DEFRAGMENTATION
Curating Contemporary Music
International Music Institute Darmstadt at Schader-Stiftung, Darmstadt
17 – 20 July 2018
Curated in collaboration with
Heloisa Amaral, Camille C. Baker, Georgina Born, Björn Gottstein, Lars Petter Hagen, George Lewis, Tim Perkis & Thomas Schäfer
Defragmentation was a research project aimed at initiating and accelerating structural and habitual change in regards to question of gender & diversity, decolonization, technology and curating within the contemporary music field. The project was jointly initiated by the Darmstadt Summer Course, Donaueschingen Festival, MaerzMusik — Festival for Time Issues, and Ultima Festival Oslo.
Its main manifestation was a "Four-Day Convention on Curating Contemporary Music“ in Darmstadt from 17 – 20 July 2018.
Next to co-developing the overall initiative and hosting events within the framework of MaerzMusik 2018, my curatorial contribution to the Darmstadt event consisted of the following interventions focussed on questions of decolonization and listening:
Conversation: Decolonization as Method
With Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung & Berno Odo Polzer
20 July 2018, 12:00, Schader-Stiftung, Darmstadt
This conversation revolves around decolonial practices, epistemic disobedience and delinking (Walter Mignolo) as methods in curating, both in visual art and contem- porary music. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung is the founder and Artistic co-Director of SAVVY Contemporary, a Berlin-based cultural center that “gives space to reflect on colonialities of power (Anibal Quijano) and how these affect histories, geographies, gender and race” through exhibition making, discursive programs, performances, archives and residencies.
Ways of Listening
With Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Rolando Vázquez, Lendl Barcelos & Berno Odo Polzer
18 – 20 July 2018, 13:00 – 17:00, Schader-Stiftung, Darmstadt
Ways of Listening is a series of afternoon sessions that put centre-stage the capacity of listening as a political and politicised condition. The three four-hour gatherings eclectically interrelate practices of listening with questions of decolonization, aiming at reflecting the enclosures and exclusions of Western modernity (including their manifestation in so-called New Music), problematising its underlying power matrix and considering non-Western narratives and genealogies. Sound and listening not only register the coloniality of power of our world, but actively co-produce it. At the same time, listening as a way of relating to the world — both as a metaphor and as a concrete, sound-specific practice — has much to offer when it comes to imagining and exercising a post-hegemonistic, post-centric present and future. Ways of Listening is the first in a “Defragmentation” series of experiments dedicated to decolonizing listening and will continue in 2019 in the context of MaerzMusik — Festival for Time Issues in Berlin.
Participants are kindly requested to stay for the whole four-hour session.
Session 1: Towards Decolonial Listening
hosted with Rolando Vázquez
Session 2: Unknown audio subjects
Hosted with Lendl Barcelos
Session 3: Delivering ourselves from the tonal
Hosted with Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
Material
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Defragmentation Website IMD
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Darmstadt Program
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On Curating, Issue 44, January 2020
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George Lewis: A Small Act of Curation (On Curating)
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Discussion: There are Black Composers in the Future (Outernational)
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Interview Georgina Born