Dis Fig performing in Bern at NMFF 2017 (photo: Karin Scheidegger)

Conference: Pop–Power–Positions

18.10.2018 | 00:00 – 20.10.2018 | 23:59

Bern (CH)

From October 18 to 20, 2018, the 3rd biennial research conference by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, German-speaking branch (IASPM D-A-CH), was organized in cooperation with Norient. It took place in Bern, Switzerland at the University of Bern and Bern University of the Arts. The conference discussed questions around power, positioning, and possibilities and forms of representation in and around popular music in times of global networks. Norient has invited Ali Gul Pir (Karachi, Pakistan) and Umlilo (Johannesburg, South Africa) to attend the conference. See call for paper, program, and further information below.

Program (Excerpt)

Find the full conference booklet here. Below we present the conference highlights as well as all the contributions by Norient authors.

→ Facebook-Event

Thursday, October 18, 2018
Venue: Bern University of the Arts (HKB), Fellerstrasse 11, 3027 Bern

15h	Conference Opening
15.30h	Keynote: Cultivating Cosmopolitics: Pop Music, Citizenship and Social Transformation by Jenny Fatou Mbaye (City University, London, UK)
17h	Panel: Changing Geographies in Popular Music: Local Struggles, Global Communities and the Transfer of Contexts curated and moderated by Norient Ali Gul Pir (Karachi), Umlilo (Johannesburg) and Laurence Desarzens (Lausanne) Moderation: Theresa Beyer (Basel)

With their politically engaged music, artists such as Umlilo (South Africa) or Ali Gul Pir (Pakistan) want to make a difference in their countries. Their songs speak up against social injustice, homophobia and restrictions of freedom of expression – globally relevant topics that are simultaneously specific to their local socio-political situation. Through social media, Umlilo and Ali Gul Pir have shown up on the global radar, they have become an important voice in virtual communities and started to travel. When performing abroad, the context of reception necessarily chang-es. Bookers and festival organizers – as Laurence Desarzens has been for years – should do justice to the multiple layers of meaning by choosing an appropriate concert setting. Many questions are connected with this problem: How far does the global frame of reference extend? What are the specific strategies of both artists and organizers to solve the challenge of context-transfer? And what have we learnt from failed representations of difference in times of world music? Laurence Desarzens (Lausanne), Umlilo (Johannesburg) and Ali Gul Pir (Karachi) discuss their experiences, critiques and visions.

20.30h

Concert Night: A Sick Sad World Presented by Norient, BlauBlau Records, and ISC Club Bern Featuring ÄTNA (Germany) and Umlilo (South Africa) Venue: ISC Club Bern, Neubrückstrasse 10, 3012 Bern

Friday, October 19, 2018
Venue: University of Bern, UniS, Schanzeneckstrasse 1, 3012 Bern

9h	Kuduro, Tarraxo, Afrohouse – Postcolonial Schizophonia in Luanda, Lissabon und der Welt? by Stefanie Alisch (Bayreuth)
10h	Nationale Identitäten in elektronischer Tanzmusik. Mexiko und Südafrika im Vergleich by Dahlia Borsche (Berlin)
11.30h	Mobile Identities: Production and Consumption of Narco-music in a Transnational World by Helena Simonett (Lucerne)
12h	Artistic Intervention by Umlilo (Johannesburg)

Saturday, October 20, 2018
Venue: University of Bern, UniS, Schanzeneckstrasse 1, 3012 Bern

9h	Panel: «Asia as Method» in Popular Music Studies by Oliver Seibt, Citra Aryandari, Barbara Titus, and meLê yamono (Amsterdam)
9.30h	Long Live the Cold War! Researching (Post)Socialist Popular Music by Kerstin Klenke (Vienna)
12h	Artistic Intervention by Ali Gul Pir (Karachi)
14h	Musical Borealism (Re)Considered by Antti-Ville Kärjä (Helsinki)

Invited Artists

Umlilo (Johannesburg, South Africa)

> B Camminga: «Queer and Of Here»
> B Camminga: «Of Rainbows and Monsters»
> Dylan Culhane: «Photo Series: Shizophonia»
> Leila Dee Dougan: «Surviving in South Africans Queer Scene»
> Henriette Gunkel: «Distorted Processes of Becoming»
> Theresa Beyer: «Queer Hip Hop Clips From 8 Countries»

Ali Gul Pir (Karachi, Pakistan)

> Ali Haider Habib: «Pulling the Plug on Art»
> Ali Gul Pir & Taimoor Salahuddin: «When a Rapper Tries to Change the World»
> Manal Faheem Khan: «A Finger to the Establishment»
> Thomas Burkhalter: «Satirical Rap from Pakistan»
> Thomas Burkhalter: «Risking your Life for YouTube»

Call for Papers

(German version here)

In Nigeria, the high pressure to follow the copyright rules of the globalized pop music market restrains the use of samples in hip hop culture. In Egypt, young musicians have no credit cards, leaving them without access to the online music market. In Europe, second and third generation migrants discuss their non-European backgrounds and European identities in songs and tracks. And U.S.-produced Korean pop music (K-Pop) increasingly rivals Korean-produced K-Pop in its concern for authentic presentation.

