Gender Diversity in Music and Art
Event details
Location
- UWA Conservatorium of Music
- Map location
Date and time
- 16 - 19 July 2019
Event type
- On Campus
Registration
- Registrations essential
Hosted by the University of Western Australia Conservatorium of Music
Convenor: Dr Louise Devenish
Please note this schedule is correct as at Tuesday 11 June, and is subject to minor changes.
This four-day international conference will focus on vital, diverse and inspiring music and art making by women and gender-diverse artists and scholars. Spotlighting otherwise under-recognised contributions to the development of music and art, Gender Diversity in Music and Art will both showcase and discuss the representations of this work in academia, industry and the everyday.
The conference draws together the discussions that emerged from the Women in the Creative Arts (ANU 2017) and Gender Diversity in Music Making (Monash 2018) conferences. A cross-section of artists, art forms and academics will meet to share work and experiences and build opportunities for gender equity across these fields. Join us to share a wide spectrum of activity in this area including academic research, current industry approaches and discussions, and creative work.
Papers, lecture-recitals and panel proposals are welcomed from people of all genders, as well as creative works (compositions, performances) by women and gender-diverse artists and scholars. Submissions by First Nations artists and scholars are particularly encouraged.
Topics for submissions might include (but are not limited to):
- Discussion and presentation of creative works by women or gender-diverse artists
- Autoethnographic accounts of gendered experiences in the creative arts
- Creative approaches to exploring gender through the creative arts with a focus on music and visual art
- Historical research on gender diversity in music and art
- Critical theoretical research on gender and contemporary art-making practices
- Case studies and the sharing of approaches towards gender diversity in artistic programming and pedagogy
- How contemporary understandings of gender can be used as tools of innovation in new music and art
Keynotes and artists in residence
- Jennifer Walshe
-
Jennifer Walshe was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1974. She studied composition with John Maxwell Geddes at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Kevin Volans in Dublin and graduated from Northwestern University, Chicago, with a doctoral degree in composition in June 2002. In 2000 Jennifer won the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt. In 2003-2004 Jennifer was a fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart; during 2004-2005 she lived in Berlin as a guest of the DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm. From 2006 to 2008 she was the composer-in-residence in South Dublin County for In Context 3. In 2007 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York. In 2008 she was awarded the Praetorius Music Prize for Composition by the Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur. In 2009 she lived in Venice, Italy as a guest of the Fondazione Claudio Buziol. She is currently Reader in Music at Brunel University, London.
Walshe’s work is available on many labels including Mere Records, Interval Recordings, Farpoint Recordings and Migro.Jennifer Walshe will be presenting her keynote and subsequent discussion via Skype.
- Robyn Schulkowsky
-
Robyn Schulkowsky has been an innovator and collaborator throughout her life. She has dedicated herself to revealing the wonders of percussion to people around the world. Her continuous exploration of new sound dimensions has led to the development of new and unusual musical instruments. An active musician on five continents, Robyn moved to Germany during a heyday of experimental and adventurous classical composition. She has premiered and recorded some of the most important solo percussion works of the 20th and 21st centuries, working with composers Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis and Morton Feldman, presenting their works in Africa, India, Asia, the USA, South America and Mexico at festivals like The Proms, Salzburger Festspiel, Musikfest Berlin, Holland Festival, to name a few. With her percussion quintet and Gustavo Dudamel she premiered Sofia Gubaidulinas’s acclaimed composition glorious percussion.
Schulkowsky’s adventurous nature connects her with exceptional project partners and also with alternative performance spaces. She has collaborated with legendary African drummer Kofi Ghanaba, visual artist Guenther Uecker, actress Edith Clever, social scientist Nilam Ram, and choreographers Merce Cunningham and Sasha Waltz.
- Shoeb Ahmad
-
Shoeb Ahmad offers a rich and extensive background in Australian music, creating idiosyncratic music over the last decade. Using guitar, keyboard, voice and computer, Shoeb works both as singer/composer and improviser when performing solo and in collaboration. Shoeb has released a diverse range of original music while also working on sound design for dance/theatre, installation pieces and contemporary chamber composition, inspired by 20th Century avant-classical works, Indian ragas and minimalist electronic music. Shoeb has performed throughout Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the UK and the SE Asian region as a solo artist and with groups such as Sensaround, Spartak, Tangents and the Australian Art Orchestra.
