spatial levels and relational con-nections. Co-presence and the production of locality, then, have to be explained andnot assumed in the order of things. Locality is done, and this doing has to bereconstructed following situationally the network of agents, users, institutions andmaterialities constituting it (Amin and Thrift 2002, Law 2000). And if locality is anetwork and heterogeneous effect, then it is better appraised as a performation(Thrift 1997, Tironi 2009b); that is, as an entity that does not preexist its enactmentput forward by the agents populating it. Locality encompasses corporeal practicalactivities (Ibert 2010, 201); that is, it is produced in practice.In sum, the local as a closed spatiality and a face-to-face relational construction is

    being contested. But then, is a cluster possible if we assume a different transient,mobile, mutable ontology of the local? And if so, what exactly would a cluster looklike? Some elements can be derived from the critiques above summarized. But to datethere isnt a comprehensive answer to these questions. This paper tries to tackle thegap by describing the organizing principles and the spatial characteristics of a local(cultural) economy, namely the experimental music scene in Santiago, Chile. Being acultural industry and, moreover, in a developing country this case study does notintend to reach generalized conclusions. However, this case is successful in unveilingthe tensions between the emergence of an innovative learning/production network onthe one hand, and the problematic constitution of the local as expected in clustertheory on the other.

    Santiagos Experimental Music Scene1

    Between January 2007 and March 2008, I conducted an ethnographic-basedresearch on Santiagos experimental music scene (EMS). Besides participant obser-vations (Spradley 1980) of the scenes practices (rehearsals, public performances,production of events, socializing activities), 25 in-depth interviews and an onlinesurvey (n=24) were conducted. The aim was to identify the organizing principles

    190 M. Tironi

  • and the spatial arrangements of Santiagos EMS. The challenge was to disentanglean apparent paradox: on the one hand, Santiagos EMS is a highly innovative andproductive cultural industry. On the other, its organizing including both the spacesand the actors-networks that create and populate it does not conform to the con-ventional (bounded) definitions of locality utilized by the mainstream research onurban cultural clusters. For, when analyzing the ontological nature of its agents,there is nothing that can be nearly called a firm. There is nothing, either, that canbe called a cluster or a district when studying the geography of the scene. Orthere is, but only if we accept a mobile and eventual definition of the local, in lieuof the conventional static perspective.Santiagos alternative music scene has grown significantly since the 1990s, but it

    was only in the early 2000s that an innovative and independent sub-scene emergedand expanded beyond national borders. In contrast with the mainstream alternativescene in Santiago, this sub-scene embraced more avant-garde paths of musical explo-ration. The scene gathers a variety of musical projects from electronica to folk,from musique concrete to hiphop but they all share, first, a hybrid approach tomusical styles, mixing and remixing different types of musical categories. Second,all projects are engaged in the exploration of non-conventional procedures of crea-tion (field recording, circuit bending, plunderphonics, instrument recycling) and dif-fusion (netlabels, art performances, concept installations). And third, for the abovecharacteristics, Santiagos EMS has little (or no) access to mainstream, commercialmarkets and audiences. This commercial marginalization is, often, self-inflected:artistic production is done for the love of art (Bourdieu 1993, Ley 2003).The last point reverberates with the institutional precariousness of Santiagos

    EMS. Cultural policy in Chile is still weak and partial. The main policy instrumentfor the promotion of cultural production is the National Fund for the Arts (Fondartin Spanish). This fund supports cultural and art projects in several categories(including music). However, the priority is still focused on relatively consolidatedauthors belonging to the art scene, especially when it comes to experimental pro-jects. Unknown and unconnected artists outside the established art circuit doingavant-garde music are not likely to benefit from Fondart subsidies.But in spite of this financial and material precariousness, Santiagos EMS is highly

    dynamic. As a matter of fact, the scene functionally operates as a de facto cluster,for it complies with at least three features of Marshall-like districts. First, the sceneis productive and innovative: the scene produces value-added. The scene gathersaround 40 projects ranging from one-member sonic projects to more conventionalrock-like bands that pivot around a (semi)continuous circuit of live gigs, perfor-mances and festivals. The vitality of this circuit has been praised by the internationalmedia for its quality and creativity. The scene has been featured in newspapers andmagazines in New York, Los Angeles and Buenos Aires. Cumshot Records, a collec-tive project of noise music has been invited to perform at So Paulo art biennial, andPueblo Nuevo, a netlabel specializing in avant-garde electronic music, has recentlywon an important French award. An Australian newspaper commented in its musicsection that one of the nicest surprises of 2006 was discovering an incrediblyexciting, self-contained scene in Santiago Gepe, Javiera Mena, Prissa, Julia Rose,World Music that may just make Chile the New Sweden (Carew and 29 Dec2006).2 Thus Santiagos EMS, despite its marginal economic position, has enteredthe global circuit of cultural production, a highly sophisticated and valued niche-ori-ented sector key in the new knowledge economy (Scott 2004).

