273 Conversations in Berlin
good humor (Wolfe, 2019: loc 2325–2296). Puwar suggests that this is
because “the minority position of women makes women much more vis-
ible and therefore they are noticed much more easily” (Puwar, 2004: 92).
Fischer’s reflection on her experience of working closely with Teicher
moves towards a more inward-facing interrogation of her actions. This
self-questioning was the next prominent theme:
One thing I feel is that [Teicher] having grown up as male, gave her
a dierent experience growing up of power and owning power, espe-
cially even around technology. So, yeah, even with us, and we’re really
close and we really agree with each other and really are passionate
about queer politics and feminism, but even the two of us, I sometimes
feel like she can come at her knowledge or present her knowledge in
a way that can sometimes make me feel like disempowered. It’s not
something that I would point ngers at her or point ngers at me,
I think it’s about the way that we interact and being aware of that.
Also for myself, being aware of why I feel disempowered or why
I don’t take control. Why am I not like, no, get away, get away from
the computer? I’m doing this thing now. Why do I sit back more?
What is my learning style? Because I certainly feel that I explore; I am
able to go even more deeply when I’m completely alone. Once I have
the tools that I need and I’m completely alone but the thing, of course,
that makes that not ideal is that I think collaborations do make things
better and collaborations are great places for learning and knowledge
sharing and stu. So I wouldn’t say that my goal is to just work alone.
I want to work with other people and I want those other people to not
just be women too because I know that that is the reality of the world
and also because I don’t think that fundamentally I shouldn’t work
with men. But how do we go at that so we all feel really good in the
collaborative process? It’s a complex question.
Fischer
Fischer considers where power is situated or taken, examines her actions,
and even learning style. It begins to show how this self-checking, com-
bined with a normatively masculine backdrop, unconscious bias, and
everyday sexism from others erodes self-belief, sometimes to such an
extent that some ultimately simply withdraw from the discipline. One cru-
cial insight Fischer offers though here is that this is not a gender or indeed
binary gender issue, but one that relates to power. For example, Kaltès
explains how a female promoter held her to a higher standard specifically
because of her gender:
It’s so deeply rooted in minds that I even sometimes had comments
from other women – I remember I had a gig and my sound card crashed
just before it. I was like, okay, big problem. So I found another sound
card, someone brought it to the club but I didn’t have the right cables.
So I went to the sound guy and said, I don’t have the right cables.
I need this and that.
274 Liz Dobson
He told me that, no, I could directly “plug my computer into the
mixer”. I said no, that my material/setting wasn’t allowing that but he
said “just do it”. He was extremely frustrated and he disappeared for
half an hour without a word. I had to start my gig and he didn’t want
to help for a reason I don’t understand.
I went to him again and said, you didn’t give me these cables, it’s
really basic cables, and after another half hour I just found the cables
on my desk. He didn’t give them directly to me nor informed me he
got them even though he could see I was running around to try to nd
a solution. The promoter who wasn’t helping either told me, it’s your
job, you have to know your gears, especially as a woman. You have to
know better because what are these guys thinking now? (the night fo-
cused on the representation of female-identied artists). . . . I actually
felt guilty. I felt responsible. I felt that my knowledge was not good
enough, and it took me a couple of days to be like, fuck this [laughs].
I know my gear and the problem has nothing to do with it.
Kaltès
Kaltès concluded, after several days of reflection, that her request was
entirely reasonable; however, in this situation she felt unsupported but
under pressure to perform to a higher standard than the others, specifically
because of her gender. I asked Kaltès what effect this kind of experience
has on her as an artist:
I think the rst direct eect is that I questioned myself, I questioned
my work. I lost my balance and doubt myself, that was the rst thing.
Then I felt angry. Also at myself, which is an ugly feeling. But eventu-
ally I learned from such experiences to trust myself more. To identify
more clearly my own emotion or frustration and not let others burden
me. You constantly have to keep some distance with that or you end up
being crippled with self doubt, bitterness and anger. It’s work.
