What happens to music when it leaves its traditional sites? How do such musical interventions change places not usually devoted to music? This concerns not so much concerts that take place in museums, which leave intact music’s disciplinary and medial codes, or museums explicitly dedicated to music, which are hardly connected to contemporary artistic practice, but those contemporary musical practices that have moved to the sites and institutions of visual art. Even though they cannot always be unambiguously distinguished from sound art, these musical practices in the gallery, these exhibitions of making music represent a tendency in contemporary art that has hardly been theorized.
We want to look at the transformations music undergoes when it switches sites but remains music. What happens when it is confronted with other regimes of space and time, others perceptual and discursive norms, other economies of attention? To what extent does it have to change, what does it gain and what are its possibilities of changing the dispositives it moves into? How can making music be exhibited?
Unlike in the case of dance, there haven’t been any large international exhibitions dedicated to contemporary music, and very little has been written about music in the gallery and the museum. The conference aims at initiating a theoretical discourse on these phenomena and exploring their political implications and possibilities.


The conference will be held in English.The conference will be held in English.


Thu 29 May


7pm
Panel: Shannon Jackson, Lina Lapelyte, Çağla Ilk and Christian Grüny | “Exhibiting Music: Problems and Perspectives”


Fri 30 May


9:30-10am
Introduction: Christian Grüny


10-11am
Lecture: Shannon Jackson | “Sound and Sociality Across the Arts”


11-12am
Artist talk: Lina Lapelyte | Moderation: Kalas Liebfried


12am-1:30pm
Break


1:30-2:30pm
Lecture: Doug Barrett | “Hear for the Time Being: Art, Music, and Global Crisis”


2:30-3:30pm
Artist talk: Ari Benjamin Meyers | Moderation: Anna Schürmer


3:30-4:30pm
Curator’s talk: Sarah Johanna Theurer | Moderation: Joshua Weitzel


4:30-5pm
Break


5-6pm
Lecture: Christoph Haffter | “Sonic mapping. The political art of Black Quantum Futurism”


6-7:30pm
Closing




PARTICIPANTS
G Douglas Barrett works on postwar art music and contemporary art. He’s written two books—Experimenting the Human: Art, Music, and the Contemporary Posthuman and After Sound: Toward a Critical Music—and teaches at Syracuse University.


Christian Grüny is professor of contemporary aesthetics and philosophy at the University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart. He published several books and numerous articles on aesthetics, the philosophy of music, performance, art theory, phenomenology, and the philosophy of culture.


Christoph Haffter is post-doctoral researcher at the philosophy department of the University of Basel and the Hochschule für Musik Basel. He works on aesthetics, philosophy of music and Critical Theory.


Çağla Ilk is a curator and architect. From 05.2025 she will be the designated director of the Maxim Gorki Theatre, where she will take over the management from the 2026/2027 season. She was director of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden from 2020 to 2025 and is curator of the German contribution to the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia in 2024, where she has invited the artists Michael Akstaller, Yael Bartana, Nicole L’Huillier, Ersan Mondtag, Robert Lippok and Jan St. Werner to design Germany’s national contribution.


Shannon Jackson is Hadidi Professor of Rhetoric and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley, where she is also Chair of History of Art. A 2025 Mellon grant recipient and former Guggenheim fellow (2015), her publications on the arts, media, performance, and social engagement include Back Stages (2022) The Builders Association (2016), Social Works (2011), Professing Performance (2004), and the online site InTermsofPerformance published with the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.


Lina Lapelytė (b. 1984, Kaunas, Lithuania) is an artist whose practice blends music, pop culture, gender stereotypes and nostalgia through performances that engage trained and untrained singers to question vulnerability and silencing. In 2019, her work Sun & Sea (Marina), made together with Vaiva Grainytè and Rugilè Barzdžiukaitè, curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale.


Kalas Liebfried is a Bulgarian artist and curator. He is the Artistic Director of Lothringer 13 Halle, Munich. His intersectional practice focuses on sound, performance, and discursive platforms.


Ari Benjamin Meyers is an artist and composer who explores structures and processes that redefine the performative, social, and activist nature of music, in particular music-making and rehearsal. His work has been presented and exhibited at major institutions, festivals, and biennials all over the world; currently he is Professor for Sculpture at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.


Anna Schürmer is a music and media culture scholar specializing in the field of sound studies with a particular focus on new and electronic (dance) music. She works and researches on various discourses of auditory media cultures (Queer Musicology, Posthuman Studies) and explores the sonic perspectives of artistic research (Acoustic Research). www.interpolationen.de


Sarah Johanna Theurer is a curator and writer focusing on time-based art and techno-social entanglements. From living sculptures to generative music and machine learning, her curatorial work at Haus der Kunst München explores liveness and other forms of animation.


Joshua Weitzel works as musician and sound artist-curator with concerts as well as exhibitions. He is a member of the projects Tan Bone and Takatsuki Trio Quartett, co-runs a project space for media art in Kassel and currently works on a PhD thesis on the history of sound art at documenta.




SENSORY INFORMATION
Place & surroundings
A glass pavilion on the open grounds of the Academy of Fine Arts with several pavilions in a wooded area. Access routes are passable. The room has a large window front.
Duration
One evening and a whole day
Recording
There is video, sound and photo recording.
Sensory stimuli
Auditory: Lectures, discussions, Q&A sessions and background noise (conversations, technology, room reverberation)
Visual: PowerPoint presentations, bright outside light through large windows in sunny weather
Gustatory: Bad coffee, water, biscuits, mints, chewing gum, etc.
Interaction: Encounters through handshakes/hugs.
Themes: What is a music installation?
Seating
Seating on the windowsill and chairs.
Language
Conference language English, no translation. Colloquial language German & English
Contact persons
If you need support or have any questions, please contact our team on site at any time.