open call: curating course at ultima 2023 ultima (no)

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 from 19-23 September 2023 and will be led by Sounds Now Associated Artists 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 favour of Eurocentric aesthetics and performance practices.

Throughout the course Institutional Audibilities – Archival Poetics, 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.

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.

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, are invited to apply. Participants must have a traceable history of their own work with curatorship and the ability to follow presentations and participate in workshops in English.