‘Attending to the Moment: Aesthetics, Politics, Sound’ with Louise Meintjes

After a COVID-induced break, we are now pleased to welcome Louise Meintjes as speaker and key discussant for our 3rd Anthropology of Music Lecture Series and Master Class, 13-16 July, 2022, at the Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz (Germany). This year’s event is entitled ‘Attending to the Moment: Aesthetics, Politics, Sound‘. In a series of three lectures and in conversation with master class participants and their research projects, Louise Meintjes will discuss the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the framework of what she calls an ethical analysis of sound:

Ethnomusicology, and Anthropology of the Arts, have long wrestled over how to depict the relationships among aesthetics and politics, among art, pleasure and activism, among performance, oppression and violence. With an ear toward the present in which we find ourselves (in the world, in the academy, in music and sound studies), and an eye on the vitality of bodies and breath, how do we attend to the moment? What kind of research, analysis and writing succeeds in keeping the details of artistry that lend art its persuasive or affective power on the page? What approaches succeed in grasping the specific political efficacy of the arts, without reducing artistic process to a political act? In instances in which the pleasure of participation in the arts is limned by violence, what constitutes political efficacy?

The seminar will emphasize ethnographies of music, performance, and sound and is open to addressing multi-modal ethnographic practices that focus on these particular arts. From working in the context of the legacy of apartheid to Black Lives Matter, from the slow violence of environmental degradation to the drama of climate events and the pandemic, what does an ethical analysis of the sonic arts look and sound like?”

Please find our call for applications with details on how to apply here.

Timeline:

The call for applications will be sent out in early January 2022, with a deadline on March 31, 2022. We’ll return to you within two weeks and ask all invited participants to confirm their participation by April 30, 2022. Around May, 2022 we’ll send out some recommended reading material and the accepted absracts as preparation for the event, which will take place July 13-16, 2022 at JGU Mainz.

Dates in short: