Sonic Ties: Rethinking Communities and Collectives
isaScience 2023 is celebrating an anniversary: ten years of isaScience, organised by the mdw! This year’s conference on questions of togetherness and hence also looks inward at the isaScience community. In keeping with “We and Me”, the motto chosen for this year’s isa – International Summer Academy of the mdw, isaScience2023—with its own title of “Sonic Ties: Rethinking Communities and Collectives”—is set to trace current debates pertaining to community and collectivity in sound, music, and the performing arts at large. Consistently central to these considerations will be how communities and collectives can be rethought within research as perceived through sound, how sound shapes various social, historical, and geopolitical contexts, and how such sonic connections reflect back to affect the individual. With an eye to communities and collectives ranging from social movements to music ensembles and from ethnic communities to artist groups, isaScience 2023 will also be exploring the interconnections between sound and power structures. What different forms and degrees of sonic participation exist, and to what extent are they linked to local or globalised experiences?
Four renowned international scholars will shed light on the topic of “Sonic Ties” from widely varying perspectives as keynote speakers: Srđan Atanasovski of the Center for Comparative Conflict Studies (CFCCS) in Belgrade, Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier of the University of Alberta, Sumanth Gopinath of the University of Minnesota, and Ana Hofman of the ZRC SAZU Institute of Culture and Memory Studies in Ljubljana. All the way from ethnomusicological, sociological, music-historical, and critical-theoretical approaches to artistic research, we look forward to a diverse interdisciplinary programme from 26 to 30 August 2023 in Reichenau an der Rax and online. The final programme will be announced in May 2023, with online registration expected to be possible starting near the end of May.