    Enacting Music Scenes 191

  • Second, the effervescence of the scene has produced economic and industry spill-overs. The capacity of a localized economy to generate multiplier effects on lateralindustries is a key indicator of cluster performance (Feldman 2000). SantiagosEMS has triggered the emergence of a quasi-commercial, semi-informal musicindustry that organizes the events, designs flyers and posters, and deals with promo-tion. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, the scene is sustained by a numberof music labels, most of them on-line. Today there are at least 10 netlabels, housedin Santiago, dedicated to the promotion of avant-garde music. Some of them Jac-obino Discos, Pueblo Nuevo and Quemasucabeza have even enlisted internationalprojects. Moreover, Santiagos EMS is supported by several Internet-based musicmagazines and information resources. These weblogs not only promote live gigsand other events of the scene, but also connects the Chilean experimental musiccommunity with connoisseur international information.Finally, in the third place, Santiagos EMS has developed and is constituted by

    the interaction between vertical and horizontal linkages, a requirement for clusterformation (Richardson 1972, Bathelt, Malmberg and Maskell 2004). In SantiagosEMS, vertical linkages cooperation and collaboration are developed around theinteractions between music projects and at least three economic nodes: netlabels,venues and media devices. With the three of them, the scene has established rela-tively cohesive productive links in which music projects benefit from support givenby these nodes, while these nodes depend on the success of the scene and its artis-tic production. Horizontal linkages relations of competition, copying and monitor-ing between projects are deployed around the relation between musical projects.In sum, Santiagos EMS performs as a cluster; it is productive and innovative, it

    has produced economic spillovers and it has developed vertical and horizontal link-ages. But the EMS lacks a fundamental cluster element: a fixed spatiality. In thenext section, I demonstrate that neither the geography underpinning the scene northe nature of the actor-networks performing it comply with the conventional wis-dom on cluster formation and local economic development.

    Decentering the Spaces of (Cultural) Production

    When the productive and everyday spaces of Santiagos EMS are reconstructed,one immediate conclusion can be made: they seem to be defined more by the move-ment of people, artifacts and places and by the transient, eventual and boundlessnature of its activities than by closed territories and embedded behaviors. Contest-ing the Marshallean notion of cultural production in contemporary cities as a locallyfixed phenomenon, the scenes cluster seems to be on the move (Sheller and Urry2006, Urry 2000 and 2002). To be sure, Santiagos EMS is local, it unfolds in San-tiago, but it does so in an entanglement of networked and ever-changing spatialitiesand projects that make it difficult to define local as a delimited and immobiletime-space. Specifically, the spaces of Santiagos EMS are (a) not aligned in acoherent territory, (b) temporary and (c) mobile.

    Dislocation

    The activities and agents of Santiagos EMS are not concentrated in space. There isnothing like a neighborhood, quarter, district or milieu that might characterizethe physical relation between the different nodes comprising the scene. On thecontrary, the scene is distributed throughout the city.

    192 M. Tironi

  • Figure 2 depicts four key spaces for the scene: socialization spaces (pubs, disco-theques, restaurants and live music venues where the scene meets usually overdrinks to informally share information, talk and gaze each other); performancespaces (where the scene musically display itself and enacts its publicness); rehearsalspaces (where the bands and project design and manufacture their products); andresidential spaces (where members of the scene live). These four spaces comprisethe scenes physical spatiality, and each one of them plays a key role in the enact-ment of the scene. They are what Maillat and Camagni (2006) call the supportspaces of a milieu, and cluster theory assumes that these should create an inte-grated and geographically tight relational meso-space (Giuliani and Bell 2004). Thecentral hypothesis is that the clustering of these support spaces facilitates the flowof information and cooperation, creates an intangible industrial atmosphere thatpropels creativity and enhances (symbolic and material) economies of scale(OConnor 2004).And indeed, Santiagos EMS shows signs of agglomeration around a broadly

    defined downtown Santiago. But only for socialization and performance spaces.Rehearsal and residential spaces, far from being concentrated in downtown Santi-ago, are distributed throughout the city. So another way to put it is that productionis dislocated from consumption: the spaces where the stuff of the scene is madedoes not conform to a coherent and relational geography with the spaces where thescene shows and recreates itself.