Issues of power, position, access, and representation have shaped the production, distribution, and reception of popular music and continue to do so today. The three-day interdisciplinary conference Pop – Power – Positions highlights popular music’s embeddedness in a global world. It seeks to uncover and scrutinize the risks, challenges, and potentials of power structures, positioning, and (re)presentations in popular music. The analysis of global, postcolonial structures plays a central role in this endeavour. To date, however, music– and popular music in particular – has only rarely been studied using postcolonial perspectives.

Postcolonialism refers not only to the historical fact of colonialism and its political, geographical, cultural, and economic impact on the countries and regions in-volved. Rather, postcolonial studies deal with all aspects of cultural diversity, ethnic and cultural difference, and their related power structures. Colonialism as well as postcolonialism refer to hierarchies that are enacted and produced through the construction of the Other and bring about and enforce debateable concepts of representation such as gender, race, ethnic group, nation, class, and culture. In this regard, the effects of (post)colonialism can be detected not only in former colonialized and colonising countries and regions, but also in those which at first sight do not have a colonial heritage, for example Switzerland.

From its beginnings, popular music has been produced and performed in and within (post)colonial (power) structures. Postcolonial traces are, according to Johannes Ismaiel-Wendt, inherent in any popular music (2011). Current productions of popular music in different countries show that (post)colonial conditions live on in popular music, especially in a globalised world, and that musicians as well as recipients react in various ways to this situation.

The conference focuses on (global) power relations and representations of race, cultural difference, ethnicity, gender, class, and nation, including the changes and subversive strategies these may involve. Ethnographic and analytical studies of popular music in and from (former) colonised countries and regions are also welcome. We invite papers that address the following range of topics and questions:

Power

Who speaks in popular music? What kinds of power structures shape the production, distribution, and reception of popular music? What is the impact of the Anglophone music business on other music markets? Who speaks about popular music in the areas of marketing, advertising, journalism, fan cultures, (global) politics, and educational institutions – and what vocabulary do they use?
Have digitalisation and digital networks led to a democratisation of musical processes, or the contrary?
What sounds and music(s) are processed in what contexts by whom and how, and to what aim? How does the use of certain sounds/music(s) point to existing power relations, dependencies, and availability?

Place

What role do geographies and geopolitics play in popular music-making? How do geography, world order, and power structures relate?
In what ways can popular music exist beyond cultural, ethnic, and national geographies? What role does the relation between the Global North and Global South have in popular music?

Positions

How do structures of power and distribution limit the access to the produc-tion and reception of popular music?
What relevance, usability, and impact do technologies (like Digital Audio Workstations) or legal regulations (like the copyright laws) that have been de-veloped in Western contexts have for popular music? In what ways are (post)colonial structures and power relations (re)produced therein?
What kinds of representations do musicians use for their marketing? What traits are ascribed to music?

Postcolonialism

What potential does popular music hold for detecting and changing (or en-forcing) colonial and postcolonial power structures?
How can postcolonial theories be made fruitful for an up-to-date understand-ing of popular music?
How do musicians of different forms of popular music process a «(post)colonial experience of the world» («(post)koloniales Welterleben», Ismaiel-Wendt) in their music?

Popular Music Studies

How marginalised are specific popular musics within the history of popular music?
Should or can we write a Global History of Popular Music?
In what way is the concept of popular music in itself (post)colonial?
What hierarchies, asymmetries or inhibitions can be found in inter-/transdisciplinary Popular Music Studies?

Impressions

Panel discussion with Umlilo, Laurence Desarzens (HEMU Site du Flon, Lausanne), and Ali Gul Pir, moderated by Theresa Beyer (Norient) (photo: Daniel Allenbach)

Keynote by Jenny Mbaye (City University, London) (photo: Daniel Allenbach)

Welcome reception with live performance by Waiting Line (Bern, Switzerland) (photo: Daniel Allenbach)

Organisation

Local Organizing Committee

Dr. Anja Brunner, University of Bern
Hannes Liechti, Bern University of the Arts/Norient
Daniel Allenbach & Sabine Jud, Bern University of the Arts Yves Chapuis, University of Bern

Hosted by

Partners

Locations

Schanzeneckstrasse 1
3012 Bern
Switzerland

Fellerstrasse 11
3027 Bern
Switzerland

Cover Artwork 9th Norient Musikfilm Festival 2019 (design: Guillermo González Bravo)

9. Norient Musikfilm Festival 2019

10.01.2019 | 00:00 – 13.01.2019 | 23:59

St. Gallen, Bern, Lausanne (CH)

