Sonic Ties: Rethinking Communities and Collectives

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→ Read the abstracts

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Saturday, 26 August 2023

Arrival and Check-in at Hotel Marienhof

17.00            Apéro

19.30            Concert of the isa23 awardees: A selection of the best young musicians of isa23

Schloss Reichenau

Sunday, 27 August 2023

Listening Sessions throughout the conference days:

Michelle Atherton: Listening to the Soil

Find the schedule here and register for a slot in the isaScience office at Hotel Marienhof

09.00-09.30    Coffee & Registration

09.30-10.00    Opening & Welcome Address isaScience

10.00-11.15    Keynote Lecture: Srđan Atanasovski

Chair: Andrea Glauser

Histories of Workers’ Songs: Between Communities and Representations

11.15-11.30    Break

11.30-13.00    Panel: Sound, Embodiment, and the Social

Chair: Therese Kaufmann

11.30-12.00    Sophie Zehetmayer

Affective Bodies in Time: Synthesizing Relations of Musical and Social Rhythm

12.00-12.30    Andrea Liu

Occupy Wall Street’s “Human Mic”: A Sonic Embodiment of Solidarity

12.30-13.00    Masimba Hwati

Nyaudzosingwi, the Onomatopoeic factor in Toyi-toyi and Zhii riots of 1960 Bulawayo

13.00-14.30    Lunch Break

14.30-17.00    Panel: Sounds of Protest

Chair: Ana Hofman

14.30-15.00    Carolin Müller

Sonifications of Sensations of Crisis: Embodied Resistance and Sonic Warfare

15.00-15.30    Hanna Grześkiewicz (online)

Sounding Feminist Resistance – On Resonances of Recent Feminist Mobilisations in Poland and Iran

15.30-16.00    Break

16.00-16.30    Beth Hartman

“I Will Rescue You”: Musical Saviors and The Anti-Trafficking Movement

16.30-17.00    Gala Naseva
The Reproduction of Hegemonic Social Structures in the Post-Yugoslav Community: Turbofolk and Gender Identity

18.00   Welcome Dinner

Monday, 28 August 2023

09.30-11.00    Panel: Sonic Emancipation

Chair: Srđan Atanasovski

09.30-10.00    Archita Arun

Look Closer, Into, Through: On Priya Ragu’s “Good Love 2.0” and “Chicken Lemon Rice”

10.00-10.30    Zu Lingshan

The Sonic Ties in Region: The Glocalization of Chinese Mongolian Rock Music

10.30-11.00    Rasika Ajotikar

Thinking music on musical terms or political terms?

11.00-11.30    Break

11.30-13.00    Panel: Claiming Spaces through Sound

Chair: Andrea Glauser

11.30-12.00    Thalia Raftopoulou

Sound Affect and Public Space in the Case of the Athenian Apartment Building, ‘polykatoikia’

12.00-12.30    Katherine Griffiths

Recovering the 1980s and 1990s London Lesbian Club Scene

12.30-13.00    Gui Ren & Ryo Ikeshiro

Female Soundwalk: Chinese Female Immigrants and Public Space in Hong Kong

13.00-14.30    Lunch Break

14.30-15.45    Keynote Ana Hofman

Chair: Marko Kölbl

Musical Leisure: Sonic Ties against Commodification and Exploitative Forms of Lives

15.45-16.30    Break

16.30               ‘Sommerfrische’ and beyond – A Critical Lecture Walk through Reichenau an der Rax with Juri Giannini

Tuesday, 29 August 2023

09.30-10.45    Keynote Lecture: Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier

Chair: Kathrin Heinrich

Listening to the Sonic Sea: Creating Ties in Time of Change (online)

10.45-11.15    Break

11.15-12.45    Panel: Music and Memory Practices

Chair: Juri Giannini

11.15-11.45    Gay J Breyley

Sonic collectivity and communal sorrow: Hajipour’s song ‘Baraye’ and Hatami’s album 35.256031, 47.013321, 27.081979

11.45-12.15    Sukanya Kar

Re-thinking the Indigenous Song Performances of the Rajbanshi Community: Contrapunctuality of Mnemonics, Orality and Indigeneity (online)

