“This article endeavours to investigate gender politics within contemporary music, and explore the contributions that women and gender minorities (GM) have made to music, both historically and within the ‘now’. Women and other GM have been sidelined and at times made outright invisible throughout music history. Not only has this been through displacement from the canonisation process of multiple music traditions, but also through the invisibility of laboured cultural contributions resulting from music making; whether that be building new music technologies, performing, composing or improvising. When women are acknowledged within music history, it is within the context of the gender binary, within specific expectations of gendered roles and behaviours assigned to them. Transgender (trans) people furthermore, are displaced historically, with little to no information regarding the production of music by both Male-to-Female, Female-to-Male and non-binary trans people available.”
Marika Pratley is a queer Greek New Zealand composer and sound/performance artist. She has performed in a variety of productions and composed original works for theatre, dance and film. Marika composed and directed A Symphony of Sloths, which toured NZ, Auckland and Dunedin Fringe Festivals 2014-2015. This received multiple nominations, including Most Original Concept and Best Music Production. Marika has participated in multiple performance art works exploring gender, feminism and sexuality. In 2012-14, she performed in Virginia Kennard’s The Lady Garden and in Kennard’s 2015 exhibition you occupy my body by looking. Her work “Stuck” featured in No. 5 (Spring) edition of Works for Loudspeakers. Marika currently performs in an improv noise trio, with Madison Van Staden and Chris Wratt. She is also member of The Happy Plaster, a performance art band.
Marika is currently working on original sound design for Still Lookin’ Good, a dance film with Berlin artists Oliver Connew and Alice Connew.
www.soundcloud.com/marikapratley