Research

I have always been fascinated with the idea of Utopia.

Utopian imagination is a violation of boundaries. It transgresses the present, exposing its lacks, its contradictions, its wounds. To imagine utopia is to trespass into the messy, unresolvable territories of now, to pull apart the grammars of power that shape what is thinkable, sayable, or livable. A care that does not dare to trespass, to confront, to be altered, becomes another boundary: a map of property, a zoning of affect, a necropolitical maintenance of the status quo. Utopia, by contrast, demands presence, not as a static acceptance but as a fragmented, ecstatic, and radical grounding in what is, so that it may be undone. It refuses the antiseptic care that sedates, excises, and contains. Instead, it insists on the uncomfortable vitality of exchange, on risk, on collective transformation. If utopia lives anywhere, it is in the mess of trespass, in the site of contact, in the open wound where futures are forged.

Drawing on two decades as a performer, composer and collaborator, my PhD uses practice‑based methods and case studies from my own projects and experiences in playing a broad range of music, to untangle the relationship between music and utopia. Underpinned by the position that utopia is not a destination, but an orientation that promotes emergence, complexity and human flourishing, I am developing a framework in which to apply utopian theory to music, which will culminate in the development of the Atlas of Utopian Sound Practice – a non‑linear, multimodal and intentionally provocative text, presented as a bricolage of speculative maps, musical exercises, accounts of prior utopian attempts, proverbs, and cautions about utopia’s pitfalls, designed to hold contradiction and invite adaptation.