Call for proposals
Theme
This three-day symposium invites researchers, performers, composers, and artist-scholars to engage creatively and critically with three intertwined lines of inquiry:
- Sustainability through experimentation — exploring how the activation and transformation of existing repertoire can serve as a dynamic form of preservation.
- The fragmentary in art and music — addressing fragments not merely as incomplete remnants, but as generative, structural, and epistemological devices.
- Experimental performance practices based on reconfiguration, curation, and reassembly of pre-existing sonic materials — including fixed and live electronics, archival recordings, and other sonic artefacts.
The symposium builds on artistic research that understands musical works not as stable, closed entities, but as dynamic constellations of materials open to reinterpretation through performative and curatorial acts. Within this perspective, performance becomes a site where fragments are activated, reorganised, and transformed—ensuring not only their continued relevance but also their continued existence.
A central case study for the symposium will be a body of collaborative work developed by Juan Parra Cancino and pianist Jan Michiels. These projects mobilise piano repertoire, fixed and live electronics, archival recordings, and heterogeneous sonic materials within an expanded field of experimental music curatorship. Through works such as Debussy Odyssey (https://www.michielsjan.be/product/debussy-odyssey/) and Isolt (https://www.lafabriquedesregards.eu/isolt), these practices explore historical repertoire and sonic artefacts as archives of potential actions that can reassemble into new performative environments that foreground discontinuity, layering, and temporal multiplicity.
Conceptual Framework
This symposium proposes a critical and practice-based investigation into (aesthetic) fragmentation, experimental performance, and sustainability as activators of the notion of ‘playing with’. These explorations are centred on a view of music performance as process rather than result, as a space of potential and dialogue with the past.
This perspective opens a transhistorical space in which fragments circulate across contexts, becoming agents of reconfiguration. Fragmentation shifts attention away from stable works toward processes of enactment, in which experience emerges through interaction and transformation. Recent artistic research has reconceptualised fragments as primary units of artistic and epistemic production. Fragmentation is not defined by absence but by relationality, process and potentiality. Musical practices, whether compositional, performative, or analytical, are inherently fragmentary: they operate through selection, omission, recombination and recontextualisation.
This symposium explores experimental performance as a form of curatorial practice. Here, performance is not limited to the interpretation of a predefined work, but becomes a site for the active organisation and negotiation of materials—historical, sonic, technological, and conceptual. The integration of archival recordings, live electronics, instrumental performance, and mediated sound produces hybrid formats that challenge traditional distinctions between composition, interpretation, and documentation.
These two themes intersect at the notion of sustainability through experimentation. Certain repertoires—whether canonical instrumental works or technologically embedded practices (such as fixed media)—often reach a point of interpretative or technical equilibrium at which further experimentation within established frameworks becomes limited. In such cases, preservation risks becoming museal, prioritising stability over vitality.
Sustainability, in this sense, is not about conservation alone, but about ensuring the continued circulation, relevance, and adaptability of musical works.
This intersection of fragmentary thinking, experimental performance, and sustainability gives rise to several key questions:
- What does it mean to sustain a repertoire through transformative use rather than preservation alone?
- In what ways do practices of reassembly, montage, and curation/curatorship redefine the experience of the musical work?
- How can archival recordings and sonic artefacts be activated within live, performative contexts?
- How can performance practices resist or move beyond museal approaches to musical heritage?
- What forms of temporal plurality emerge when historical and contemporary materials and practices intersect?
Topics of Interest
We welcome proposals addressing, but not limited to:
- Sustainability through use in artistic and musical practices
- Fragmentation and incompleteness in music, sound art, and interdisciplinary practices
- Experimental music curatorship and performative assemblage
- Archival practices and creative reuse
- Reconfigurations of historical repertoire
- Interactions between live performance, fixed media, and real-time electronics
- Listening practices shaped by discontinuity and recontextualisation
Formats
We invite submissions in the following formats:
- Paper presentations (20 minutes + discussion)
- Lecture-performances (30 minutes)
- Artistic demonstrations/performances (duration to be specified)
- Work-in-progress presentations
Submissions that combine theoretical reflection with artistic practice are particularly encouraged.
Submission Guidelines
Please submit:
- An abstract (max. 300 words)
- A short biography (max. 150 words)
- Technical requirements (if applicable)
Submissions should be sent via this link: AIRTABLE
Deadline: November 30, 2026
Notification of acceptance: December 18th, 2026
Practical Information
The symposium will take place on 22-24 February 2027 at Orpheus Instituut in Ghent.
Participation fee: € 60 (regular) / 40 (students)
In addition, we offer a networking dinner on the evening of February 23 for an additional contribution of €20.
The fee includes participation in the conference programme, coffee breaks, and two lunches.
Cancellation policy
We are not able to process refunds after 5 February 23:59 CEST.