Political Aesthetics in Musical Viscourses
For the upcoming interdisciplinary conference on “Political Aesthetics in Musical Viscourses,” which will take place at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Mexico City from October 23 to 25, Association Répertoire International d’Iconograpie Musicale (RIdIM) is inviting scholars and researchers to submit proposals. According to Karin Knorr-Cetina, the term “viscourse” refers to the “integration” of visual representations into continuous communication. The shift in terminology from discourse to viscourse encloses the epistemological potential embedded in visual representations and permits the investigation of visual communication in a “non-discriminatory” and “equative” manner. With an emphasis on how musical themes, such as practices, soundscapes, and sonic expressions, are mediated, represented, and understood through visual means, the conference aims to investigate the intersections of music, politics, and aesthetics in visual representations of music.
Among the themes and subjects are, but are not restricted to
- Music and the political imaginary: How is music represented visually in resistance, propaganda, or political movements?
- Protest art and sound activism: How visual culture influences how people perceive protest music and political sound
- Historical and contemporary representation of music in political viscourses
- Embodied politics of sound and vision: The ways in which visual narratives, music videos, album covers, and musical performances generally enact political identities (race, gender, class, etc.)
- Instrumentalization of music in colonial, frontier and imperial enterprises from 15–20th century
- Censorship in visual-musical media: The function and role of music-related visual art in totalitarian, repressive and authoritarian political contexts
- Indigenous, post-colonial and decolonial sonic-visual practices: Examining how marginalized and non-Western musical traditions are portrayed in visual media and visual arts
- The technopolitics of music and visuality: the political ramifications of AI-generated visual-musical media
- Aestheticized politics and politicized aesthetics: The mutual impact of visual-musical manifestations and political ideas
Submission Guidelines
- A crucial aspect of all submissions is an obvious and strong link to visual source material with musical subject matters.
- Possible formats include individual paper presentations or panel sessions consisting of three papers.
- All submissions will be reviewed by the Program Committee
- Abstracts in English or Spanish (including a brief CV) of max. 2’800 characters (incl. spaces) should be submitted by 11 May 2025 using the application form available online.
Further Information
- A website dedicated to the conference is available online by end of May at the latest.
- The conference is designed as an in-person event; hybrid or virtual participation formats are not planned.
- Presentations are preferably to be delivered in English.
- The conference fee will be €uro 200. There will be reduced fees for specific participant groups (e.g., students), see Conference and Practical Information.
Program Committee
- Antonio Baldassarre, President Association RIdIM
- Zdravko Blažeković, Research Center for Music Iconography, City University of New York
- Daniela Castaldo, Università del Salento
- José Antonio Robles Cahero, Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información Musical “Carlos Chávez”
- Timur Sijaric, Hochschule Luzern – Musik
- Arabella Teniswood-Harvey, University of Tasmania
- Gladys Zamora, Conservatorio Nacional de Música, México-City