https://www.tso.com.au/news/for-composer-joseph-franklin-a-piece-of-music-is-never-done
#writing
In collaboration with artist Tina Stefanou and editor Jack Coventry, I composed a 26-minute piece in quadraphonic & sub (LFE) for Stefanou's reworking of her film Hym(e)nals.
The work will be shown continuously throughout the Biennale, in a freestanding, purpose-built structure.
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Album link: https://josephfranklin.bandcamp.com/album/the-horror-of-the-avant-garde-s
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It was premiered and recorded in Narrm in 2023, conducted by Elliott Gyger, with featured soloists Marc Hannaford (piano) and Satoshi Takeishi (percussion), and performed by Laila Engle (flutes), Luke Carbon (clarinets), Jasper Ly (oboe/cor anglais), Callum G'Froerer (double-bell trumpet), Benjamin Anderson (double-bell bass trombone), Louise Devenish (percussion), Melina van Leeuwen (harp), Joseph Franklin (contrabass guitar/harmonium), Sophia Kirsanova (violin), Phoebe Green (viola), and Anna Pokorny (cello).
https://www.newfocusrecordings.com/catalogue/joseph-franklin-the-horror-of-the-avant-garde-s/
#contrabassguitar
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April 01, 2026
Abstract:
THE DANGER OF THE REFRAIN: how art can unintentionally support things that the artist did not intend
"Art can unintentionally support things that the artist did not intend." Composer Georg Friedrich Haas's warning becomes urgently concrete when we trace the afterlife of Which Side Are You On? (1931).
Written by Florence Reece during the Harlan County coal miners' strike—after armed deputies raided her home searching for her union organizer husband—the song has traveled far beyond its origins. Nearly a century later, its simple refrain circulates through labor strikes, civil rights movements, anti-fascist organizing, concert halls, and corporate media.
Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the refrain as territorial marker, I trace how Which Side Are You On? deterritorializes and reterritorializes across struggles—from the SNCC Freedom Singers to Billy Bragg's miners' strike anthem, from Frederic Rzewski's piano variations to The Homobiles' queer anti-fascist version, and finally to HBO's Succession, where a workers' anthem becomes emotional underscore for a billionaire's heir.
I distinguish between reterritorializations that maintain material stakes and name concrete enemies and those that reduce political struggle to aesthetic contemplation. The paper asks: What must remain intact for a political refrain to resist becoming generic struggle ambience? And how do we, as composers and scholars, track what our refrains are doing when they leave home—who they're interpellating, and on whose behalf?
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#theory
February 24, 2026
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January 13, 2026
Tina Stefanou - voice and safety whistle
Joseph Franklin - contrabass guitar and artefacts
December 2025 at Rose Hall, University of Pennsylvania
#contrabassguitar
#liveperformance
This conversation was built on the materials from my solo album a thousand tiny mutinies (2024) and was performed in quadraphonic sound, with spatialised electronics, bass(es), and percussion.
Recorded live at The Quadraphonic Club, Brunswick. Released 15 October 2025:
https://josephfranklin.bandcamp.com/album/064-a-thousand-tiny-mutinies-live
#contrabassguitar
#liveperformance
where things were once conjoined is a work of collage: a process of reconfiguring, smearing, bending, sculpting, collapsing, smashing, disfiguring and reanimating. To Frankenstein is to be a restless, defiant creature that ruptures protocols through highly attuned mechanisms, taxonomies and rituals.
Listen HERE.
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