Kaltès
Experiences like this make the possibility of such discrimination feel plau-
sible, and they can become anticipated; experiences of gender-based dis-
crimination and elevated expectation are difficult to set aside.
In the predominantly white (cis) male space then, it is important to be
aware, to be cognizant of the situation, and supportive (while not explic-
itly drawing attention to it). Within education specifically, this ‘super-
surveillance’ (Puwar, 2004: 92) affects the individual’s freedom to speak,
take risks, explore ideas/equipment; some enjoy a greater privilege of
being vulnerable in the classroom. I make this connection because per-
sonal development, creativity, and learning is dependent on the social
circumstance of learning. My own research in creativity and learning
in the collaborative situation is framed by developmental Psychologist
Lev Vygotsky’s (1978) emphasis on language being a psychological tool
for higher mental development. So there is enormous value in creating
spaces where risk can be felt less acutely (Dobson & Littleton, 2016;
275 Conversations in Berlin
Mahn & John-Steiner, 2002). While there is always a degree of risk and
vulnerability, not all students possess the sub-cultural capital (Thornton,
1996), some lacking the socio-economic capital that enables them to
take the same creative or technical risks. The best audio production, and
audio education environments in particular, provide: detailed informa-
tion about technical equipment and support available, and actively pro-
mote professional conduct practices based on an anti-harassment policy
that is fit for purpose, and proactively enforced by those responsible for
a space.
THE BENEFIT OF A NETWORK
One might argue that audio digitization and availability of free or rela-
tively inexpensive music software, combined with online tuition and You-
Tube, is a kind of audio democratization – that this kind of access should
result in greater diversity in audio. Research shows that the socio-cultural
context has a much greater influence. For example, Patrick Bell investi-
gates an idea that there has been a “great democratization of digital record-
ing technologies such as DAWs” (Bell, 2015) through his survey of New
York based–music, n = 104 (n = 89 male and 70% white). He explains that
“[t]he putative democratization of recording technology is tethered to a
basic economic argument – affordability equals access – while analyses
of the sociocultural conditions of this mode of music-making have been
largely overlooked” (Ibid.: 133). The transition from vinyl to digital audio
was also a potentially significant step towards DJ democracy, but mem-
bers of this scene still need to navigate social capital and masculine DJ
cultures. The most significant factor contributing to the low proportion of
women working in audio is community (Wolfe, 2019; King, 2018; Arm-
strong, 2016; Comber, Hargreaves, & Colley, 1993). This raises questions
about entry points. Learners and early career professionals need access to
equipment (economic capital), a community of supportive peers (social
capital), plus information about the domain (scene capital), and opportu-
nities to learn through low-risk exploration of new knowledge and skills.
At some point any engineer, artist, or explorer with professional ambition
needs to bring their work out into the world; however, the possibility of
this happening is connected with how isolated or integrated a person is
socially. Through a tested mastery of, and confidence with, professional
audio equipment comes increased autonomy and agency as a practitioner.
Ultimately, this can lead to elevate the symbolic capital of more diverse
people, which begins with empowerment. Fischer explains the benefit
of being in environments that include other women or at least feminist
people who understand the impact of power dynamics:
I don’t think that all men make women feel disempowered or can’t be
those teachers, but to some extent there can be a divide along those
lines. So I think it is important for women to be around female people,
or female identied people or feminist people or people at least who
recognise this power dynamic because, again, to me that’s where it
276 Liz Dobson
gets back to power. It’s not necessarily about gender but it’s about
power and the feeling of power in the world.