- Dr Sandy O’Sullivan
-
Dr Sandy O’Sullivan is an Aboriginal (Wiradjuri) Associate Professor and Deputy Head of the School of Creative Industries at the University of the Sunshine Coast. For 27 years they have taught and researched across gender and sexuality, the body, performance, design and First Nations’ identity. They hold a practice-focused PhD across these intersecting areas.
Sandy recently completed an internationally-focused Australian Research Council program examining the representation and engagement of First Nations’ Peoples across 470 museums and keeping places. In 2017 they were funded by the Canadian Government to give a keynote on queer representations in museums and galleries for the Museum Queeries Symposium in Winnipeg as a central activity of the Thinking Through the Museum Collective. Sandy is continuing their engagement with the Collective, and is also working on both an ARC Linkage mapping creative practice across the Barkly Region of the Northern Territory, and an Australia Council for the Arts commissioned report on the state of First Nations’ performance across theatre and dance. Across Sandy’s current work they are considering the ways that Queer First Nations’ arts and artmaking influence, resist and challenge reductive approaches to identity.
Note: Sandy identifies as gender non-binary and uses the pronouns they, them and their. - Decibel New Music
-
Based in Western Australia, Decibel are world leaders in the integration of acoustic instruments and electronics, the interpretation of graphic notations and pioneering digital score formats for composition and performance.
The ensemble has collaborated with composers such as Eliane Radigue, Werner Dafeldecker, Agostino Di Scipio, Alvin Curran, David Toop, Marina Rosenfeld, Lionel Marchetti, Andreas Weixler and Johannes S. Sistermanns and worked with iconic Australian composers Jon Rose, Alan Lamb, Ross Bolleter, Warren Burt, Eric Griswold and Anthony Pateras. Decibel have contributed the Australian premieres of works by Fausto Romitelli, Tristan Murail, Alvin Lucier, Peter Ablinger, Mauricio Kagel and have toured and recorded monograph concerts dedicated to Roger Smalley, Alvin Lucier, John Cage and Giacinto Scelsi.
Decibel have commissioned over 60 new works since their foundation in 2009, have toured Europe and Australia, recorded for ABC Classic FM and SWR German Radio, and released five albums to date on Australian and international labels. The ensemble has developed and commercialised the Decibel ScorePlayer iPad app, a score reading device incorporating mobile score formats and networked coordination performance environments that is sold worldwide.
Decibel are Cat Hope (artistic director, flutes, bass), Lindsay Vickery (reeds), Stuart James (electronics, keyboards), Aaron Wyatt (viola, iPad programming), Tristen Parr (cello) and Louise Devenish (percussion). - Vanessa Tomlinson
-
Vanessa is a percussive artist dedicated to exploring how sound shapes our lives, awakening our ears to new sounds, in new spaces, with the hope that attentive listening will lead to attentive custodianship of place. With a long history in experimental music, Vanessa uses this body of knowledge to consider how we listen through site-specific explorations, and to explore new collaborative sonic ideas. Trained as a percussionist in Australia, Germany and the USA, Vanessa relies on this sonic investigation of objects to build compositions, create contexts for improvisation, interpret the voices of other composers and collaborate across art-forms and disciplines. She has toured the world for 25 years, premiering over 100 works by significant national and international composers, presenting work at major international festivals, and collaborating with improvisers, dancers, artists and more.
- Nicole Monks
-
Nicole Monks is a trans-disciplinary artist of Yamatji Wajarri, Dutch and English heritage. Living and practising in Redfern, Nicole is informed by her cross-cultural identity and her work takes its focus from storytelling, as a way to connect the past with the present and future. Her designs take a conceptual approach, often embedded with narratives, and aim to promote cross-cultural understanding and communication.
Nicole is an artist in residence at the UWA School of Design and SymbioticA.
Public events
- Armadillo: Robyn Schulkowsky, Vanessa Tomlinson and Louise Devenish
-
7pm | Tuesday 16 July | Callaway Music Auditorium, UWA
Co-presented by Tura New Music
Composer/percussionist Robyn Schulkowsky has premiered and recorded some of the most important contemporary music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, working with composers such as Stockhausen, Wolff, Cage, Feldman and Xenakis. The Australian premiere of her masterwork 'Armadillo' immerses us in the swirling rhythmic sonority of drums. - Shoeb Ahmad | Performance and Discussion
-
4.30pm | Thursday 18 July | Eileen Joyce Studio, UWA
Join Shoeb Ahmad for free performance and discussion presented as part of the 2019 Gender Diversity in Music and Art Conference.
