*CFP* “MUSIC, LITERARY AND PERFORMING ARTS IN CENTRAL-EUROPEAN AND MEDITERRANEAN CONTEXT”, 2020 CONFERENCE

Music, Literary and Performing Arts in Central-European and Mediterranean Context

7-9 de Mayo de 2020

University of Split, Croatia

Keynote Speakers

Stanislav Tuksar, Academician, Academy of Music, University of Zagreb, Croatia

Paolo Puppa, Emeritus Professor, Ca'Foscari University of Venice, Italy

Ivano Cavallini, Ph.D., Prof., Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy

Leo Rafolt, Ph.D., Prof., Academy of Arts and Culture Josip Juraj Strossmayer, University of Osijek, Croatia

The aim of the Conference is to consider encounters and dialogues between Central-European  and Mediterranean cultures in the field of music, literary and performing arts. As the Mediterranean front of Central Europe where different European cultural areas overlap – the Austro-Hungarian, Venetian, Slavic and Ottoman – with Roman and Byzantine legacies still very visible, Croatian culture has been enriched by these multiple influences, while maintaining a strong individual identity. This was an inspiration for proposed conference thematic area, which is, in a way, bilateral and explores the cultural convergences of different geographical spaces and corridores. 

Perceived as the focal point of various cultural activities and meeting point of many artists, writers and performers, the Mediterranean and the Central European region have long fascinated scholars in the field of humanities and social sciences. In the spheres of cultural history - from literature, through visual and performing arts to music - the influences, artistic landscapes and images of the Mediterranean and the Central European cultural circle have merged with specific elements of national heritage. Consequently, any and all considerations of performing arts (music, theatre, dance) in the Central-European and Mediterranean context must accept individual endeavours and local traditions but also have to recognize the region’s ongoing historical role as a nexus of cultural cosmopolitanism. Cultural contacts between the mentioned European regions, independently and sometimes in spite of the changing frontiers and political circumstances, produce ties and representations of (dis)similarities which contribute to the mutual understanding and enhance dialogue between different cultures. Their relations will be discussed in terms of dynamics and exchanges of ideas on the one hand, and of cultural, literary and artistic echoes and interactions, on the other. 

Due to this broad geographical, historical and cultural perspective, this conference is interdisciplinary in its viewpoint, bringing together many disciplines that examine the permeation and transformation of cultural traditions of Mediterranean and Central Europe through various topics and questions such as: universality and difference, relationship between the centre and the margin, identity, hegemony, Otherness, language, national feeling, ethnicity and autochthonous. Besides considering particular national traditions, especially those of the so called “small nations” that, by building a recognisable distinctiveness, have contributed to European spiritual communion, the conference will provide a platform for intellectual exchange between scholars interested in socio-cultural and ethnical dimensions that seek out a history of mutual intermingling, movements and influences that have shaped our shared history.

The conference invites interested scholars to share the results of their research within the framework of the following categories and particular themes:


At the crossroads between Central-European and Mediterranean cultures: Music and musicians

This section welcomes proposals in any category of research related to any Central-European and Mediterranean music culture, past or present with a special emphasis on cross-cultural interactions. The presentations will be grouped into sessions based on common themes such as those listed below (some of them are closely related to the project goals):

• Music and different arrays of its discursive spaces: historical, geographical, socio-political, ethnical, cultural, aesthetical...
• Music and its geographies: spreading musical art from centers to peripheries and vice versa (including any category of research related to music trails - mapping artistic and cultural influences and relations; music migrations and repertoire transmissions; links and connections between  major and marginal European music centres)
• Cross-cultural perspectives on music and heritage (this topic includes presentations of research related to music as heritage: collecting, reviving, re-evaluating, sharing and preserving (trans)national cultural value);
• Music and its presentation: musical sources, collections and instruments in European context (including any category of research trying to answer how sources – archival or otherwise – can enrich musicological knowledge and what the possibilities of preservation of the musical artefacts and its presentation in current/contemporary musical life all over Europe are);
• Documents and correspondence about music (including any category of research related to music written documents and private letters which play very important role in the reconstruction of musical and theatrical contexts across Europe in the early modern age).
• Relationships: Music and literarure / Music and other performing arts (this topic accommodates presentations of research focusing on diverse aspects of relationships within the continuum music – literature – performing arts in Central-European and in Mediterranean context)

Mediterranean heterotopia: Arts and literature

Seen as a heterotopia, in Foucauldian terms, i.e. as a space that coagulates and condenses other spaces, experiences and chronological discontinuities, Mediterranean and mediterraneity present themselves as an enigma to be decoded, scholars and tourists find it equally appealing. Mediterranean has always been a place of longing, an extremely luring ‘room with a view’; a place of collective yearning.

However, there is a whole other side to it. The ongoing humanitarian crisis and crisis of humanity in the waters of Mediterranean adds an extra complexity and a sense of mixed feelings when it comes to this particular area, transforming the Mediterranean into a kind of a challenging core, questioning various artistic features concerned with the past, present and future.

Artists and scholars still find it extremely difficult to delineate the cultural borders of Mediterranean and have always struggled with the definition of Mediterranean and the margins of mediterraneity. Mediterranean, in a way, escapes through fingers, defying classification and urging to be looked at not just as a geographical space but as a mental category, as a rhizome (Deleuze / Guattari) that is to be approached from many different fields and scholarly angles simultaneously in order to be grasped in spite of the water intrinsic ungraspability which shapes the very coastline of the Inner Sea. When it comes to different anthropological, historical and cultural processes, Mediterranean was also frequently perceived as a corridor, through the Adriatic, ending with Trieste as a melting pot and a cultural crossroads, to the Central-European area.

This section welcomes submissions exploring any and all issues concerned with, but not limited to literature, visual and performing arts, in order to articulate mediterraneity and its relations to other areas both diachronically and synchronically, to represent and come to terms  with its heterotrophic nature and everything it artistically stands for.

Submission of proposals and deadlines

Proposals containing the working title and abstract (300-400 words) for a 20-minute presentation accompanied by a short biography of c. 200 words, in  English, should be submitted by e-mail, to: imidst2020@gmail.com

Deadline for Proposals: December 20, 2019. The scientific board will examine all abstracts by December 31, 2019, and contributors will be informed immediately thereafter.

The official languages of the conference will be Croatian, English and Italian.

Fee and sojourn details

Participants coming from abroad pay the fee of 50 Euro or the equivalent value in local currency (HRK).

The organizers will provide midday meals during the conference for all participants. Other meals will be charged separately, although one dinner will be offered to all conference participants.

It is expected that travel expenses to and from Split and the accommodation arrangements and expenses will be covered by participants themselves.

Proceedings

The organizers are planning to publish the multi-lingual Proceedings of the conference with selected papers by the end of February 2021. Selected presenters will be invited to submit revisions of their papers for inclusion in the published volume by the end of July 2020.

Contacts

If needed, please send all other correspondence and queries to the official conference address as indicated above: sjurisic@ffst.hr or directly to the coordinator Dr. Ivana Tomić Ferić: ivanatf@ffst.hr