Eva Dieteren

Research project: Voices from the Margins: The Cyborg Concept Album

Abstract

This PhD project investigates the cyborg concept album in order to answer the following question: How does the cyborg concept album figure as a space through which marginalised communities acquire a transmedial voice? I aim to examine in which ways the concept album offers a dynamic, interdisciplinary site for the political performativity of the cyborg. The project's focus on voices from the margins marks an intervention in academic debates on the concept album, which have primarily been focused on its development within progressive rock, neglecting to account for the legacy of female, non-binary, queer, and BIPOC artists. In order to answer this research question, the project has three main objectives: 1) to investigate how the cyborg is manifested in the concept album; 2) how the concept album presents cyborg narratives, which transcend binary, human-centred thinking; 3) how cyborg embodiment is gendered, queered and racialised. These objectives are reflected in a three-pronged methodological approach, which combines musical, narratological, and embodied performative approaches. This will be employed to support the argument that the cyborg concept album challenges human-centred, binary thinking through narrative, embodiment and voice. The project is informed by feminist and queer cyborg theory; case studies will be taken from Arca's Kick (2020-2021) series, Grimes' Miss Anthropocene (2020), Janelle Monáe's Metropolis (2008-2013) series and Dirty Computer (2018), and Little Simz' Sometimes I Might be Introvert (2021) and Stillness in Wonderland (2016).