Fischer
All-women environments can (but don’t necessarily) offer this insight
about power and: “The very real exclusion from scene networks is the cen-
tral motivation for women to launch their own forms of local, translocal
and virtual networking, separate from the existing male-dominated scene
networks” (Gavanas & Reitsamer, 2013: 69). Further discussion of such
feminist networks can be found elsewhere (Gavanas & Reitsamer, 2013;
Fitzpatrick & Thompson, 2015; Dobson, 2018), though my own view is
that groups like our Yorkshire Sound Women Network
16
are valuable in
terms of building social, economic, cultural, and symbolic capital amongst
women, benefiting women’s creative practice, collaborative learning,
and enterprise creativities through the increased availability of facilities
and opportunities to develop domain specific knowledge and skill (Dob-
son, 2018). For many it is also a pathway into intersectional feminism as
women meet others with relatable and also diverse experiences and priori-
ties. For those who find this too jarring, I suggest that what we effectively
have had (for some time) are all-male environments with all of the benefits
that I have already outlined.
WHERE ARE THE SITUATIONS FOR POWER TAKING?
It is enormously problematic to suggest that power is only given; power
can of course be taken when conditions support a person’s capacity to
take. Drawing on two Higher Education experiences, Artist A explains
how their
17
technical support encouraged students to really exploit the
help offered. Conversely, the subsequent absence of technical support as a
postgraduate influenced their learning and also their perspective on seek-
ing help:
I really feel like I let men run around and do things for me that I should
have really been doing and learning myself. That denitely happened.
So I think I came away not quite as technically able as I should have
been, and then I learned it all on my own, after I actually graduated. . . .
They have a full-time technician who sorts everything out. I didn’t
really have to do anything there ever. Whenever I had a problem, I’d
just knock on the door of one of the two technicians. Either the com-
puter technician or the sound technician, and they’d come and sort
it out for me. Whereas going to the Hanns Eisler, it was really good
because it’s just one professor who does all of the electronic music in
the whole place, and there was a 32-speaker Lautsprecher Orchester
with speakers all over the place doing completely dierent things. It’s
his design, but obviously he can’t do that all himself, so it was up to
us basically to put it all together, following instructions. It was a bit of
a mess with 10 composers running around not really knowing who’s
going to do what or what’s already done and what still needs to be
277 Conversations in Berlin
done or who needs to go and get what. But it was really good because
it was, no, that’s how it should be. It should be hands on because
people are here to learn and they’re here to learn how to be electronic
composers, and if you want to be an electronic composer, you have to
be a technician.
18
Artist A
In the end Artist A’s point is not explicitly about gender, but against the
socio-cultural norms already described gender becomes relevant. I have
often witnessed situations where students benevolently support others by
taking control of the equipment (mouse, desk, speakers) to solve a prob-
lem in a way that is mostly disempowering to a point that does more to
reinforce their helplessness.
ASSUMING POWER
When assuming that someone either has knowledge (or a least a capacity
to understand), we reinforce this belief. Assuming power is more empow-
ering than benevolently taking over. Fischer explained that empowerment
comes from working with mentors and teachers who have power:
[When] women want to learn more about electronic music, feel more
empowered or feel like they can be more outspoken when they work
with other women because they don’t feel like sometimes men or peo-
ple – and this is, again, I’m trying to step lightly around it because
I don’t think it’s just about men, but there is a certain style of import-
ing knowledge or being a teacher or having knowledge that some men
have, which may create problems for some women who are trying
learn – in that learning environment they really need someone who is
treating them in a way that assumes that they have power, that they can
do it, that they’re not just to be following. It really creates a supportive
environment for them.
Fischer
For me the key point here is the value of a teacher who is attuned to this
idea of power and empowerment. Fischer also touches on the idea of a
traditional education discourse: “a certain style of importing knowledge
or being a teacher or having knowledge that some men have”; a style
that echoes some of my earlier points about the relationships between
technology, masculinity, and sub-cultural capital. The discourse of tradi-
tional Western education is often based on a more knowledgeable person
imparting knowledge in a way that elevates the teacher’s status, power,
and agency, particularly in Higher Education where the traditional dis-
courses of learning are instructor led, promoting ideas of authority and
power more typically associated with the men historically responsible for
established academic institutions. It is even built into the very fabric of the
building with large, fixed seating lecture halls designed for larger cohorts,
to enable – dare I suggest – a more economic mode of delivery.
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