Dolly’s Laugh

Abstract

This creative response is an attempt to understand our long-standing obsession with the moments that shouldn’t be in song recordings but somehow remain. Written while we were physically apart over the course of a few months, our dialogue responds to a desire to understand whether there is any meaning in these obsessions, whether they can teach us about sound and the musicians that produce them. We want to call attention to what is usually discarded – what happens before, after or in-between, what happens on top of – moments in excess of the track which break the performative bargain and reveal the multiple possibilities always contained within performance. The piece is accompanied by a soundpiece putting some of the recorded moments mentioned in dialogue with each other.

Notes on Contributors

Ruari Paterson-Achenbach is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher, currently undertaking their PhD in Music at the University of Cambridge. Their work thinks about sound and performance as vehicles for memory, resistance and temporal antagonism. Through a critical engagement with ‘Outsider Music,’ their PhD uncovers radical potential for creativity within and through non-normative social life. More broadly, their research interests include queer temporality, critical listening, and creative anarchism. Ruari was also a ‘New Creative’ and has produced works with and for the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the BBC and NTS Radio.

Sophie Marie Niang is a black feminist researcher from Paris, working at the intersection of cultural studies, black studies, and queer theory. She is currently a Junior Research Fellow in European Cultural Studies at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. Her first book project explores black refusal and worldmaking in contemporary France, through a focus on rap, black women’s self narratives in film and literature, afrofeminist performance, and literary fiction. Her work is published in Sociology Compass, Feminist Review, and Modern & Contemporary France.