Julian Söderberg: An Ethnographic Exploration of Contemporary Art Music Practices in Oslo

Field of study: Practice-oriented Musicology.

The study is based on the following research questions:

• How do habitués of the contemporary art music world in Oslo develop identities through their cultured practices?
• What are the functions and effects of institutions, institutionalization, and subsidization in the scene?
• What discursive frameworks structure the field?

The study is grounded in ethnographic studies and Foucauldian discourse analysis of educational, artistic, programming, and funding practices.

The project will conduct this exploration down two paths: one folding in towards the bodies and minds that contemporary art music works upon, the other expanding out onto the socio-cultural territories it striates. The inwards trajectory will study the role contemporary art music plays in the distinguished (Bourdieu, 1979/1984) (sub)cultural lives of its practitioners, focusing on contemporary art musicking (Small, 1998) as a technology of the self (Foucault, 1984/1990). The outward trajectory, on the other hand, will explore the institutionalized and subsidized reality of contemporary art musicking, interrogating the institutional ecology (Bull, 2019) in which contemporary art musicking is made possible and takes place. Connecting these vectors of inquiry, the dissertation will examine the discursive frameworks that tie the contemporary art music world together and analyse how they shape practice.

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Julian Söderberg is enrolled in the PhD programme in Music Research from 1 September 2025.