24-29 May 2022, Athens & Nafplio, Greece

Call for Submissions

The work of composer and architect Iannis Xenakis spans several fields, with significant contributions in instrumental composition, electroacoustic music, music theory, multimedia and site-specific performances, and architectural design. His vision pertains to topics such as city planning, studies of morphology, philosophy, or the role of the arts in relation to the sciences. He was a pioneer interdisciplinary artist and thinker. The study of his work is relevant and significant for understanding the history of modern music, art, and architecture, and their relationship to historical and political events since the second world war.

In recent decades the study of Xenakis’s work has seen a continuous rise in performances and recordings by a new generation of musicians and multimedia artists, as well as by symposia and publications. Moreover, access to the Xenakis Archives (www.iannis-xenakis.org) has helped to advance new research even further. We can thus refer to a broad field of Xenakis Studies that is increasingly in dialogue with fields such as new media art, sound studies, performance studies, politics, ecology, parametric design in architecture, or sound art. This field has already been established in a series of dedicated symposia: Paris 1998, Nice (France) 2001, Athens 2005, Guelph (Canada) 2006, Cologne 2006, London 2011, Nicosia (Cyprus) 2011, Paris 2012 and 2015, and Leeds (UK) 2017.

The present symposium will accommodate this renewed interest by inviting musicologists, musicians, architects, specialists of multimedia art, and artists to celebrate his legacy on the centenary of his birth and to share their recent or ongoing research on Xenakis. Please note that this call aims to attract original findings that have not been previously presented elsewhere.

Indicative Topics

• Aesthetics, Philosophy, Politics, Ecology
• Instrumental music
• Electroacoustic and Computer Music
• Music theory, analysis
• Computational music models
• Architecture, Space, Parametric Design
• Performance studies
• Technology interaction, new media
• Polytopes and multimedia
• Theatrical Works and Performances
• Archival research, genetic criticism
• Historical contextualisation
• Xenakis’ influence on present-day music and artistic practice

Proposal Submission

Proposals can be in the form of:

1. Academic Papers
2. Workshops (including or not public participation)

The symposium’s language is English.

All proposals to be submitted via EasyChair.

Academic Paper Proposals

• Stage 1: Short abstract (ca. 500 words) & brief CV (100 words) of main author(s) by 15th of September 2021
• Stage 2: Full-length article (5000 words maximum) by 15th of January 2022
• Stage 3: Camera-ready article by 15th of March 2022

Workshop Proposals

• Short description (ca. 500 words) & brief CV (100 words) of main author(s) by 15th of September 2021

All proposals will be judged and reviewed anonymously by the Scientific and Reviewing Committee of the symposium.

More information at xenakis2022.uoa.gr.