“Musical Sketching” by Arne De Boever

This summer, IDSVA is proud to participate in the Biennale Sessions taking place at 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Within the IDSVA PhD program, as part of the Sessions, Arne De Boever will deliver a lecture titled “Musical Sketching,” on June 14, 4–6pm (Arsenale seminar room). The lecture is open to all visitors of the Biennale.

“Sketch”: this noun, which is also a verb, comes up in François Jullien’s The Great Image Has No Form to capture what the painter is doing when they are de-picting what in the classic text of Daoism, the Laozi, is called “the great image”—the image somewhere between form and the formless, as materializing out of what is there before the image’s form but without losing connection to that formlessness. Think of it as a reluctant image, in a minor key, or as an image that withholds or restrains itself while coming about—like a sketch. 

Jullien’s use of the word is hardly casual, given that he dedicates an entire chapter to a “Theory of the Sketch.” Picking up on this word as a properly philosophical term, this talk explores the theory and practice of “musical sketching,” and considers its central importance to the understanding of “silent music” that De Boever is developing in a book he is co-writing with the composer Michael Pisaro-Liu. Starting from Beethoven’s sketchbooks, and considering musical sketches by Thelonious Monk and Glenn Gould as well as philosophical reflections on musical sketching by Bernard Stiegler and Giorgio Agamben, De Boever presents an argument in praise of the musical sketch as providing key insights into the use of silence in musical compositions, performances, and recordings.

Arne De Boever teaches American Studies in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts, where he directed the MA Aesthetics and Politics program for over a decade. He is the author of numerous articles, reviews, and translations, as well as seven books on contemporary comparative fiction and political and aesthetic philosophy. His most recent books are Against Aesthetic Exceptionalism (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), François Jullien’s Unexceptional Thought (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), Being Vulnerable (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023), and Post-Exceptionalism: Art after Political Theology (Edinburgh University Press, 2025).

To learn more about the Biennale Sessions, visit here. For any inquiry about IDSVA contact Jeanne Moore, Director of Administration and Director of Admissions at jmoore@idsva.edu.