Call for papers - Vintage Materialities in Music

Call22 december 2024

Call for Papers

Vintage Materialities in Music (28–30 June 2023, Orpheus Instituut) is a three-day international conference organised by LUCA School of Arts, Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, and Orpheus Instituut and taking place at Orpheus Instituut. The conference aims to generate a critical discourse around a transferable topic (fashion, furniture, cars, …) through relevant case studies. Artists-scholars engaging with one or more of the questions outlined above are invited to propose 30-minute lecture-recitals or 20-minute conference papers.

Topic

Once a term from winemaking and a synonym of high quality, now a standard epithet of any object that is sought after on account of its rarity, unicity, or antiquity, ‘vintage’ has sparked (sub)cultures, industries, and communities. In music, vintage refers mostly to instruments or apparatuses that, after a period of obsolescence, are being rediscovered, revalued, reproduced, or revamped—electric guitars, effects pedals, analogue synthesisers, drum machines, amplifiers, recording equipment, sound carriers, etc. The scope, appeal, and user groups of vintage gear are becoming wider by the day. Aesthetically speaking, vintage materialities are defining the sound and look of multiple styles of music, just as harpsichords, gut-stringed violins, and valveless trumpets are characterising ‘early music.’ However, vintage materialities in music transcend issues of historically informed performance, and they confront artists and scholars with unanswered questions:

On what grounds can obsolete technologies for music production and performance become desirable again in an era of high-tech, across different genres, and in both the professional and amateur spheres?
In what ways do vintage materialities and their technical affordances mediate or challenge present-day creative and performative practices?
How do vintage materialities respond to cultures, discourses, politics, and economies of, among others, retro style, nostalgia, afro- and retrofuturism, and lo-fi?

Registration

This three-day international conference aims to generate a critical discourse around a transferable topic (fashion, furniture, cars, …) through relevant case studies. Artists-scholars engaging with one or more of the questions outlined above are invited to propose 30-minute lecture-recitals or 20-minute conference papers. The conference language is English.

Please submit a title and abstract of around 250 words to tinyurl.com/vintagematerialities by 15 February 2023. Graduate students, artist-scholars and non-academics working on transdisciplinary, underrepresented, or non-Western case-studies are particularly encouraged to apply.

Since papers will be chosen by the programme committee through a blind peer-review process you are kindly requested not to include your name or affiliation in the attachment.

Speakers will be notified by 15 March 2023 at the latest. The full program will be announced in April 2023. A limited number of outreach travel grants will be made available to help early-career and independent artist-scholars with the expenses of attending the conference.

Programme committee: Kurt Bertels (LUCA), Leen Engelen (LUCA/KU Leuven), Bruno Forment (Orpheus Instituut; responsible organiser), Matthias Heyman (KCB/EhB, VUB; president) Anastasia Kefala (Aarhus University), Juan Parra Cancino (Orpheus Instituut), Zeynep Toraman (Harvard University), Luk Vaes (Orpheus Instituut).