Performing, Engaging, Knowing - August 26th to 29th, 2020

Call for Papers

Study Group on Applied Ethnomusicology, 7th Symposium

Performing, Engaging, Knowing – August 26th to 29th, 2020

The ICTM Study Group on Applied Ethnomusicology, the Lucerne School of Music, the Department of Composition, Electroacoustics, and Tonmeister Education of mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, and the Swiss Society for Ethnomusicology invite ethnomusicologists and artistic researchers to submit papers for the 7th Study Group Symposium «Performing, Engaging, Knowing» to be held in Sursee (Lucerne, Switzerland) from 26 to 29 August 2020. Abstracts are due by 15 January 2020.
The symposium aims to bring together ethnomusicological and artistic practices to uncover convergences and conflicts between different forms of sonic, musical, and social knowing. We hope this will offer mutual inspiration for researchers, ethnomusicologists, and artists, and that it will open doors to new kinds of interactions, new methodologies, and new forms of interventions.

Topics
- Performing ethnomusicological and/or artistic interventions for social and political change
- Collaborative and diversity-sensitive production, performance, and dissemination of auditory and sound knowledge (involving social collectives and/or ethnomusicologists and/or artists)
- Non-verbal forms of knowledge (tacit, procedural, embodied, sensual, emotional) in applied ethnomusicology and artistic research
- Ethnomusicologically informed artistic research methods / artistically informed ethnomusicological research methods
- Other topics arising from new applied, practice-based, and action research in music

Formats of contributions
Contributions can have the following formats:
- Individual academic papers and lectures (20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes Q&A)
- Individual performance lectures (20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes Q&A)
- Artistic performances (20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes Q&A)
- Recorded video/audio presentations (20 minutes, followed by a 10-minute video call Q&A)
- Poster presentations (we will provide a slot for posters presented on location or by recorded video presentation of 5 minutes, followed by 5 minutes Q&A; video call option available)
- Themed panels, performance cycles, or mixed forms with an opening statement and 3 to 4 contributions (70 minutes, followed by 20 minutes Q&A)

- Debates with opening statement, 2 to 4 (controversial) short inputs, and active participation of the attendees (30 minutes, followed by 60 minutes moderated plenary discussion)
- Other interdisciplinary and/or experimental contribution formats (please specify when submitting your abstract)

Abstract submission
We invite abstracts of 1,500 to 2,500 characters for individual papers and performances, and of 5,000 to 10,000 characters for panel sessions or performance cycles (including all individual papers and performance parts). Please send to symposium-pek@hslu.ch no later than 15 January 2020.

Theoretical background
The symposium explores socially committed processes of knowledge production in music and sound. «Performing» and «Knowing» refer simultaneously to the retrieved, declined, and newly developed knowledge in musical performances and sound-related artistic practices, and to academia’s dynamic and complex formations, contestations, and communications of knowledge. Performativity contributes to a diversity of knowing: it constitutes realities, governs intergenerational and intercultural transmissions and transformations of knowledge, and enables new ways of hearing and sensing the world.

Alongside «Performing» and «Knowing», the meeting highlights performative actions in and about music that aim at social change, as indicated by the middle word of the symposium’s heading: «Engaging». This involves interactions of people in specific historical, social, medial, and material configurations, and—from a post-colonial perspective—requires processes of negotiation with social collectives, whose representatives are to be on par with the engaged ethnomusicologists, musicians, or artists.

The symposium’s theme is inspired by a history of encounter and cooperation between socially committed people in ethnomusicology, in music, and in the arts. Scholars of applied ethnomusicology implement knowledge through socially responsible, music-centered interventions with a specific social collective. Such interventions may be conceived as performances of musical knowledge and of social engagement, which are themselves producing knowledge.

Since the «crisis of ethnographic representation», fieldwork – the central method of ethnomusicology – has been critically debated, as has the authority of the researcher. Consequently, applied ethnomusicology today is less concerned with «objective» results of interventions than with their processes and configurations, with the embodied knowledge of people, with subjectivities of the researcher’s experiences, with the media of academic communications, with questions of gender and diversity, and with equitable interactions with members of the collectives whose social and political concerns are the focal point.

In contrast to most ethnomusicologists, artists and artistic researchers aspire to gain knowledge in and through musical practices – artistic, traditional, and popular – and to advance and emancipate different, mostly non-verbal, forms of knowledge (tacit, procedural, embodied, sensual, emotional, and particularly auditory), thereby trying to overcome limitations that arise from understanding research to be based only on declarative knowledge. Artistic Research takes up process-oriented and performative, often socially and politically engaging aspects of art production. Artistic Research as
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its own research discipline has been debated for some years, mainly in arts schools of higher education and primarily by those in the visual and conceptual arts. However, many people working in the arts see themselves as researchers, some of them explicitly using methods developed in academia. By bringing together these different approaches to and forms of music knowledge, we hope the symposium will provide a rich and inspiring exchange.

Confirmed keynote speakers
Sandeep Bhagwati, Concordia University Montréal
Tan Sooi Beng, School of Arts, Universiti Sains Malaysia

Symposium language
Abstract submissions and presentations must be in English. We will not provide simultaneous translations from or to other languages.

Infrastructure
The symposium venue will be equipped with WIFI, sound systems, and projectors (presentations must have the aspect ratio of 16:9). Adaptors for power supply (in Switzerland the plug type J is used) and projectors (for VGA) must be brought by the contributors. On request, we will do our best to consider other infrastructure and equipment (musical instruments etc.), but we cannot guarantee their availability before finalizing the symposium program.

Abstract Procedure
We invite ethnomusicologists, music performers and artistic researchers, and scholars of other fields to submit abstracts of original and unpublished research. Please include a short title for your contribution, indicate the contribution format, and mention specific infrastructural needs.
Abstracts will be blind peer reviewed by the members of the program committee, with a focus on a strong applied component, academic rigor, originality, and social relevance. Feedback will be given in three categories: acceptance without remarks, acceptance with critical feedback for abstract revision, and rejection. Notices of acceptance will be communicated by 15 February 2020.

Due to the duration of the symposium and the restricted time, we will accept a maximum of presentations equivalent to 50 individual contributions.

Publication
We are planning a peer-reviewed publication of symposium contributions. The anticipated deadline for submission is 31 December 2020. The format of the publication will depend on the kind of contributions that are submitted.

Symposium registration, travel aid, and video participation
A preliminary symposium program will be available and symposium registration will be open from 15 March 2020 at the website www.hslu.ch/symposium-pek. Early bird registration will close on 30 April 2020. The overall registration deadline is 15 June 2020.

As Switzerland is expensive, we will offer contributors the following packages for conference fee, board, and lodging:

- Conference fee, board, and lodging 26-29 August 2020 for employed persons: EUR 480.–
- Conference fee, board, and lodging 26-29 August 2020 for low-waged persons, students, retirees, persons from a developing country: EUR 240.–
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- Conference fee and meals 26-29 August 2020: EUR 180.–
- Half conference day with one meal: EUR 35.–

A limited number of scholars who, for financial reasons, would be unable to participate, will be offered full financial support and travel aid. Moreover, there is the option of virtual participation, by submitting a video recording of the presentation and having the Q&