    Figure 1. EMS project ecology.Source: the author.

    Enacting Music Scenes 193

  • The reason for this asynchrony has to be found in two fundamental and interre-lated facts. First, most of the scenes members are still living and rehearsing intheir parents places. Here, then, we are at the antipode of the conventional wisdomon cultural entrepreneurs. We face an avant-garde movement that instead of break-ing with the petit bourgeois way of life by colonizing and recreating an alternativecultural realm in transitional urban spaces (Deutsche and Ryan 1989, Ley 2003,Lloyd 2006), embeds itself in its opposite, in the space of the family. There is nodemarcation: the everyday spaces of working-class families are entangled with thosemaking experimental sonic explorations. Dadalu, a member of Colectivo Etereo,explains how their production space is entwined with the spaces of everyday life:

    Figure 2. The spaces of Santiagos EMS: socialization, performance, rehearsal andresidential.

    Source: the author.

    194 M. Tironi

  • Now we rehearse at [Colectivo Etereos] CO2s place, in Las Condes, becausehis turntables are there, and we rehearse in the dining room. He used to liveonly with his dad and he had an independent room with his turntables torehearse. But now a brother arrived to live with them, so now we have torehearse in the dining room.

    It is not that the members of the scene want to stay or rehearse at their parents,but that they cant afford otherwise. So, secondly, we confront a highly precariousscene that doesnt have the purchasing power or the institutional support to create acreative milieu. The scene hasnt spatialized in a site like Hackney and Shorditchin London; the Quartier Latin in Paris; Prenzlauer Berg and Wedding in Berlin;Poblenou in Barcelona; Williamsburg (and Greenwich Village and SoHo) in NewYork; Palermo Hollywood in Buenos Aires in which the aesthetical dispositionof artists is performed and their work/live, production/consumption spaces are inte-grated (Lloyd 2004). Here, then, images of SoHoization processes in inner-cities(Zukin 1986, Podmore 1998) driven by artists and middle-class young professionalsare not well suited to represent the work/live strategy unfold by the scene.The specificity of Santiagos EMS is, then, its multipivotality, its decenteredness:

    the physical spatiality of the scene is not aligned, with one spatial layer centered onSantiagos official and relatively clusterized cultural space, and with the otherdispersed throughout the city, without any focal center.

    Temporality

    But the spaces of Santiagos EMS are not only dislocated and decentered: they arealso temporal. Indeed, the scene is deployed by and actualized in a network ofsites, places and venues that are in constant movement. So even when some activi-ties of the scene those related to consumption, publicity and socialization mayagglomerate in a specific city location, within this (extra-) boundedness the sceneflows through a (intra-) temporary and contingent physical spatiality.As shown in Figure 3, the scene hasnt created spatial fixes to balance the

    inherent volatility of cultural economies. The scene reports to have utilized 45 livemusic venues in the last three years. Of those, 19 are not anymore functioning, and12 are only occasionally used (less than twice over a 12-month period). And out ofthe 14 venues in actual use at the time of the research, only two have been in func-tioning for more than one year. From those, only Bar Uno a small andunequipped bar in Bellavista has been symbolically and functionally appropriatedas the scenes place, a site that is exclusively devoted to the scene. The scenedoesnt have, in other words, a spatial obligatory point of passage (Callon 1986,Law and Hetherington 2000), a central node which stabilizes the network, aligningother nodes in the same network, while becoming a mandatory means of access forall actors in the network. Obligatory points of passage permit accumulation, or whatLaw (2000, p. 9) calls a logic of strategic aggrandisement, a place able to accu-mulate resources and surpluses which might then be redeployed to increase itslocation as an obligatory point of passage, a location of capitalization. SantiagosEMS doesnt have a strategic point of accumulation, a single location which byits capacity to amass and re-distribute the surpluses of the scene orders the net-work both spatially and organizationally. This deficiency contradicts, moreover, theevidence gathered in global cities: cultural innovation is always anchored in and

    Enacting Music Scenes 195

  • propelled by specific spatial and knowledge hubs whether the Factory in WarholsGreenwich Village (Currid 2007), Can Felipa in Poblenou, Barcelona (Tironi2009b), or Caf Orbis Mundi in Wicker Park, Chicago (Lloyd 2006) that orderthe network around a centripetal focal point and an institutional, political or socialagenda.The result is a liquid spatiality: a geography in which places change, emerging

    and extinguishing without a bounded framing. A static map of the scenes perfor-mance spaces shows a distribution of sites that hides, however, a much richer his-tory of intermittent enacting that characterizes the scene.