12.15-13.45    Heya Collective (online Lecture Performance)

Precarity Sounded Through Networked Music Performance

13.45-14.30    Lunch Break

14.30-16.00    Panel: Shaping Community via Media

Chair: Sumanth Gopinath

14.30-15.00    Cheng Wei Lim

YouTube, Vernacular Music Theory, and Marginalized Communities

15.00-15.30    Aditi Deo, Vebhuti Duggal (online)

Listening to Music in India in the Age of Platforms

15.30-16.00    Tianyu Jiang (online)

Experimenting Sonic Ties: The Transdisciplinary Collaborative Practices of Shanghai Community Radio (SHCR)

16.00-16.30    Break

16.30-17.45    Keynote Sumanth Gopinath

                        Chair: Stephanie Probst

Listening to Dolly Parton’s Elusive Race Politics

18.00               Dinner & Disco

Wednesday, 30 August 2023

09.30-11.00    Panel: Beyond the Human

Chair: Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier

09.30-10.00    Serena Lee (Lecture Performance)

Frost on the Bell: Relating Through Resonance

10.00-10.30    Collin Edouard (online)

The Memories within Haitian Voices: Vocality and Ritual

Mounting in Haitian Vodou

10.30-11.00    Luca Soudant (Lecture Performance)

Resounding Gender: Thinking Through a Feedbacking Scold’s Bridle

11.00-11.30    Break

11.30-12.30    Interdisciplinary Ties? isaScience 2013-2023

Roundtable Discussion and Closing forum

Introduction: Ulrike Sych, Rector of mdw

Moderation: Marko Kölbl

Participants: Ursula Hemetek, Cornelia Szabó-Knotik, Therese Kaufmann

13.30              Farewell Lunch at Looshaus am Kreuzberg

The programme may be subject to change.

Please check the technical requirements for your online-participation!

isaScience is mdw’s international conference for interdisciplinary research on music and performing arts. We invite scholars, artists, and activists from various disciplinary backgrounds and academic levels to join the discourse on isa’s annual thematic focus. Since 2013 isaScience is part of isa, the international summer academy of mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria.

isaScience 2023 will take place from 26 to 30 August 2023 at Hotel Marienhof in Reichenau/Rax as well as online.

• A shuttle service from the train station at Payerbach-Reichenau to the conference venue is available free of charge.
• Complementary funding will again be available for students and scholars in academic precarity upon acceptance of the proposal and application (if they are able to travel to Reichenau/Rax according to Covid-19 global travel restrictions in effect in August/September 2023). The exact amount of funding will be decided on a case-by-case basis according to requirements of the participant. To apply please email isascience@mdw.ac.at after your proposal has been accepted with a short description of your situation and academic affiliation (or lack thereof).
  
• The isaScience team is happy to organise childcare for researchers travelling with children of any age. Please let us know beforehand to make sure all needs can be met. Hotel Marienhof is very family-friendly with a large garden as well as an in-door pool and wellness area, while the towns of Payerbach and Reichenau are popular holiday destinations and offer a variety of family-friendly activities.

For further information please contact isascience@mdw.ac.at

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Sonic Ties: Rethinking Communities and Collectives

 →Download Call for Papers

isaScience 2023, mdw – University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Reichenau/Rax, Austria and online, 26-30 August 2023

Sound and social relations are tightly interwoven and oftentimes contingent upon each other. ‘Sonic Ties’ offers a lens through which to study the qualities of connection and intersubjectivity that arise through sound. isaScience 2023 invites you to explore ‘Sonic Ties’ as a central mode of sharing communality and experiencing collectivity through music, dance, and other phenomena of performance and cultural expression.

By focusing on this specific mode of relating the sonic and the social, mdw’s interdisciplinary, international conference investigates how sound shapes collectives and communities in different societal, historical, and geopolitical contexts, and the ways in which these sonic ties reflect back on the individuals involved. Looking at communities and collectives from social movements to musical ensembles, from ethnic communities to artist collectives, isaScience 2023 seeks to investigate the entanglements of sound and power relations. What are the different forms and degrees of sonic participation and to what extent are they tied to local or globalized experiences?

