Visualising the Unseen: Music in Visual Culture

22-24 July 2021, Prague
20th International Conference of Association RIdIM, Prague, Národní Muzeum, České Muzeum Hudby.

Association Répertoire Internationale d’Iconographie Musicale, in cooperation with the Czech National Museum Prague will host its 20th International Conference from 22 to 24 July 2021.

We invite proposals from researchers in the humanities and the social and cultural sciences to engage with the topic of visual culture, music iconography and music iconology.

It is a common topos that Music is described as the art of the unseen. The focus of this conference is on the different and diverse models that, since the known beginnings of reflection about music, have been used to understand, illustrate and explain the power of music to influence human existence. Often allocated to a transcendental place, beyond the visual, many of these models adhere in their mode of construction, or in descriptions of their impact, to imagery – be it myths such as that of Apollo and Marsyas, or Orpheus, the 12th-centruy Sankrit Hindu poem Gitagovinda illustrated by Manaku and Nainsukh of Guler in the 18th century, cosmic constructions or landscapes that relate the “real” and visible with the “transcendental” and unseen. The conference will delve into materialisations of these models that theorise music and their visualisations in different media.

Original research including, but not limited to, the following topics is welcome:

• the iconological and iconographical dimensions of the subject in still and moving visual representations
• the relation of text, image and sound in the constructions of the models of transcendence
• the philosophical, anthropological, historical, sociological, religious, gender, colonial and spatial dimensions of the subject
• visual narratives and agendas related to the subject
• the correlations of the subject to music theory, music aesthetics, music education, organology and practices of music
• case studies of specific visual representations of the unseen in music culture

The conference language (abstracts, programme book and presentations) will be English.

Abstracts of max. 2,000 characters along with a short biography (max. 800 characters) should be submitted in Word format using the downloadable form by 18 December 2020 to association@ridim.org.

Important Dates

• Submission of abstract of proposals for papers, deadline: 18 December 2020
• Notification of decision to each applicant by Programme Committee: 26 February 2021

There will be a conference registration fee of Euro 195.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

• Sylvain Perrot, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, ArcHiMèdE, Strasbourg
• N.N.

Programme Committee

• Eva Paulová (Chair), České Muzeum Hudby (Czech Museum of Music, Prague)
• Antonio Baldassarre, President Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musical (RIdIM), Zurich
• Carola Bebermeier, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien
• Egberto Bermudez, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá
• Zdravko Blažeković, Research Center for Music Iconography, New York
• Daniela Castaldo, Univeristà del Salento, Lecce
• Christine Fischer, Hochschule Luzern – Musik
• Marita Fornaro Bordolli, Universidad de la República, Montevideo
• Arabella Teniswood-Harvey, University of Tasmania, Hobart
• Wei Zhang, 上海音乐学院 (Shanghai Conservatory of Music)

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Mardi 19 Mai, 2026