In Experimental Otherwise, Benjamin Piekut takes the reader into the heart of what we mean by "experimental" in avant-garde music. Focusing on one place and time--New York City,
1964--Piekut examines five disparate events: the New York Philharmonic's disastrous performance of John Cage's Atlas ELIPTICALIS; Henry Flynt's demonstrations against the downtown
avant-garde; Charlotte Moorman's Avant Garde Festival; the founding of the Jazz Composers Guild; and the emergence of Iggy Pop. Drawing together a colorful array of personalities, Piekut argues
that each of these examples points to a failure and marks a limit or boundary of canonical experimentalism. What emerges from these marginal moments is an accurate picture of the avant-garde,
not as a style or genre, but as a network defined by disagreements, struggles, and exclusions.
