Call for proposals: Sonic Worldings

Sonic Worldings: Crafting realities through artistic research

The Orpheus Doctoral Conference (ODC) is a yearly event organised by docARTES PhD researchers, bringing together artist-researchers from across the world for dialogue, performance, and exchange.

This year’s theme, the emerging generative concept of ‘worlding’, offers a methodological and theoretical orientation through which artistic practices may bring forth and configure different experiential, epistemic, and material realities. Rather than representing a pre-given world, musical practices can be understood as ontologically productive: they engage in worlding by generating sonic, historical, and conceptual realities that intervene in and reconfigure the social, material, and symbolic conditions of the present.

We do not obtain knowledge by standing outside of the world; we know because we are of the world. We are part of the world in its differential becoming. - Karen Barad

This conference focuses on worlding within artistic research in music, asking:

• In what ways do musical practices engage in worlding, bringing into being sonic, historical, and conceptual worlds that are relational, overlapping, and contested?
• What forms of knowledge emerge through such processes?
• What constitutes impact or value when a project worlds its own epistemic frame, entangled with but not contained by disciplinary norms?
• Can worlding itself become a critical framework, reshaping how we evaluate, collaborate, and critique within the artistic research community?

Submission guidelines

We welcome proposals that engage critically or experimentally with worlding in music, including but not limited to composition, performance, historiography, and transdisciplinary research.

Deadline

December 21 (23:59 CEST).

Contribution types

• Presentations: 20 minutes + 10 minutes for Q&A
• Lecture performances: 35 minutes + 10 minutes for Q&A
• Artistic performances: 25–45 minutes recommended
• Installation: sound / audiovisual

Additionally, we encourage experimental and/or collaborative presentation formats.

Practical

Location

Orpheus Instituut, Korte Meer 12, 9000 Ghent BE

Date

Thursday 16 April and Friday 17 April 2026

More information

Sonic Worldings: call

Apply now