11. November 2021, Joseph Haydn-Saal

Contesting fixed conceptions of identity increasingly informs political activism among several marginalized communities in Europe and beyond. Such approaches to activism challenge political struggles that are based on more traditional notions of identity. These developments are also operative in a range of musical practices.

Drawing on examples from the LGBTQ+ community and minority communities in India, the 2021 MMRC Lecture shed light on the relevance as well as the challenges of queering identity for minority studies and minority politics by bringing together scholarly, activist, and artistic viewpoints.

___Programm:

Voguing Performance
Kiki House of DIVE

Opening
Ulrike Sych, Rector of the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

Introduction
Ursula Hemetek, mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

Keynote Lecture: Choral Activism, LGBTQ+ Rights, Queering Identity in 21st Century Europe
Thomas Hilder, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim

Response: Does Identity Politics Unite or Divide us? Reflections on Social Justice and its Theorisations in Music Studies
Rasika Ajotikar, SOAS University of London

Panel Discussion
Chaired by Ursula Hemetek, mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

Voguing Performance
Kiki House of DIVE

About the MMRC
The Music and Minorities Research Center (MMRC) was founded and is led by Ursula Hemetek, who was awarded the Wittgenstein Award – also known as the "Austria Nobel Prize for Science" – by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) in 2018. The goal of the MMRC is continuing the ethnomusicological minority research which has been developed by Ursula Hemetek, and creating a structural basis for it. The intention is to sustainably establish this field of research with an emphasis on its socio-political application.