Call to order.

Call to Order is the musical sound of an artist-run centre. Using the minutes from board meetings as the harmonic framework for a potential musical score, Call to Order is a proposition: What might an artist-run centre sound like if it operated in the minor mode?

An artist-run centre is a not-for-profit organization governed by a board of directors, elected on an annual basis to represent the general membership. The board meets regularly throughout the year and meetings are generally conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order, with the proceedings recorded in the minutes.

Robert's Rules of Order is rumoured to be the most boring book one can read. Written by retired U.S. Army Major Henry Martyn Robert in 1876, and modelled on the rules of procedure of the U.S. House of Representatives, the text outlines a procedure for decision-making where motions are made and discussed, then put to a vote. Given the capacity of the rules to limit discussion and silence dissent, it is curious that "Robert's Rules" have become standard practice for alternative organizations like artist-run centres.

There is, however, a poetry in the terminology of Robert's Rules, a particular rhythm to the order of business, and an inherent performativity to the language used: calling a meeting to order, establishing the order of business, approving the agenda, making a motion, seconding the motion, soliciting debate, amending the motion, amending the amendment, voting on the amendment, calling the motion to a vote, voting on the motion, making a motion to adjourn, voting on the motion to adjourn, to adjourn. In reading the minutes of past meetings, one can tell whether a meeting went smoothly, or if it collapsed into a mire of stalemated vote-offs, amendments to amendments of amendments, and mis-made motions. There is a kind of perverse musicality to it all.

If there was a music counterpart to Robert's Rules of Order, it would be Walter Piston's Harmony, the authoritative reference for harmonic theory. Like Robert, Piston was also in the military, joining the U.S. Navy as a musician and writing patriotic fanfares during World War II. In 1941, he authored Harmony based on the music of the 18th and 19th centuries, a stable period of common practice when there was surprisingly little change in the harmonic materials used in musical composition. Piston's Harmony remains an authoritative guidebook for student composers today.

Perhaps it is a mere coincidence that the rules of order for deliberative assemblies and the rules for harmony were both authored by U.S. military men yet the inherent stability and unchanging status of both Robert's Rules of Order and Piston's Harmony are what define them as "Major" texts--in Deleuze and Guattari's sense of the term--as opposed to the constant change and variation characteristic of more revolutionary, or "minor,' texts. Considering artist-run centres as a form of minor practice suggests that they borrow and divert power from major, established models in order to produce something unique, unpredictable, and in constant variation--much like the minor mode in music. By this logic, if artist-run centres were to operate in the minor mode, they would be exercising their revolutionary potential.

In order to translate minutes from artist-run-centre board meetings into music, we first compared the terminology and operations of Robert's Rules of Order to Piston's Harmony, finding possible points of similarity and connection between the two systems. (The map on the following page illustrates these connections.) Next, from the minutes, we deciphered points when a given meeting "adhered" to the rules of order and when it "deviated" from them to develop a harmonic rule base for the minutes, using the Major mode and the minor mode in turn to gauge a meeting's harmonious resolution. The resulting harmonic sequences are not complete musical compositions in themselves, but represent frameworks upon which music might be composed; they are musical works in potential.

James B. Maxwell is a composer of concert music, music for contemporary dance, and music for theatre and film. His work has been presented in Canada, the UK, and Europe.

Kathleen Ritter is an artist and writer. She often uses the institutional structures that surround and mediate art as the basis of her practice. She has been involved in artist-run centres since t998 and has read Robert's Rules of Order from beginning to end twice.