Shoeb Ahmad offers a rich and extensive background in Australian music, creating idiosyncratic music over the last decade. Using guitar, keyboard, voice and computer, Shoeb works both as singer/composer and improviser when performing solo and in collaboration. Shoeb has released a diverse range of original music while also working on sound design for dance/theatre, installation pieces and contemporary chamber composition, inspired by 20th Century avant-classical works, Indian ragas and minimalist electronic music. Shoeb has performed throughout Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the UK and the SE Asian region as a solo artist and with groups such as Sensaround, Spartak, Tangents and the Australian Art Orchestra. - Decibel 10 at 10: Western Australian Women of New Music (2009-2019)
-
7pm | Thursday 18 July | Callaway Music Auditorium, UWA
Co-presented by Tura New Music
This concert features Decibel performing a selection of works they have commissioned from Western Australian women since their foundation in 2009. It makes part of their 10 at 10 celebrations – 10 concerts around Australia featuring music they have commissioned since their inception 10 years ago.
The concert features work by Amber Fresh, Erin Coates, Catherine Ashley, Rachael Dease, Olivia Davies, Cissi Tsang, Annika Moses and a new work from WA composer Kate Milligan made possible through Tura’s Young and Emerging Composer Commissioning Program.
Registrations
Full registration (including all public events)
Earlybird (available until 14 June): $150
Late (bookings after 15 June): $200
Full registration (student): $100
Single Day Registrations (include option to attend both concerts): $70
Conference Dinner (Wednesday 17 July | 6.30pm): $60
First Nations people free
UWA Music and Design Staff and Students free
Registration includes lunch and morning/afternoon tea
Tickets to the concerts Armadillo and Decibel 10 at 10 are included with all registrations. General public tickets to these events are available by clicking the links below.
16 July | 7pm | Armadillo: Robyn Schulkowksy, Vanessa Tomlinson and Louise Devenish
18 July | 7pm | Decibel 10 at 10: Western Australian Women of New Music (2009–2019)
Submissions
Key dates
Submissions due 5 April 2019
Results announced 30 April 2019
Program published online June 2019
Process
Submissions are welcomed for:
- 20 minute paper presentation
- 20 minute lecture-recital
- 20 minute panel proposals (maximum of 4 speakers)
- Creative works duration 5 – 10 minutes
Submissions will take place via the EasyChair platform. Submit a single document including a 250 word abstract, list of technical requirements and a 100 word biography. Please include any additional access requirements as appropriate.
If you are submitting a creative work, relevant creative material (e.g. scores, photographs, links) must be included. Maximum of one link, maximum 3 minute video. For music submissions, please include the names of proposed performers. Selected faculty and postgraduate students from the Conservatorium of Music will be available to perform works where appropriate. While every effort will be made to organise performers, no guarantee of artist availability can be provided by conference organisers.
All submissions will be peer reviewed. Following the conference, a callout will be made seeking submission of full papers for publication of a special journal issue.
All general queries to [email protected].
Further information on diversity in your submission can be found here.
For any queries regarding gender diversity in your presentation, please email Shoshana Rosenberg at [email protected].
Further information for presenters
Download the Guidelines for Presenters here. This document includes suggestions for language surrounding diversity, and links regarding inclusive practices that you might like to consider as you prepare your presentation.
Acknowledgement of Country
We wish to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we are meeting on, the Whadjuk (Perth region) people. We wish to acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and this region.
Committee
Director: Louise Devenish
Music Chairs: Louise Devenish, Sarah Collins, Cecilia Sun
Gender Diversity Chair: Shoshana Rosenberg
Visual Art Chairs: Ionat Zurr, Tarsh Bates
Student Chair: Dan O’Connor
Technical Support: Jesse Stack, Pip White
Accommodation
Accommodation is available at St Catherine’s on Park, near the Conservatorium of Music. Delegates can book at a discounted conference rate of $189 per night, including breakfast and wi-fi. To receive the discounted rate, book through the St Catherine’s on Park website and enter the promo code 'UWA Music'.