Singing the Senses into Theoreticians: a practice-based exploration of the radical legacy of pre-industrial work-song cultures in UK and Netherlands

Singing the Senses into Theoreticians: a practice-based exploration of the radical legacy of pre-industrial work-song cultures in the UK and the Netherlands and the relevance of its reinterpretation today. - This doctoral project employs practice-based research predicated on durational, performative reenactment of pre-industrial flax processing, incorporating song. It examines how embodied singing practices in 18th-century rural industries sparked social uprisings through emergent sociability rather than deliberate assembly. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach including ethnomusicological analysis, it will attain understanding through commonalities in work-songs from the UK and the Netherlands. The project harnesses the heritage of song cultures as a means to develop contemporary (art) practices advancing social cohesion and political imaginaries, in which the senses become theoreticians (Karl Marx, 1844).