About the Workshop

This workshop questions the widespread assumption that music inherently brings people together. From concert halls to international festivals, music is often celebrated as a universal language – a belief embedded in liberal internationalism, cultural diplomacy, and the rhetoric of soft power.

These frameworks commonly present music as a harmonizing force capable of bridging ideological divides and fostering mutual understanding. Yet this celebratory narrative obscures a deeper tension: music’s disruptive potential. Its ability to challenge norms, create friction, and complicate official narratives is often more politically significant than its unifying qualities. The same structures that deploy music to symbolize peace and cooperation also depend on its capacity to provoke, alienate, and unsettle. 

 

This workshop explores that paradox: can music unite and divide at the same time – and under what conditions?

Attending the Workshop

Please register here.

Programme

Friday, November 21, 2025, Room 319

10:00-10:30 pm             Opening and Introduction

Jessica Gienow-Hecht (Freie Universität Berlin) Anna Kukatova (Freie Universität Berlin) Lesar Yurtsever (Freie Universität Berlin)

 

10:30-12:00 pm             Panel 1: Music, Power, and Representation

	Anne-Sylvie Barthel-Calvet (Université de Strasbourg) Twisted Ambitions: Iannis Xenakis between Avant-Garde Democratization and Nation Branding
	Maria Rijo Lopes da Cunha (University of Aarhus) Rethinking Paradigms: On Music's Symbolic Power, Cultural Diplomacy And Value Formation

 

12:00-1:30 pm             Lunch

1:30-3:00 pm             Panel 2: Belonging and Exclusion in the Avant-Garde

	Peter J. Schmelz (Johns Hopkins University) The Connections and Disconnections of the Kyiv Avant-Garde
	Lesar Yurtsever (Freie Universität Berlin) By the Elite, for the Elite: Turkish Avant-Garde in 1950s New York

3:00-3:30 pm             Tea and Coffee Break

3:30-5:00 pm             Panel 3: Performing Power: Music, Spectacle, and the State

Anna Kukatova (Freie Universität Berlin) “The Freakiest Show in Town”: David Bowie’s Trip through the USSR   Esteban Buch (L'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) Javier Milei's aesthetics of destruction

5:00-5:30 pm             Final Discussion

 

 

Zeit & Ort

21.11.2025 | 09:30 - 16:30

John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, Room 319

Lansstraße 7-9, 14195 Berlin

November 21, 2025