The GRiNM Conference
In collaboration with the Zurich University of the Arts, Gender Relations in New Music will realize the GRiNM Network Conference 2019: Experiences with Gender and Diversity in Contemporary Music. The conference will take place between 14.11. – 16.11.2019 in Zurich.
The goal is to bring together thought leaders from across contemporary music, including artists, scholars, educators, festival leaders, and leaders of music venues, in order to address these systemic issues together across the entire musical ecosystem, and learn from each other’s practical experiences initiating change. The focus of the conference will be on hearing about significant projects already underway, as well as the first-hand know-hows about leading them, with the aim of developing new praxeologies together in the field. A small number of lectures and presentations will be complemented at the conference with a variety of discussion, in order to most effectively harness the potential of the conference’s invited guests.
GRiNM
GRiNM (Gender Relations in New Music) initially formed as a collective of concerned community members interested in using the platform of the Darmstadt International Summer Courses to question and challenge the homogeneity of the New music scene.
GRiNM (originally GRID, Gender Relations in Darmstadt) is a grassroots organization that began August 2016 as an open conversation, staged through daily open meetings, aimed at picking apart the complex mechanisms that reproduce the status quo in the New music scene. During these meetings, questions of gender, though central, expanded to become about a broader struggle against systematic oppression. The group advocates for giving access to the same set of opportunities, compensation, and ability to sustain their musical practices to everyone who wants to.
GRiNM has now expanded online. As an interest group, it brings together composers, performers, critics, and many others involved in New music; it is not a homogeneous organism, rather a coalition made up of a diversity of viewpoints and positions.
The group’s activities involve gathering data and generating statistics about the gender breakdown of major festivals for New music, as well as raising awareness and promoting discussion on issues of equality and inclusion. We use institutional platforms such as talks at festivals, as well as artistic methods of protest and intervention in order to achieve this.