1st Sounds Now Symposium: “Curating Diversity in Europe”

1st Sounds Now Symposium: “Curating Diversity in Europe”

Date : 25.09 — 25.09.2020
Location: Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, Berlin, Germany

For more information see the Sounds Now website.

The symposium “Curating Diversity in Europe”, taking place online (September 25, 2020) and offline (May 2021), offers a platform for keeping the discourse on diversity in contemporary music in Europe alive, developing potentials for transformation during a time of limited international encounters and swelling nationalistic currents. The focus of the symposium is on processes and profiles of curating that critically question power structures and Eurocentric patterns of thought, to implement political, collective or participatory strategies in the curatorial decision-making process. Keynotes by Du Yun and Sandeep Bhagwati will be followed by panel discussions on emancipation, decolonisation and “looted music”.

The symposium is planned in a hybrid format. All content (keynotes, panels, chats and networking) will be transmitted live to onsite participants at the Akademie der Künste, and simultaneously via internet to an online audience; content will continue to be accessible after the symposium as online video documentation. With this hybrid format, we want to strengthen the international networking and at the same time enable personal meetings.

The symposium will be continued in May 2021 as part of the “Memories in Music” festival (May 6-9, 2021) at the Akademie der Künste.

With:
Sharif Sehnaoui (Co-founder and artistic director of Irtijal Festival, Beirut), Anothai Nitibhon (President for Academic and Research, Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music and free curator, Bangkok), Du Yun (Professor of Composition at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, and distinguished visiting professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, free curator), George Lewis (Edwin H. Case Professor of American Music at Columbia University, USA), Elaine Mitchener (contemporary vocalist, movement artist and composer, GB), Artyom Kim (Omnibus Ensemble Usbekistan), Carlos Gutierrez (Composer, Artistic Director OEIN, Bolivien), meLê yamomo (Assistant Professor of Theatre, Performance, and Sound Studies at the University of Amsterdam / Philippinen, Berlin), Memory Biwa (Historian and Activist, Namibia), Lars Christian Koch (Director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s collections at the Humboldt Forum), Sandeep Bhagwati (Canada Research Chair in Inter-X Art Practice and Theory at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Concordia University in Montreal), cdrk (musician, researcher)