The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Institutions [research group]
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RESIDENCY PROGRAMME FOR MUSIC ARTISTS, CURATORS, RESEARCHERS, AND CULTURAL WORKERS
[November 2026 – June 2027]
The New Lexicon is an international research residency devoted to the critical investigation, articulation, and transformation of music institutions as structures through which musical value, authority, access, labor, knowledge, memory, and public life are produced.
Across four online seminars and a culminating public residency, participants will examine the institutional conditions of their practices, develop projects through dialogue, and contribute to a plural vocabulary for rethinking how musical life is organized.
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PROGRAM AT A GLANCE
Program period: November 2026–June 2027
Format: Four online seminars followed by an on-site festival phase
On-site location: Bled, Slovenia (EU)
Public presentation: Seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week
Application deadline: September 30, 2026
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FORMAT
Stage I | Articulation and Presentation | November 4, 5, 2026
Two online seminars introduce participants’ institutional contexts, projects, and research questions, with attention to their histories, procedures, assumptions, and consequences.
Stage II | Critical Inquiry and Development | February 10, 11, 2027
Two online seminars examine how music institutions establish value, distribute resources, organize labor, shape publics, preserve histories, and define what becomes possible, while developing practical and conceptual trajectories for change.
Stage III | Public Presentation and Exchange | June 14-25, 2027
Participants present research, proposals, lectures, and discussions at the seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week in Bled, Slovenia.
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RESIDENCY OVERVIEW
The New Lexicon is an international research residency dedicated to the critical investigation, articulation, and transformation of music institutions as structures through which musical value, authority, access, labor, knowledge, memory, and public life are produced. It brings together people whose practices engage the organizations, conventions, infrastructures, and recurring relations that make musical activity possible while determining how that activity is recognized, supported, circulated, and judged.
Music institutions include conservatories, universities, ensembles, festivals, venues, funding bodies, publishers, broadcasters, archives, platforms, professional associations, independent initiatives, and artist-led organizations. They also exceed formal organizations. Audition procedures, commissioning customs, curricular models, disciplinary categories, contractual norms, curatorial habits, technological standards, and inherited ideas of excellence may function institutionally even when no single body controls them. The programme therefore approaches the institution not only as an administrative entity, but as a durable arrangement of values, practices, roles, resources, and expectations.
Across four online seminars and a culminating public residency, participants will examine the institutional conditions of their work, develop artistic, curatorial, pedagogical, organizational, or research projects through sustained critical dialogue, and contribute to a shared, plural vocabulary for rethinking how musical life is organized. The programme asks how concepts of music, quality, expertise, participation, tradition, innovation, responsibility, and the public become embedded in procedures and acquire material consequences.
The residency is addressed to artists, curators, researchers, educators, producers, organizers, administrators, and other cultural workers whose projects raise questions that cannot be resolved through operational discussion alone.
The New Lexicon is neither a conventional professional-development programme nor a forum for generalized institutional critique. It is a practice-based research environment in which philosophy and institutional activity enter into reciprocal relation. Philosophy offers methods for clarifying concepts, testing claims, examining norms, distinguishing forms of power, and situating structures historically. Institutional practice, in turn, reveals how ideas become procedures, spaces, budgets, schedules, contracts, repertoires, interfaces, and lived relations.
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MENTORS
Dr. Alastair White
Urban Megušar, Double M.Mus.
Dr. Niki Zohdi
Dr. Dré A. Hočevar
COORDINATOR
Brina Kren
DATES
MENTORS
PROGRAMME FORMAT
RESEARCH PREMISE
WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS
WORKING METHOD
PARTICIPANT VALUE
WHO THE PROGRAMME ADDRESSES
TOWARDS MULTIPLE PHILOSOPHIES OF MUSIC INSTITUTIONS
APPLICATION
APPLICATION FORM AND
PARTICIPATION FEES
The New Lexicon program is produced by .abeceda Institute
.abeceda [Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy], a public-benefit NGO and non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing contemporary artistic practices and critical inquiry. Through its innovative programmes, .abeceda has gained international recognition as one of the leading platforms for contemporary music and artistic research in the Adriatic region and across Europe: www.abeceda.io