Researchers from a wide variety of countries are gathering in Paris (24-26 January, 2019) to participate in the international conference ‘Sound and Music in the Prism of Sound Studies’. The meeting aims to build on current research on the categories of sound, noise and music, as well as to interrogate the theoretical and disciplinary stakes of sound studies. This will be done through a survey of recent work in the fields of musicology, aesthetics, anthropology, sociology, history, archaeology, and geography. The event is a further development of the ongoing collaboration between the CRAL (EHESS/CNRS) and the CNSMDP (Paris) within Université PSL and Columbia University (New York).

The first day will address the political implications of sound. The second will consist of a reflection on sound art, and on the role of sound within the philosophy and epistemology of music. It will end with an enquiry into sound geography and archaeology. The third day will start with a study of social, political and technical history of sound in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The last panel will delve deeper into the relationship between sound, philology and anthropology, and will re-evaluate the foundational question underlying the program: how may we listen to and think about sound and music through the prism of sound studies?
Every day will conclude with keynote addresses by professors Karin Bijsterveld, Lydia Goehr and Brian Kane, complementing the seven panels that cover a large field of research on sound. Attendees are likewise invited to explore Looking at Gravel, the installation by Peter Kiefer (at 54 bd. Raspail, 75006, Paris) as well as to the concert at Reid Hall (4 rue de Chevreuse, 75006, free entrance).

This international conference is organized by the Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage (CRAL, EHESS/CNRS), with the collaboration of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), of Columbia University (New York) and of Université PSL.

Organising Committee : Esteban Buch (CRAL – EHESS), Marion Dupuis (CNRS – CRAL / EHESS), Karine Le Bail (CNRS – CRAL / EHESS), Adeline Loeffel (CRAL – EHESS), Violeta Nigro Giunta (CRAL – EHESS), Lola San Martín Arbide (CRAL – EHESS), Jonathan Thomas (CRAL – EHESS).

Scientific Committee : Esteban Buch (CRAL – EHESS), Rémy Campos (CNSMDP), Walter Frisch (Columbia University), Tristan Labouret (CNSMDP), Karine Le Bail (CNRS – CRAL / EHESS), Ana Maria Ochoa Gautier (Columbia University), Violeta Nigro Giunta (CRAL –EHESS), Lola San Martín Arbide (CRAL – EHESS), Jonathan Thomas (CRAL – EHESS).

Contact : sonmusique.paris2019@gmail.com

Thursday 24 January 2019

• 13:30 : Welcome

• 14:00 – 14:30  Karine Le Bail & Lola San Martín Arbide – EHESS – Introduction : Les musicologues au prisme des sound studies : entre pratiques de recherches et stratégies disciplinaires

1. Anthropologie politique du son / Political Anthropology of Sound

• 14:30– 15:15 César Colón-Montijo – Columbia University – Towards a Caribbean Anthropology of Sound, Illness, and Precarity

• 15:15 – 16:00  Sarah Collins – University of Western Australia – Sound and the Political Subject

Modérateur : Esteban Buch (EHESS)

16:00 – 16:30  Pause café

16:30 – 17:30 Keynote speaker

• Karin Bijsterveld – Maastricht University – Acousmania in Sound Studies: An Amplifying, Absorbing, Reflecting and Redirecting Response

Friday 25 January 2019

9:00 – 9:30 Pot d’accueil

2. L’art du son / The Art of Sound

• 9:30 – 10:00  Paula Harper – Columbia University – Sound On: Attention, Autoplaying Video, and the Digital Sensorium
• 10:00 – 10:30  Karine Bouchard – Université de Montréal/Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières – Les sound studies au service de la muséologie : réévaluer les enjeux d’une discipline
• 10:30 – 11:00 Julia H. Schröder – Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz – Sounds for the Theatre Stage: A Cultural Practice in Competition to Music?
• 11:00 – 11:30  Peter Kiefer – Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz Art – Research - Sound - an (im)possible amalgam

Modérateur : Walter Frisch (Columbia University)

11:30 – 12:00 Pause Café

3. Approches philosophiques et épistémologiques / Philosophical and Epistemological Approaches

• 12:00 – 12:30  José Gálvez – Humboldt University of Berlin – Sound/Society/Subjectivation - Epistemological consequences of sound studies for musical analysis
• 12:30 – 13:00  Benjamin Straehli – Université de Lille – Philosophie du son et philosophie de la musique doivent-elles aller de pair ?

Modérateur : Karine Le Bail

13:00 – 14:30 Déjeuner

4. Espaces vibrants / Resounding Spaces

• 14:30 – 15:00   Céline Hervet – Université de Picardie Jules Verne – La réhabilitation d’un « sens second ». Contribution des sound studies à l’historiographie philosophique de l’âge classique
• 15:00 – 15:30  Marc Sciuchetti – The Florida State University – Sound, Place, and Identity: How Place-based Identity is Formed Through Sound and Rivers
• 15:30 – 16:00  Mylène Pardoen – Université Lyon 2 / CNRS – L’archéologie du paysage sonore : sound studies, sensories studies ou orni (objet de recherche non [encore] identifié)

Modérateur : Rémy Campos (CNSMDP)

16:30 – 18:00 : Presentation of installation "Looking at Gravel", de Peter Kiefer, du 21 au 26 janvier 2019, à l'EHESS (54 bd Raspail, 75006 Paris).

20:00 – Free concert at the Reid Hall (4 rue de Chevreuse, 75006 Paris).

Saturday 26 January 2019

9:00 – 9:30 Pot d’accueil

5. Le son dans les sciences et l’histoire / Sound in Sciences and History

• 9:30 – 10:00  Samuel Llano – University of Manchester – The Noise of Shifting Boundaries: Towards a pre-history of sound studies
• 10:00 – 10:30  Joshua Navon – Columbia University – “Musicality” at the Boundaries: Music Pedagogy and Experimental Psychology in Germany around 1900
• 10:30 – 11:00  Stéphane Le Gars – Université de Nantes – Entre télégraphie et orphéon : l’espace acoustique en France à la fin du XIXe siècle. L’exemple d’Ernest Mercadier comme construction du son entre Ecole Polytechnique et sociétés chorales
• 11:00 – 11:30  Andrea F. Bohlmann & Peter McMurray – University of North Carolina / University of Cambridge – Tape Ethnography: An Archaeology

Modérateur : Tristan Labouret (CNSMDP)

11:30 – 12:00 Pause Café

6. Analyser le son du politique / Analyzing the Sound of Politics

• 12:00 – 12:30  Adrien Quièvre – Université de Lille – Les dynamiques sonores de la contestation : musicologie et sound studies
• 12:30 – 13:00  Jonathan Thomas – EHESS – Inhumer les victimes du 16 mars 1937 : une économie politique du son et du silence

Modérateur : Violeta Nigro Giunta (EHESS)

13:00 – 14:30 Lunch

7. De quelques frontières disciplinaires / On Some Disciplinary Boundaries

• 14:30 – 15:00  Andrey Logutov – Lomonosov Moscow State University – Giving Voice to Sound: Situating Sound Studies Within Philology
• 15:00 – 16:00 Débat

Modérateur : Esteban Buch (EHESS)

16:00 – 16:30 Pause café

• 16:30 – 17:30  Keynote speaker
• Brian Kane – Yale University – In Search of Audile Technique