Maximalism: Material & Practice
PhD Dissertation, University of Virginia, 2026, https://doi.org/10.18130/kexb-rg11
Abstract
This dissertation explores the concept of “maximalism” as a framework for a creative practice rooted in an expansive approach to material, process, and interdisciplinary influences. I relate how an encounter with maximalism through the twin lenses of heavy metal and drone music led me to reframe my understanding of the term from its use as an aesthetic label—broadly applied to works characterized by their relative “excess.” While most often applied as an aesthetic label to completed works characterized by their relative “excess,” I instead locate maximalism in “excessive” approaches to compositional parameters and processes of making employed in the creation of art and music.
Chapter 1 introduces “maximalism” as it is conventionally understood across artistic disciplines, explores its relationship to minimalism, and traces the development of my thinking around maximalism in the context of material and process. In Chapters 2-4, I explore how this reframing of maximalism applies to my own creative practice through discussion of four recent works: Collapse, Fracture, Kraken, and Relic. These pieces weave together a wide range of material and interdisciplinary influences, including visual arts practices, literary maximalism, thalassophobia, heaviness, theories of scale, and astronomy. Through a mixture of technical description and analysis, theoretical framing, and autoethnographic reflection, I present these pieces within the broader context of an “aspirationally” maximalist artmaking practice.
Apocalyptic Process
in Interference Journal, Issue 8, August 2022, ISSN: 2009-3578
Abstract
Joanna Demers speaks of apocalypse as an “unveiling” — in the real world, we are only just finding out what an “apocalypse” might look like, and how it affects creative practice. I propose that as a composer/improviser, I am actively engaged in seeking out apocalypse. This article examines what I see as the inherently “apocalyptic” nature of the creative process, and situates it in the context of the pandemic through my own experience of its effects on my work. While living through the pandemic has had a debilitating effect on my ability to produce work, the apocalypse-seeking composer in me has always had an eye on channelling this bleakness into new ways of working, as I find myself slowly rediscovering my relationship with my practice.