    Figure 3. The spaces of Santiagos EMS: socialization, performance and rehearsal.Source: the author.

    196 M. Tironi

  • Figure 4. Daily mobilities of Fakuta, Nawito, Mika Martini, Namm and Onda Bidn.Source: the author.

    Enacting Music Scenes 197

  • Displacement

    The decenteredness of the scenes spatialities has to be related to the Santiagosurban form. As Chiles capital city, Santiago is the countrys largest metropolitanregion with six million inhabitants. And although some commentators define Santi-ago as a compact city (Galetovic 2005), most scholars agree on the opposite: Santi-ago is a sprawling and extended metropolis (Figueroa 2005) that is rapidly eatenthe regions rural land (Reyes 2005). As an indicator of the citys suburban growth,Soler and Greene (2005) count 32 functional urban centers in Santiago.The main point is that in a decentered and extended urban context, mobility is

    the fundamental everyday activity of most Santiaguinos. And it is, as well, thedefining urban activity for the scenes members. Five of them living in differentsectors of the city were asked to fill a space-time diary for one week (Latham2003 and 2004, Oyn 2008). In these diaries they had to register (a) the placeswhere they went, (b) the time of the travel, and (c) the mode of transportation. Andthe results depicted three main conclusions. Firstly, that the members are constantlyon the move. Indeed, they moved more than the average Santiaguino: while theaverage inhabitant of the city moves 2.1 times per day (SECTRA 2008), the scenesmembers make 3.2 journeys per day.But the members of the scene are not only constantly on the move, they also

    enact large routines of mobility. This is the second conclusion. Of all travels made(58), 76% were for more than seven kilometers, and most of them done via publictransit, which increases travel times. Indeed, while the average Santiaguino spends104 minutes per day in travel (SECTRA 2008), it can be estimated that members ofthe scene spend 195 minutes (three hours and 15 minutes) every day movingthough Santiago. In other words, the experience of travel of moving, usually on abus, from one distant place to the other is a central feature in the lives of themembers of Santiagos EMS.Finally, the third conclusion is that the routines of movement enacted by the

    scenes members are polynuclear. Movements are not structured around a singlepivot. Rather the opposite, they are ordered in a distributed fashion: the mobility pat-terns (see Figure 5) show that members especially Fakuta, Nawito and Namm have different departure/arrival nodes, creating rhizomes that do not conform to adelimited territoriality.These patterns of daily mobilities match the larger histories of movement shown

    by the scenes projects. Being on the move is not only a characteristic of the EMSeveryday life; switching between places is also a key practice for understanding theproduction spatialities of the scene. Indeed, out of 16 projects, eight have changedtheir rehearsal space four times or more. In total, 13 projects have done so threetimes or more. In average, then, EMS projects switched their rehearsal studio 3.5times during their productive life. If an average project is 2.5 years old, then a pro-ject of Santiagos EMS changes its rehearsal space every eight months. Moreover,and echoing the patterns of daily mobility shown by the scenes members, transfer-als are not constricted to bounded territories. On the contrary, they stretch overlarge distances. The (mobile) history of DiAblo represents these situations:

    We used to rehearse in the place of a dude in the corner of Agricola andMacul. Then that house was sold, so we had to rent studios for the hour forsome time and then Daniel [DiAblos newest member] came in and we went

    198 M. Tironi

  • to Espaa Av. [a famous squatted house]. We stayed there until it was demol-ished then we moved to Taller Sol, in Agustinas Av and after that wearrived here [actual rehearsal place]. Polijah, from DiAblo.

    In sum, Santiagos EMS is structured around an extensive and multifocal mobilitypattern. And this pattern unfolds both in the everyday practices of the scenes mem-bers and in the histories of the projects comprising the scene. Moving and overlarge distances to connect socialization and performance spaces with rehearsingand residential spaces is a the central spatial mark of the scene. There are no spatialfixities tying down the scene productive organization: it moves, over large stretches,from one place to the other.

    Multiple Agents

    Space is not given in the order of things. Rather the opposite: space, as actor-net-work theorists remind us, is performed (Law 2000). Objects do not move in space,they create it; but since objects are networked entities whose elements include

    Figure 5. Temporal evolution of rehearsal spaces.Source: the author.

