Contesting Border Regimes - Sounds and Images

Lectures, Panels, Film & Musical Performances

7 and 8 May 2021

The crisis of European border politics and current struggles against deportations and illegal push-backs from EU countries including Austria have led to various political, activist as well as artistic interventions. This transdisciplinary symposium creates a forum to address the potential of cinematic and musical politics and to look into their relation to activist practices and current research.

Our goal is to bring activism, the arts and academia in contact. We want to explore, how these differing approaches interconnect in contesting contemporary border regimes and their devastating effects.

Programme Friday, 7. May 2021

15.00 - 15.30 Opening

Gerda Müller, Vice Rector for Organisational Development, Gender & Diversity: Welcome Adress

Ursula Hemetek, Director of the Department of Folk Music Research and Ethnomusicology as well as of the Music and Minorities Research Center: Introductory Remarks

Tonica Hunter, Artistic/Music Curator of "METAMORPHOSIS//METAHUMAN", and Faris Cuchi Gezahegn: Curatorial Statement

Faris Cuchi Gezahegn, Dora Deliyska: METAMORPHOSIS//METAHUMAN PART I

15.30 - 16.30 Keynote Lecture (Chair Evelyn Annuß)

Brigitta Kuster: Burning Seas: Junctions and Disjunctions. Mediterranean Sea Crossings and the Audiovisual "Affectics" of Migration (for copyright reasons, this part cannot be made available)

17.00 - 19.30 Film Screening and Panel Discussion (Chair: Evelyn Annuß)

Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed: Purple Sea (for copyright reasons, this part cannot be made available)

Amel Alzakout, Khaled Abdulwahed and Philip Scheffner: Panel Discussion

Programme Saturday, 8. May 2021

11.00 - 12.30 Musical Performance and Keynote Lecture (Chair: Ursula Hemetek)

Faris Cuchi Gezahegn, Ciara Moser: METAMORPHOSIS//METAHUMAN PART II

Ilker Ataç: Is Urban Citizenship the Right Answer to the Crisis of European Border Politics? Entanglement of Non-State Actors with the Local Municipalities Across Europe (for copyright reasons, this part cannot be made available)

Faris Cuchi Gezahegn, Miriam Adefris, Ganaël Dumreicher: METAMORPHOSIS//METAHUMAN PART III

13.00 - 15.00 Paper Presentations and Panel Discussion (Chair: Ursula Hemetek)

Anja Brunner: Contesting (Musical) Boundaries: Women Musicians from Syria in Austria and Germany 

Ioannis Cristidis: Challenging Europeanity: Syrian Refugees, Musical Acts of Citizenship and Cosmopolitanism from Below 

Evrim Hikmet Öğüt: Street Music Practice as Social Non-Movement: Syrian Musicians' Claim on the Public Space

Anja Brunner, Ioannis Cristidis and Evrim Hikmet Öğüt: Panel Discussion

15.00 - 15.30 Closing

Ursula Hemetek: Closing Remarks

Faris Cuchi Gezahegn: METAMORPHOSIS//METAHUMAN PART IV - FINALE

More Information

For more information see the website of the symposium.