Keynote: “The Multiplicities of Our Bloodlines”
The year was/is 2020, the year of the existential crisis. Many of us have been brewing doubts about who we are and where we belong. Culture becomes a privilege, a mirror of values, a nexus of self and socio-economic realization. In this time of rampant nationalism and “cancel culture,” current social structures highlight the divides between us all; a global pandemic, to many of us, only heightened these walls. Today, we need to rethink our gateways, our entry points to the world.
If all our multiplicities are our bloodline, could we then all thrive? As we get stuck in between, the stasis afloat, our planet hung.
About the symposium
The symposium “Curating Diversity in Europe”, which can be attended both on- and offline, 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.
About Sounds Now
Sounds Now is a network of 9 European music festivals and cultural/music centres that promote contemporary music, experimental music and sound art.
In this project, we are concerned with the way in which curation reproduces the same patterns of power and exclusion that are dominant at all levels of our societies. Sounds Now aims to actively stimulate inclusion in our professional field and thus open up the capacity and possibility for different experiences, conditions and perspectives in shaping the sonic art that reaches audiences today