    Enacting Music Scenes 199

  • spatiality, spaces create, too, what an object is. Spaces, then, are being made alongwith the objects it contains (Law 2000, p. 6). In other words, spaces and objectsare co-constructed. Or put in our terms, a cluster node (commonly a firm or, for us,a project) and the territoriality in which this node establishes its relational network,are simultaneously enacted.Santiagos EMS indicates, in fact, that the decenteredness, volatility and mobility

    of the scenes spatiality is co-determined by the multiple, contingent and virtual nat-ure of the scene. If objects (actors) and spaces are co-constitutive, and if in spite ofits spatial instability the scene manages to survive, then there has to be somethingabout the actors of the scene in the making of such multiple although functionallycoherent spatiality. Analyzing Santiagos EMS, it is possible to say that one answeris, attuned with the multiplicity of the scenes spatiality, that the units of this local-ized economy arent, in fact, unitary. Indeed, the agents of the scene are not firmsproperly but projects: the unit of economic action in Santiagos EMS, rather than aself-contained, enduring and institutionally rooted unity usually assumed by clustertheory (cf. Moulaert and Sekia 2003) are task-oriented, market-responsive, tran-sient and flexible actor-networks (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999, DeFillipi andArthur 1998, Grabher 2001 2002a and 2002b). In this section I turn to the differentways in which the ontology of the firm is being liquefied by Santiagos EMS.

    Multiplicity/Multidimensionality

    Cluster theory assumes that firms have fixed and distinct economic identities. Oneof the key conditions of possibility for cluster formation is that firms have to be

    Figure 6. Multiple militancy, the case of Nawito, Dadal and Fakuta.Source: the author.

    200 M. Tironi

  • complementary and range from large to medium and small units (Marshall 2005,Mouleart and Seskia 2003). Firms, in other words, establish clear-cut identity fron-tiers differentiating each unit from the other, both in functional and dimensionalterms. This assumption, however, doesnt apply for Santiagos EMS. On the con-trary, the (economic and aesthetical) identity of the scenes projects is always beingenacted, discussed and challenged.Indeed, projects are porous: they are permeable entities that admit more than one

    functional and aesthetical identity. First, the members of the scene participate inmore than one project, thus the borders from one project to the other are highly per-meable. Reflecting on the effervescence of the scene, Walter Roblero member ofCongelador, one of the oldest projects of the scene states:

    One thing that has helped [to the emergence of new projects] is this capac-ity [of younger people] to split themselves up so many times its like withthis guy the projects name is that, and my solo project is that other, and theyfinally end up with, like, five different bands.

    An important incentive for such rapid project incubation has been the increasingaccess to cheap music and recording technologies, with the concomitant shift fromrock and roll to electroacoustics. We dont have the money to buy a drum set andto rent a rehearsal room to play it, says Fakuta from electronic duo Banco Mun-dial. The arrival of the computer, in this context, was liberatory and allowed for thefree-flow development of sonic projects. Talking about Namms origins in 2003,Pablo says:

    At that time [2003] we began exploring different stuff because Sebastin[Namms partner] had a computer and he knew a bit about music software.Then I got a computer and we started recording stuff at my place we beganimprovising, looping, mixing and making tracks. We realized that we couldmake music without having a band, that sometimes a computer was way moreinteresting.

    In addition, web-based social networking platforms with streaming applications likeMySpace, widely use by the scene, minimized diffusion costs. Then, without majormaterial/technological barriers to entry, the possibilities to form a band multiplied.We made, like, a pajama party [with band mate Daniela] and smoked a joint, andwe were high and we began recording stuff. Thats World Musik. And I dontknow, people liked it, remembers Fakuta about the origins of World Musik, herside project together with Daniela, also a member of Julia Rose, Colectivo Etreoand Iris. The result, then, is a highly complex and interlinked ecology of mergers,alliances and temporary collaborations in which the boundaries of each emergentproject are constantly redefined. What counts as a project or as a band is the per-formative effect of a momentary association that has gelled (White 1992; see alsoSheller 2004) into a unitary agent.The porosity of the scene is also evidenced in the multifunctionality if its

    agents. Rather than performing a specialized division of labor, each actor in thescene has internalized the functions and operations needed for the systems repro-duction. There are not bands on the one hand, and promoters, techniciansand designers on the other: in order to exist, the members of the scene have

    Enacting Music Scenes 201

  • dislocated their identity locus to permit, without losing their practical coherence,multiple tasking. Namm, besides it musical act, runs netlabel Jacobino Discosand functions as event organizer; Ervo Perez, member of DiAblo, Colectivo NO,Fake Daddy and La Golden Acapulco, is also the head of Productora Mutante,an organization that promotes noise projects and organizes gigs and festivals;Hector, aka Asa de Lippes and member of Mega Toy, runs Cumshot Records,both a netlabel and semi-formal office for audiovisual services; Rodrigo fromOlas Romer and Montaa Extendida designs posters and flyers, as does Diegofrom La Bandas; Mika Martini runs netlabel Pueblo Nuevo; Carlos from Mostroand Come Perro Fuma Gato does the art for several projects and runs netlabelHorrible Registros; Daniel from DiAblo, Colectivo No and La Golden Acapulco,and Nicols from Innombrable are sound engineers and, together, have recordedseveral bands.The entrepreneurial capability of cultural agents has been studied elsewhere