Zwinglistrasse 3
9000 St. Gallen
Switzerland

Locations

Neubrückstrasse 8
3012 Bern
Switzerland

Rue de Bourg 51
1003 Lausanne
Switzerland

Sonic Fiction Vol. 1 (artwork: Caroline Grimm)

Norient x Rewire: Sonic Fiction

21.04.2018 | 20:00 – 09.06.2018 | 23:00

Zürich (CH)

Norient is proud to present a new series of cutting-edge concerts and audiovisual performances. In collaboration with the Rewire festival (Den Haag, the Netherlands) and Schauspielhaus Zürich Norient presents exciting acts of today’s pop music on the theater stage in Zurich, Switzerland. In the first edition on April 21, 2018, the experimental sound worlds of Ben Frost have collided with the dark avant-garde pop of Jenny Hval. In the second edition on June 9, 2018, the spiritual vocal collages of Aïsha Devi met a «black out» show in total darkness by electronic and ambient producer Tim Hecker.

Exactly twenty years ago the journalist and writer Kodwo Eshun attempted in his influential book More Brilliant than the Sun – Adventures in Sonic Fiction to rethink the perception of music in general by finding a new language for music (rather than rely on words that leave the radical imaginary space of music untapped). He did this by describing and excavating the unacknowledged traditions of diasporic science fiction, by finding a «future shock» in music and sounds. Today, it is still obvious, how limiting traditional language is, especially attempts to describe current sonic phenomena; more than ever, pop music is crossing borders, is audiovisual, powerful and aesthetically challenging. Contemporary musicians debate political topics and appear provocative and virtuosic at the same time. With this new series of concerts and audiovisual performances, Norient and Rewire want to present the diversity of the current Sonic Fiction on the theater stage in Zurich to a wider audience.

Read a text by Adam Harper about the concept of «Sonic Fiction»: «Sound Creates Reality»

Media partner: zweikommasieben Magazin and Orange Peel

Vol. 2. June 9, 2018: Aïsha Devi / Tim Hecker

19:30h at Schauspielhaus Zürich, Pfauen – [Facebook Event]

Tickets from CHF 30 to 70

Tim Hecker live at Schauspielhaus Zürich (photo: Thomas Burkhalter, 2018)

Check out complete photo series on the event.

20h: Aïsha Devi

In the first part of the evening Swiss-based Aïsha Devi will present her new a/v show in collaboration with French visual artist Emile Barret and in support of her brand new debut album DNA Feelings (Houndstooth 2018). In her spiritual music she mines her Nepalese-Tibetan heritage, her live shows are transcendent experiences. Whether they are guttural or soprano, Devi’s warped pop mantras instruct us to find the unseen through a tense, visceral musical landscape that is often gnarled and industrial as it is danceable. Follow Aïsha Devi on Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, or Twitter.

Read a sonic fiction about her track «Cell Stems Spa» by Philipp Rhensius

21:20h: Tim Hecker

Love Streams by Tim Hecker

Tim Hecker is a Canadian electronic and ambient music producer and DJ who has previously performed under the moniker Jetone based out of Montréal, Canada. Within the past 15 years he has become one of the most consistent and exciting sound artists of our times, touching the sound world of drone, noise, and ambient. His live improvisations are of a ruminant character: piece by piece he manipulates recorded pipe organ sounds and quivering arpeggios and turns them into unheard textures. In Zurich he will present a «black out» show in total darkness, consisting of new and recent work. Follow Tim Hecker on Bandcamp, Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, Twitter, or on his Website.

Read a sonic fiction about Tim Hecker by Deforrest Brown Jr.

Vol. 1. April 21, 2018: Ben Frost / Jenny Hval

20h at Schauspielhaus Zürich, Pfauen – [Facebook Event]

Tickets from CHF 35 to 70

Soundcheck by Jenny Hval @ Pfauen, Schauspielhaus Zürich (photo: Thomas Burkhalter, 2018)

Check out complete photo series on the event.

20h: Jenny Hval

Jenny Hval has in recent years made a name for herself as a recording artist and writer both in her native Norway and abroad. Multidisciplinary and transgressive are words often employed to describe her art, but Jenny Hval’s polyphonic artistry is in fact seamlessly interwoven between musical, literary, visual and performative modes of expression. Her artistic voice is altogether present, accessible and obscurely complex at the same time. Follow Jenny Hval on Bandcamp, Facebook, SoundCloud, Twitter, or YouTube.

Read a sonic fiction about her song «That Battle is Over» by Luise Wolf

21.30h: Ben Frost

The music of Ben Frost is about contrast; influenced as much by Classical Minimalism as by Punk Rock and Metal, Frost's throbbing guitar-based textures emerge from nothing and slowly coalesce into huge, forbidding forms that often eschew conventional structures in favor of the inevitable unfoldings of vast mechanical systems. Follow Ben Frost on Bandcamp, Facebook, SoundCloud, Twitter, Website, or YouTube.

Read a sonic fiction about his album The Centre Cannot Hold by Maha El Nabawi

Posters