Symposium »New Music in Postcolonial Transformation«

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 program will be published here shortly.