Sounds Now: Curating Diversity

Sounds Now, a network consisting of nine European music festivals and cultural institutions promoting contemporary music, experimental music, and sound art, offers a yearly course titled “Curating Diversity” to prospective music curators. Led by Sounds Now associated artists and experts from the music world and other professional fields, the course aims to provide a space for emerging music curators to reflect and debate upon questions that arise around the role of the music curator. What does curating music mean in the world that we live in today? What makes a work or performance connect with audiences today, and how are we, as producers and facilitators, sensitive to the ambitions of creators? How can we rethink music presentation to better reflect and resonate with different societies and communities? What are the curatorial concepts and methodologies used in other art fields that the musical world could learn from?

During this panel talk, several of the courses’ alumni, coming from varying disciplines of art, will reflect on their work and challenges, and how the course has impacted their perspective.

Hanan Benammar
Hanan Benammar (1989) is an Algerian and French artist based in Oslo who works conceptually on geopolitical, environmental and social issues. She is educated from the Academy of Fine-arts of Oslo (Norway), the Dutch Art Institute (The Netherlands) and the Royal Institute of Art of Stockholm (Sweden). 
She organises and curates projects as part of her artistic practice. One of her most prominent initiatives in Norway is the Winter Solstice Night Exhibition, a Happening gathering artists from different fields for a whole night every year with a special focus on experimental arts, noise music, performance and other time based practices. The Winter Solstice defies and questions institutional frameworks and places the collective at the center.

Remy Alexander
Remy Alexander (*1991) composes, organises and teaches music. Aside from his work as a composer Remy works in the educational field as a teacher and organiser of projects and workshops about composing and improvising. In his curatorial work he specialises in children and young adults. He works as a curator and programmer of concerts and projects at festival November Music, Oranjewoud Festival and Birds of Paradise. As a freelancer he has worked for many universities, venues and festivals to develop new learning methods and projects where he introduces participants to the world of new music and composition. He enjoys pizza and many other good foods. He is not very athletic, but he can run pretty fast. Middle-C is his favourite note.

Filippos Raskovic
Filippos Raskovic (1994) is a composer, improviser and curator from Athens based in Vilnius.
In 2019, he co-founded the KRAMA collective and festival a collective; an independent initiative aiming to present a new outlook within the art scene of Athens and beyond. Through a multidisciplinary approach, it brings together different forms of artistic expression in an effort to create a dialogue that transcends (not only) creative fields and geographical boundaries. KRAMA lies in a desire to create a space (tangible or intangible) for artists to converse, experiment, merge or deviate and ultimately form a community with shared commonalities and unique differences on the fringes of mainstream culture. KRAMA since has organised the festival editions 2019 at Embros Theatre, 2021 at Keiv Gallery, 2022 at Communism and 2023 at Romantso. 
He also curates events and concerts in Vilnius in spaces such as Sodas2123 and Draugu Vardai. Finally, he is a monthly resident host at the independent web radio Radio Vilnius and Palanga Street Radio and co-producer of the show KRAMA Entries at Movement Radio.

Teresa Díaz de Cossio
Teresa Díaz de Cossio is a flutist, researcher, and curator, who strives to make meaningful contributions to the community through her work. Currently, a doctoral candidate at UCSD and a curator at Neofonia, Festival de Música Nueva in Ensenada (MX). A festival serves as a platform for exploration and collaboration among diverse communities, bringing artists from various backgrounds together to create new projects and teach new music. Through talks, workshops, and free concerts, the festival aims to engage a wide range of participants and audiences. Teresa curates projects, such as “in^set,” an ensemble currently collaborating with MOAASER, an online music academy for composers in Iran. She has had the opportunity to perform with notable figures, ranging from Los Tigres del Norte to working with George Lewis. She has also been a fellow at The Banff Center, Darmstadt Summer Institute, Curating Diversity, and Future of Music Faculty Fellowship (CIM-Sphinx Foundation).

The moderator of the talk is Mirjam Zegers. With a long track record in the music world, e.g. as personal assistant to Louis Andriessen, she developed the Curatorial Practices in Music course at ArtEZ University of the Arts. This master’s level course is aimed at those who want to explore their views on the role of music in society, as part of their own curatorial practice in various genres of music.

Photo: Sounds Now: Freedom to Move panel at NMC 2022 by Karen van Gilst
Photo Remy Alexander by Foppe Schut, photo Teresa Díaz de Cossio by Josué Castro

This panel is in collaboration with Sounds Now, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.