    (Lloyd 2004, 2006). Moreover, it reverberates with the Do It Yourself ideologyinaugurated by punk and post-punk cultural vanguards in the 1970s. However, theseapproaches are usually framed in the context of a creative milieu in which collabo-ration and cooperation are part of a larger aesthetical disposition and referred to theartists relative position in the (cultural) field (Lloyd 2006). In Santiagos EMS, onthe contrary, this impulse is strategic: its a means of survival in the face of a highlyprecarious environment. Pablo, member of Namm and director of Jacobino Discos,addresses this issue directly:

    to organize a gig requires sending emails, talking to people, talking to themedia, distributing flyers, designing a nice poster, cutting tickets. Its hard forme to be cutting tickets the night of the gig, but I do it anyways.

    Virtuality

    Santiagos EMS lacks a defined territory and stable economic actors in which tocenter its activities and practices. But it has managed, nonetheless, to create alocal buzz (Storper and Venables 2004), the intangible, spontaneous and infor-mal information and communication ecology produced by spatial propinquity ofindustries: the idea that a certain milieu can be vibrant in the sense that thereare lots of piquant and useful things going on simultaneously and therefore lotsof inspiration and information (Bathelt et al. 2004, p. 38). Yet in the case ofSantiagos EMS, this buzz is not created by face-to-face contacts, co-presenceand co-location of people and firms within the same industry and place orregion (Bathelt et al. 2004, p. 38). On the contrary, it is the effect of a web ofdistanciated relations catalyzed by the Internet, or more specifically, byMySpace.MySpace3 is a social networking platform that allows for audio reproduction,

    streaming and downloading. These capabilities have made MySpace the preferredon-line communication medium for local music scenes in Chile and elsewhere(Noble 2008). For Santiagos EMS, MySpace is entangled in so many and diverseways with the organizing and productive practices of the scene that is not possibleto separate both elements. First, MySpace is where the scenes horizontal linkagesare enacted: it brings into being the possibilities of competition and imitation withinthe scene. For example, Nicols from Innombrable says:

    202 M. Tironi

  • Out of the eight tracks of our record, six are there [in MySpace] to be down-loaded. In that sense, our entire work is at everybodys disposition youknow, sometimes I also walk around4 MySpace to listen to new music, to seewhat people is doing and what project people is involved in.

    To walk around MySpace. MySpace has become the scenes place of publicness.In absence of a geographical realm in which competing agents can map out theindustrys innovations, MySpace has become the site where the members of thescene can gaze each other, check their innovations and hear their new products either to defy, emulate or transubstantiate them.To be sure, MySpace is not just a promotional platform, a social network upon

    which the scene can observe itself. MySpace, more radically, is a condition of pos-sibility for the scene. There is no second opinion,, says songwriter Calostro,reflecting on the projects of the scene that dont have an account in MySpace,[having a profile on MySpace] thats what generates a band status. In other words,to be a band you have to be available in public space, and that place, for SantiagosEMS is MySpace.We then have a non-human actor (MySpace) that not only operates as an aggluti-

    nating device, a distributed and relational panopticon, but also as the realm in whichthe being there is enacted and performed. So Santiagos EMS contests one of themost basic assumptions of clusters: that the buzz is the only competitive advantagethat cannot be formally traded by firms because it is the result of human and there-fore unpredictable and elusive interactions in localized settings. The scenes buzzis, indeed, unpredictable and elusive, but not because of its human and spatiallybounded nature. On the contrary, it is precisely because the scene doesnt have asingle, bounded spatiality in which to unfold face-to-face interactions that a non-human mediator recreates such network of connections. But it does so changing therelational conditions assumed in cluster theory: embodied co-presence is replaced bydistanciated, global and virtual communications. Or in the terms of Rodrigo fromDizzlecciko:

    Perhaps the scene exists more on the Internet that in Santiago. There are peo-ple that have known us through Fotolog or MySpace and that like a lot ourmusic but that has never gone to a gig.

    Locality is not anymore a function of proximity but an effect of relational distance(Ibert 2010): being close or far from a collaborator or peer is not a matter ofmetric space but of network and relational robustness.

