The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Institutions [research group]
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RESEARCH PREMISE
The New Lexicon proceeds from the premise that music institutions are never neutral containers. Every admissions process, curriculum, audition, commission, appointment, grant, contract, programme, archive, venue, platform, and public statement enacts assumptions about what music is, who may speak for it, which forms of expertise matter, how quality is recognized, and what kinds of musical activity deserve continuity. These assumptions may be explicitly stated, tacitly inherited, or distributed across routines that no individual fully controls. In every case, they shape material possibilities.
An institution may understand music primarily as autonomous art, cultural heritage, professional discipline, public service, commodity, research, social practice, entertainment, or collective resource. It may support several of these accounts at once, even when they conflict. Such conceptions influence what is taught, funded, commissioned, preserved, measured, and presented. They also influence which participants appear central, peripheral, emerging, qualified, representative, or absent.
Institutional decisions transform concepts into consequences. “Excellence” may become an audition criterion; “innovation” a funding category; “access” a ticketing policy; “tradition” a programming rationale; “participation” a format for public engagement; “sustainability” a budgetary or ecological commitment. These terms do not apply themselves. They require interpretation, and their interpretation is shaped by histories, interests, available resources, professional norms, and unequal forms of authority. To investigate institutional philosophy is to ask who defines such terms, through which procedures, for whose benefit, and with what possibility of challenge or revision.
The programme does not begin from the assumption that institutions are inherently oppressive or that informality is inherently liberating. Institutions preserve knowledge, coordinate complex activity, sustain long-term commitments, provide resources, establish forms of care, and create spaces in which people can act together. The same durability can reproduce exclusions, protect unexamined hierarchies, normalize precarious labor, or make inherited criteria appear natural. Critical inquiry must therefore examine what a structure enables as well as what it prevents.
Music institutions are constituted through relations among people, procedures, technologies, spaces, documents, resources, and temporal commitments. Agency is distributed across boards, directors, juries, teachers, artists, administrators, funders, audiences, software systems, architectural arrangements, legal frameworks, and historical expectations. This distribution complicates responsibility without eliminating it. A central question is how responsibility can be located and exercised when no single actor determines an outcome, yet some actors possess greater power to define rules, allocate resources, or authorize change.
Organizations inherit mandates, collections, buildings, reputations, debts, habits, and constituencies. They operate through seasons, funding cycles, project deadlines, educational calendars, employment contracts, and strategic plans. These temporal structures can support continuity, but they can also prevent sustained reflection, privilege visible novelty, or defer necessary change. The programme asks how institutions remember, how they forget, and how they negotiate obligations to past, present, and future participants.
Application portals, recommendation systems, streaming platforms, digital archives, ticketing systems, audience analytics, social media, and generative tools influence what becomes visible, searchable, fundable, and repeatable. They may widen access while embedding new forms of classification, extraction, dependency, and opacity. A philosophy of music institutions must therefore address technical systems not as neutral instruments, but as participants in the production of value, attention, and authority.
Audiences are not simply found; they are imagined and organized through repertoire, pricing, architecture, communication, scheduling, language, codes of conduct, and expectations about knowledge or behavior. Terms such as community, outreach, engagement, and participation can name meaningful relationships, but they can also conceal asymmetries between those who define a project and those invited to enter it. Inquiry must ask what kind of public an institution presupposes, which forms of presence it facilitates, and whether participation includes any power to alter the institution itself.
Philosophy is understood here neither as an external system imposed on organizations nor as commentary added after decisions have been made. It is approached as immanent to institutional practice: present wherever categories are established, values are ranked, responsibilities are assigned, and futures are selected. Institutional practice can likewise generate philosophical knowledge. A revised audition, a collectively governed programme, a transformed archive, a new labor agreement, or an artist-led organizational experiment may test concepts of fairness, expertise, care, authorship, and public value in ways that abstract argument alone cannot anticipate.
The central question is therefore not simply, “What does this institution believe?” It is also: “How do its arrangements make those beliefs operative, and how might other arrangements make other forms of musical life possible?” The New Lexicon treats institutions as sites of philosophical production and practical contestation.
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