<aside> ⚠️ Reviewers have recommended you revise your abstract.
Revisions should be made by 15th April.

• [ ] Your abstract should give more context as to how your presentation connects to your PhD project. We recommend you revise by integrating the current abstract text with the information you have provided for the “Short Biography” (which is actually a summary of your project).
• [ ] Please provide a short biography which outlines key information about yourself and work. </aside>

<aside> ✔️ Presentation Formats

• Oral presentations should be 20 mins followed by 20 mins for questions.
• Performance presentations can be in the form of a lecture recital or performance with reflection, and should be 20 mins followed by 20 mins for questions.
• Pre-recorded Presentations: Oral or performance presentations can be pre-recorded and submitted as digital media. These should be a maximum of 25 mins**.** Prerecorded  presentations will be available to  view before the event and the full 40 mins of the session will be used for feedback and questions.

Pre-recorded presentations must be submitted by 31st May 2023.

</aside>

<aside> ℹ️ What to expect from this event:

• The course platform will go live on Notion on 2nd June. You will receive a link to access all course materials and information. Before the event you will be able to prepare by viewing digital presentations and find out more about other participants .
• Music4Change event is an international, interdisciplinary learning environment where music-focused researchers from a wide range of fields and methods come together to discuss their work and exchange knowledge. When preparing your presentation please consider how to communicate your project with people who may be outside your specific area of study and/or geographical location.
• We encourage active participation, discussion and dialogue during the event, accordingly we hope that contributors will attend the majority of the sessions across the three days. If you plan to only be present for your own presentation, please let us know in advance.
• If you wish to take 3 or 5 ECTS credit points for this event please make sure you register in advance. </aside>

Daniel Fong Xiong Yang PhD Candidate, University of Oslo

Exploring gay politics and strategy through radical ontology and radical empiricism

Keywords: postqueer identity strategy fieldwork

https://vimeo.com/840842723?share=copy

This paper ruminates on gay men as subjects and elucidate on how questions of ontology aid in shaping the methodological approach of my PhD project- “Sing like a ‘real’ man*”, an ethnography study, predicated on participatory action research (PAR), which aims to examine the experiences of gay singers in Norwegian classical vocal education and investigate how their masculinity is performed, regulated, and negotiated. Specifically, I* argue that my adoption of Deleuzoguattarian theories alongside Sara Ahmed’s and R.W. Connell’s theories of marginalization has positive influences on my project’s methodology.

Firstly, I contend that my adoption might offer a more fluid understanding of sexuality, sex, and gender, and thus, might aid in broadening my project’s focus group beyond concrete gay, cis-male singers. As such, this broadened approach might engender greater cooperation with all Queer groups within the Norwegian Queer community, and, thus, bear greater resonance with and impact for them.

Secondly, I seek to illustrate how my adoption prevents “colonial extractive methods” (Hunter et al., 2013, p. 16) and paranoid readings of the field (Sedgwick, 2002). Indeed, I argue that by using a Deleuzoguattarian approach, I can better attend to the ever-changing nuanced adaptations that gay singers employ during performance creation and the micropolitics that might be generated from such adaptations. *Therefore, my approach aligns itself with the tenets of PAR (*Smith et al., 2010) by offering more nuanced, non-generalized and non-teleological understandings of gay singers’ lives.

References

• Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus University of Minnesota Press.
• Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others.Duke University Press.
• Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: Rethinking the concept. Gender and Society, 19(6), 829-859.
• Smith, L., Bratini, L., Chambers, D.A., Jensen, R.V., & Romero, L. (2010). Between idealism and reality: Meeting the challenges of participatory action research. Action Research, 8(4), 407–425.
• Hunter, L., Emerald, E., & Martin, G. (2013). Participatory activist research in the globalised world. Springer.

About Daniel

Daniel Fong is a Doctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo. Daniel is an operatic baritone, having received his vocal training at the Royal Academy of Music (London) and actively performing various operas, oratorios and recital works in Singapore. Daniel is also happy affiliated with ‘the Sing Song Club’ (Singapore) with promotes the art songs of Southeast-Asian composers. Daniel was also an adjunct voice lecturer at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Art’s (Singapore).

Currently, Daniel’s research project titled “Sing like a ‘real’ man!” investigates how gay men negotiate their masculinity and gender identity in vocal education. He hopes that his project will address the critical gap in research and literature attending to gay classical singers and create queer-inclusive spaces within vocal education.