    Eventuality

    In sum, projects are not stable entities. They are, as the spaces they use, mobile:they perform an ameba-like identity whose limits are being constantly redefined.But how can a productive scene in the face of this flexibility be successful?The answer has to be found in the eventual and contingent nature of the scene. Therole played by Bar Uno and Ervo Prez is an illustrative example. Bar Uno, oncethe epicenter of the scene, had lost its prominent position within the scenes net-work at the time of our fieldwork. On the one hand, the venue was going throughmanagement restructuring and live gigs were being restricted. On the other, andmore significantly, Ervo Prez, the head of Productora Mutante, a key actor in the

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  • organization of the scene and the contact person between Bar Uno and theprojects, was out of the country. As a member of DiAblo explains:

    Ervo left and the pace [of live gigs] slowed down a lot, even though he left[the contact with] Bar Uno opened. This year we had significantly less activitythan last year. Dizzlekzico arent playing anymore, Innombrable neither,Neurotransmisor hasnt played since a long time, Cumshot is organizing gigsin their own places, so its like people isnt [sic] really motivated to organizethings by their own Ive talked to some other bands, which have beingaround the same time than us, and they dont want [to] organize shit.

    This example not only indicates that the enactment of the scene hinges on the entre-preneurial abilities of one single individual, but that the scene is inherently unstable:it is not only that the places of the scene are constantly on the move, but that theorganizational logics of the scene are characterized by contingency. Or put differ-ently, the scene is eventful: without any sort of financial, spatial or institutional sup-port, Santiagos EMS depends on the ever-changing and always unpredictable flowof events that, even for the members of the scene, seem always beyond control.Rodrigo, from electronic project Olas Romer, makes explicit the contingent natureof the scene:

    Ive tried to organize [events], but I dont know why I have bad luck. Forexample, Ive organized gigs in which everything is set; I have the promo-tional poster printed and then the venue stepped down.

    There are no substantial (organizing) pivots which recur in case of diversion; thescene is never blackboxed: it can always change nothing secures stability. Theenactment of the scene is the result of the conjunction of a variety of contingenciesthat are glued together for that specific moment only and everything can alwaysbe, until the very last minute, different. Nelson from Neurotransmisor links thiscontingency to the practice common in the scene of looking for a venue.Recalling Neurotransmisors live appearances, he says that:

    the first gig took place in Cerrillos, in a very well-known venue that was usu-ally lent without cost. Then we played in Casa Usher, just because that wasour rehearsal place. The other gig was because a friend saw a venue; he likedit and talked to the owner to do something there.

    It can be extracted from Nelsons words that Neurotransmisors live presentationshave almost being anomalies, impossibilities, fortuitous exceptions that have some-how materialized. The scene couples and decouples (White 1992) intermittentlydepending on emerging circumstances, obstacles and possibilities. And it seems thatthis flexibility is precisely what allows the scene to survive. The scene seems to bea fluid object (Law 2002), an entity that in order to cope with volatility and risk,changes shape. Or better put, in order to move (from one context to the next, fromone place to the next, to one identity to the other), the organization of the scene hasto mutate as well, creating a shifting, provisional and circumstantial althoughhighly effective knowledge and organizational architecture.

    204 M. Tironi

  • Final Remarks

    Summarizing, Santiagos EMS does not have one spatiality, but multiple. And thismultiplicity is not aligned: there is spatial overlapping between the spaces of the scenebut no grouping among them. Moreover, the spaces comprising the scenes geographyare mobile: they emerge and die, they change location and members are constantly onthe move. This spatial configuration is explained and propelled by the transient andporous identity of the scenes projects. First, projects are flexible: their identity is con-stantly being made and remade. Second, the buzz of the scene, far from beingenacted through the immediacy and closeness of face-to-face interactions, is performedvirtually via decentered, distanciated, technologically-mediated and global communi-cations. And third, the knowledge and productive organization of the scene is contin-gent and eventual: its functioning depends on the capacity of the scene to couple anddecouple depending on the contextual and always unforeseen circumstances.To be sure, the fluidness of Santiagos EMS is also a story of fixities. The scenes

    liquidity is performed and stabilized in and by the work of myriad physicalities,objects and obdurate materialities. The displacements and spatial dislocations of thescene have to be understood in the light of Santiagos urban sprawl; the utilizationof electronic means of music production are related to economic depravations; thespaces of the scene are in a constant state of mutation, but the scene does operate inconcrete and all-too-material venues, rehearsal studios and houses. The results dontaim at undermining the relevance of things, infrastructures and institutions in theconstruction of (mobile) music scenes. On the contrary, they aim at unveiling howthese fixities help enact complex situated although dynamic cultural economies.The results also indicate that the spatial assumptions of cluster theories have to be

