Call for Application: Curating Diversity 3: Curating Course with Irene Revel, meLê yamomo, and guests

Institutional Audibilities – Archival Poetics
Curating Course with Irene Revel, meLê yamomo, and guests

Deadline: 23. June 2023

Are you a curator interested in exploring and reflecting upon your own practice within music and sound?

The 3rd edition of the Sounds Now Curating Diversity Course takes place in Oslo at Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival September 19th to 23rd 2023 and will be led by curators and researchers meLê yamomo and Irene Revell.

The new music world is often perceived as cut off from ‘the real world’ in an ivory tower of institutionally protected experimentalism. Like most contemporary creative sectors, contemporary music needs to think hard and deeply about the engrained structures of power that perpetuate exclusions of many kinds in favor of Eurocentric aesthetics and performance practices.

Throughout the course Institutional Audibilities – Archival Poetics, the participants will be offered a space to reflect about their own curatorial practice through discussions, individual presentations, expert talks and lectures, in a uniquely musical context. The course explores various approaches to curating addressed through key concepts such as institutional structures, archival practices, inclusion and historical dynamics.

The course will be led by meLê yamomo and Irene Revell. Yamomo is an Amsterdam/Berlin-based composer, director, sound curator and researcher involved in the projects Decolonizing Southeast Asian Sound Archives and Sonic Entanglements. Revell is a curator and writer who works with artists in projects with sound, text, performance and film. Through projects such as Her Noise Archives, she examines music and sound histories from a feminist perspective.

Participants may also get the chance to present their practices in a public symposium on music curating and the archive, to be held on 21 September, and including the course lecturers, Sofie Ringstad, Heloisa Amaral and other guests.

Questions addressed in the course include the importance of inclusion in curating practices, whom one curates for, or how the musical past, present and future are defined by archival dynamics. In this way, emerging curators are offered a rare space to reflect and exchange on their role in art and society, in a uniquely musical context.

Who can apply?
Aspiring as well as experienced cultural professionals with a proven interest in musical programming that goes beyond received stereotypes of genre, and who conceive of their work as engaged with critical issues of social diversity and inclusion. Participants must have a traceable history of their own work with curatorship and the ability to follow presentations and participate in workshops in English. The application can be made through this form. It should include a short biographical not, as well as any questions that participants would like to explore personally or feel would be beneficial to group discussions.

General Information
The course is free of charge. Travel, accommodation, and festival tickets are covered by Ultima & Sounds Now by further agreement.

The participants undertake to be present in Oslo during the entire course period 19-23. September, as well as time for travel before and after the course days. Participants must also be available for an online meeting with the course leaders in the beginning of September and will be required to prepare for the course using assignments that will be sent to them in advance.

Submit your application by June 23, 2023