The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Institutions [research group]
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WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
The title The New Lexicon names the need to reconsider the conceptual languages through which music institutions describe, govern, and evaluate themselves. Terms such as excellence, quality, innovation, tradition, access, inclusion, diversity, relevance, participation, professionalism, autonomy, impact, community, sustainability, care, and public value appear across artistic policies, funding criteria, educational programmes, strategic plans, and everyday decisions. Their familiarity can create the impression of agreement even when their meanings, purposes, and consequences differ substantially.
These terms carry institutional histories. They emerge within particular aesthetic traditions, political settlements, labor arrangements, technologies, and relations of authority. They can orient action and make commitments communicable, but they can also become ceremonial language detached from practice. A promise of access may leave selection criteria unchanged. A commitment to innovation may reward recognizable novelty. An appeal to quality may conceal inherited taste. The task is not to expose every institutional word as empty, but to examine how language operates when it becomes a criterion, procedure, justification, or measure.
A new lexicon does not mean replacing one managerial vocabulary with another definitive system. Nor does it presume that older terms should simply be abandoned. The programme asks more demanding questions: What does a word allow an institution to perceive? What does it make difficult to acknowledge? Who is authorized to define it? How is it translated into action? Which disagreements does it clarify, and which does it suppress?
Lexical work is inseparable from institutional work. To distinguish access from belonging, representation from authority, consultation from participation, visibility from support, innovation from change, or care from goodwill is not merely to refine communication after decisions have been made. Such distinctions can alter objectives, procedures, budgets, timelines, and relations of accountability. Conversely, institutional experiments may produce experiences for which no adequate term exists. New language emerges through movement between concepts and arrangements, statements and consequences, proposals and lived responses.
The programme therefore treats vocabulary as a site of collective research. Participants will identify key terms within their projects, trace the assumptions attached to them, compare their uses across contexts, and formulate alternatives where necessary. The objective is not universal agreement. It is to make differences more legible, claims more testable, and decisions more accountable while preserving the plurality of institutional forms.
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