    revisited and, more specifically, that the definition of music scenes and how thelocal plays out in their constitution has to be reevaluated. The results depict a situ-ated economy that does not conform to the fixed notion of the local usually mobi-lized. On the contrary, Santiagos EMS is based on and puts forward a fluid, mobileand eventual geography. More investigation has to be done on how this localizedeconomy, in spite of its precariousness, flexibility and instability, survives and cre-ates a dynamic and innovative productive local economy. But the results hereexposed give us some clues. It would seem that, like de Laet and Mols bush pump(2002), the scene is successful because it has the ability to flow transform, adapt,mutate with the changing environment it has to confront. In the face of a fluctuat-ing context, a more effective survival strategy, the scene seems to demonstrate, is tobecome a fluctuating organization as well. We could say that while conventional per-spectives understand clusters as an immutable mobile an economy that in order todeal with and move along the shakiness of globalization has embedded itself in theimmutability of the local Santiagos EMS appears as a mutable mobile: as anorganization that prefers to isomorphically mutate with its environment.How to think, along these lines, about a new ontology of the local? This is not

    the place to develop a full-blown hypothesis. However, the results here presentedindicate that whatever the response may be, the notion of co-enactment might be ofuse. Mol (2002) has developed the notion of enactment to think about how things objects, diseases, technologies, spaces are done. Mols proposal is a distantiationfrom Goffmans (1959) definition of performance and, also, from the idea of per-formativity emerged in economic sociology to indicate the capacity of calculativedevices to produce what they are calculating (Callon 1998, MacKenzie 2008). For

    Enacting Music Scenes 205

  • Mol neither approaches deal with the generative constitution of things and how theyare made, sometimes, in multiple ways and in a variety of practices.Thus Mols enactments are well suited to think about space. However, Mols pro-

    posal might be still anchored in a dualistic model in which there is an enactingpractice and an enacted object. Our results indicate that locality is made through thepractices of the scenes members. But they also show that, in turn, those membersand their practices are an effect of the particular spatiality in which they set outtheir productive networks. We have, then, an iterative process of co-enactments:spaces (or localities) and practices (or scene members) that are constantly and mutu-ally done and re-done. And perhaps in these co-enactments lies the key to thinkingabout locality at large: not as an a priori given space, nor as a thing made, per-formed or enacted, but as a network of objects, spaces and practices that has gelledinto an stabilized entity due to the (always precarious) closure produced by the con-stant co-enactment of its elements.These insights are especially important when thinking about music scenes and

    localized economies in developing countries. The volatility, precariousness, disloca-tion and eventfulness here studied may not be the monopoly of Santiagos EMS, butthe characteristics of cultural scenes and industries in transitional cities in the globalsouth. But perhaps these results might be also indicating the need for a new approachto cluster theories and (local) music production at large. It would be tempting to saythat these results unveil a new type of music scene one different from Euro- andAnglo-centric understandings. But maybe what these results indicate is that insteadof demarcating types of scenes according to which spatial forms they actualize local, translocal or virtual (Bennett and Peterson 2004) we should approach anymusic scene as an entity that assembles different spatialities, sociotechnical media-tors, productive networks and actors. Understood this way, it would not be any morenecessary to refer music scenes to pre-existent and bounded territorialities and actors,nor to invoke the notion of the local to make sense of them: music scenes wouldemerge as networks in which spatialities and practices, localities and its scenesmembers, would mutually enact each other in specific and situated practices.

    Notes

    1. The term scene refers to a network of producers related to a particular music style or aestheticdisposition. The consumption side is not explicit, mainly because as in most niche-specific artisticscenes, its difficult not to say unnecessary to separate between producers and consumers(Lloyd 2005).

    2. The independent scene in Sweden generated international attention in the early 2000s with artistssuch as Jos Gonzlez, The Knife, Peter, Bjorn and John, and The Radio Dept for the mixbetween a peripheral music market and a highly innovative scene it represent.

    3. MySpace launched in 2003 and Rupert Murdochs News Corp bought the site in 2005 for $580million. A July 2006 estimate noted membership approaching 100 million in total (,StefanieOlson. MySpace blurs line between friends and flacks on CNETs News.com.http://news.com.com/MySpace+blurs+line+between+friends+and+flacks/2009-1025_3-6100176.html)

    4. .Doy vueltas in Spanish, literally I spin around, an expression that indicates to walk or browsearound without a definite objective.

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