We welcome proposals from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives including, but not limited to, Queer Theory, Musicology, Cultural Studies, Music Theory, Indigenous Studies, Music Sociology, Critical Race Studies, Ethnomusicology, Popular Music Studies, Dance and Performance Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, and Film and Media Studies.
Possible topics may include:

• The reproduction or subversion of hegemonic social structures in sonic communities and collectives
•  The relation of sound and music to political activism (from the labour movement to decolonisation struggles, from feminist protests to critical mass bike rides)
• Exile, diaspora, and collective memory: how communities pass on their sonic legacy across history and ruptures of displacement and create forms of sonic belonging
• The relation between musical communities and collectives and the tradition or innovation of musical and performance styles, idioms, and aesthetics (from historical to contemporary contexts)
• Negotiations of identity and social status in and through the participation in communities and collectives (e.g. racialization through sound, sonic dimensions of queerness)
• The effects of sonic ties in various musical styles and genres: e.g. from ethnic reckoning in traditional music to (sub)cultural distinction in popular music to elite formation in classical art music
• The impact of digitality on social structures through new (social) media or technologies
• Collective practices of listening and their impact on the social (from phonograph gatherings to punk concerts, from soundwalks to the social experience of fandom)
• Sound and public space: how the right to the city is claimed or contested in sonic terms
• Communality through sound in relation to rurality, vernacularity, and regional communities
• Questions of methodology: from collective authorship to the reflection of approaches and research practices, particularly the academic categorization of and its influence on communities

Contributions can include paper presentations (20 minutes plus discussion), panels, lecture performances, workshops, or other, innovative formats. Online contributions are possible.

Abstracts must clearly state your research question(s), theoretical framework, methodology, and presentation format. Please include max. 5 keywords.

Please submit your abstract in English (max. 300 words including references), a short biography (max. 100 words), and your institutional affiliation or location by 5 March 2023 in a single PDF file to isascience@mdw.ac.at
Decisions on the acceptance of proposals will be announced in April 2023.

isaScience is mdw’s international hybrid conference for interdisciplinary research on music and performing arts. It is held annually at Hotel Marienhof in Reichenau an der Rax, an hour outside of Vienna in the Semmering region, which is also home to mdw’s International Summer Academy isa. The conference’s conclave-like setting aims to foster intensive exchange between researchers in a relaxed atmosphere. The conference’s hybrid mode allows for active and passive online participation.

Academic Board: Andrea Glauser, Marko Kölbl, Stephanie Probst

Registration is free of charge. Complementary funding for travel and accommodation costs is available after acceptance of the proposal on a case-by-case basis.
mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna covers lunch and coffee breaks on-site.

Contact: Kathrin Heinrich isascience@mdw.ac.at
Websites: https://www.isa-music.org/de/isascience/ & mdw.ac.at/isascience

How to get to isaScience?

isaScience 2022 will take place at Hotel Marienhof, Hauptstraße 71-73, 2651 Reichenau an der Rax.

• by train from Vienna Central Station (Hauptbahnhof Wien): Trains serve approx. every 30 minutes the destination of Payerbach-Reichenau, travelling time is approx. 1 hour; find your train and ticket here: ÖBB Austrian Railways
• by car: Highway S6 (arriving from Vienna on the highway A2 or from Graz on the highway A9), take the exit n°17 – Gloggnitz, direction Gloggnitz, then on B27 to Reichenau/Rax
• by airplane arriving at Vienna International Airport: Trains run from VIE airport to Vienna Central Station or Wiener Neustadt where you have to change the train for Payerbach-Reichenau
• by shuttle bus from the trainstation in Payerbach-Reichenau

Organisers of isaScience:

Academic Board

Andrea Glauser, Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies, mdw
Marko Kölbl, Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology, mdw
Stephanie Probst, Department of Musicology and Performance Studies, mdw

Coordination:
Kathrin Heinrich, Research Support Unit of the mdw

Therese Kaufmann, Head of the Research Support Unit of the mdw

Contact:
isascience@mdw.ac.at

SHORT:

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