GRINM

Sunday, 19 August 14:00 GRINM (Gender Relations in New Music) – Monika Żyła – presentation/discussion | Park

GRINM is Gender Relations in New Music: Intersectional Gender and Diversity Activist Group for the New Music Scene

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 Coursesto question and challenge the homogeneity of the New music scene.

Sparked by Ashley Fure’s Historage research (commissioned by IMD), GRiNM (then 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 breakdowns 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.

https://www.grinm.org/

Monika Żyła is a musicologist, cultural theorist, author, and music curator. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Salzburg in the Department of Music and Dance Studies and a lecturer at both University of Vienna and University of Salzburg. In 2018 she received half-year scholarship from the Deutsches Polen-Institute in Darmstadt Germany. Together with Krzysztof Marciniak, she is an author and producer of the series of podcasts about contemporary music called Radio w Kuchni. In 2018, she artistically directed and produced a series of 24-hour staged performances called VEXATIONS: REVISITED based on Eric Sate’s infamous piece “Vexations” from 1893. The last performance of the piece will take place on September 7 in KunstKulturKirche-Forum für Moderne Kunst und Neue Musik, Thüringer Str. 31 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. As an author, she regularly publishes articles, music reviews, and interviews in “Glissando”, “Ruch Muzyczny”, “Dwutygodnik” and “Odra”. Her recent essay “Emigrantki” on polish female emigrée composers will be included in a book published by Krytyka Polityczna. Since 2016 she is an active member of the GRINM coalition.