Feb 25–26, 2026

Symposium »New Music in Postcolonial Transformation«

»Sometimes You Only Have to Listen«

Date: Feb 25, 2026, 14:30 Uhr

Duration: Feb 25–26, 2026

Location: Akademie Schloss Solitude

Ensemble Ascolta, Workshop mit Aida Shirazi und Jessie Cox im Juli 2025

Ensemble Ascolta, in cooperation with Akademie Schloss Solitude, invites you to a two-day symposium that brings artistic positions of the European avant-garde into dialogue with global perspectives.

How can collective, trans-traditional creative processes be shaped artistically? What alternative concepts of the »work« emerge? Where does the discourse stand today – where it has reached the scene but seemingly not yet fully permeated it, and where a political backlash is becoming noticeable?

Artists, composers, and scholars from various contexts come together to engage with these questions in an open, musical space. The symposium addresses the reception of Afrodiasporic New Music in German-speaking countries, the colonial history of sound recordings, alternative concepts of time beyond Western linearity, and practical experiences of collaborative music-making.

Participants include Harald Kisiedu, Christian Grüny, meLê yamomo, Ketan Bhatti, Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner (Solitude alumna 2024), Kaan Bulak, as well as current Solitude fellows Julio Cann Gonzáles and Peter Okotor.

Through lectures, live-thinking conversations, panels, and musical contributions, possibilities for artistic transformation will be explored — as encounters on equal footing, in a spirit of mutual learning.

The symposium is held in German and English language and is translated live with the AI-tool Wordly.

The symposium is supported by the Innovation Fund for the Arts of the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of Baden-Württemberg.

Please register here: https://eveeno.com/109262097

 

2.30 pm

Welcome address by Anne Fleckstein (Director of Akademie Schloss Solitude) & Florian Hoelscher (Ensemble Ascolta)

3 pm

Harald Kisiedu and Christian Grüny
Places and Non-Places, Composers and Non-Composers
Keynote inputs and dialogue

4 pm

Coffee Break

4.30 pm

Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner & Kaan Bulak
Safeskin
Presentation and performance

5.30 pm

Panel I
With Harald Kisiedu, Kaan Bulak, Anne Fleckstein, Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner, Ketan Bhatti, and Elisa Erkelenz

6.45 pm

Julio Cann Gonzáles (fellow, Akademie Schloss Solitude)
Presentation of artistic work

7.30 pm

Music Contribution I
Group improvisation with Kaan Bulak and members of Ensemble Ascolta

7.50 pm

Reception with finger food
For planning purposes, we kindly request binding registration here

9.15 am

Peter Okotor (fellow, Akademie Schloss Solitude)
Presentation of artistic work

10 am

Ketan Bhatti in conversation with Elisa Erkelenz
What We (Don’t) Know – Open Questions from the Practice of Trans-Traditional Collaboration

11 am

Music Contribution II
Liza Lim: Transcendental Etude for piano (Talvi Hunt, piano)

11.15 am

melê yamomo
Colonial history of audio recordings and sound capture

12.15 pm

Music Contribution III
Aida Shirazi: Shūr for chamber ensemble (2025/2026), Ensemble Ascolta

12.30 pm

Vegetarian lunch (free of charge)
Binding registration requested here

1.45 pm

Anne Fleckstein
Hospitality
Keynote input

2.15 pm

Closing panel
With Ketan Bhatti, Anne Fleckstein, Christian Grüny, melê yamomo
Moderation: Elisa Erkelenz

End around 3:45 PM