The (Im)mediate and the (In)finite: Performance and Playback in the Music of Éliane Radigue, 2000-2009
Éliane Radigue’s musical oeuvre delves into the perceptual intricacies of intermediary states. Despite her fascination with transitions, however, Radigue’s artistic vision remains resolute, driven by an ascetic devotion to the gradual unfolding of the present moment. This conceptual friction between constancy and change informs my analysis of three of her major works from the early 2000s—L’Île Re-Sonante (2000), Elemental II (2004), and Naldjorlak I, II, and III (2005, 2007, 2009). I argue that the interfacial transition between predominantly synthesized and predominantly acoustic works advances an extraordinary dialectic between performance and playback presentational modes, prompting a radical (re)consideration of the (re)production of Radigue’s music writ large. In my final analysis I therefore propose an original theoretical framework for conceptualizing the (re)production of Radigue’s musical process as a form of rehearsal, a cultural technique that foregrounds the iterative and regulative feedback of concrescent musical practice over the supposedly stable (re)production of its material objects and discursive effects.