The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Musical Arts [research group]
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PROGRAMME FORMAT
Stage I | Articulation and Presentation | October 2026
Stage I consists of two online seminars devoted to the presentation and critical articulation of participants’ practices, current projects, and principal research questions. Each participant or group introduces work in a form appropriate to the project: scores, sketches, recordings, performances, improvisational systems, installations, texts, diagrams, technological platforms, curatorial proposals, portfolios, or other relevant documentation.
The purpose is not to demand a finished theoretical position or completed artistic outcome, but to make each practice’s operative questions visible. Participants will identify the concepts on which their work depends, the problems it addresses, the methods through which it proceeds, and the artistic or intellectual stakes it claims. Discussion will examine relations between stated intentions and practical decisions, conceptual propositions and sensory or material procedures, and a project’s internal logic and the wider contexts through which it becomes intelligible.
Moderated peer response will help participants distinguish productive questions from premature conclusions, clarify unstable or ambiguous terms, and identify lines of inquiry capable of advancing the work. By the end of Stage I, each participant will have established a provisional account of the philosophical grounds of their practice and a focused set of artistic and research questions for further development.
Stage II | Critical Inquiry and Development | January 2026
Stage II consists of two online seminars devoted to collective inquiry into the grounds, methods, scope, and possible functions of philosophy of musical arts. Moving between shared questions and the specific demands of participants’ projects, the group will consider what this field might need to become, which problems it should address, and which methods are adequate to the plurality of contemporary musical practice.
Inquiry may encompass ontological questions concerning works, performances, events, processes, and situations; epistemological questions concerning what musical practices know; aesthetic questions concerning form, judgment, experience, and value; ethical questions concerning responsibility, care, representation, and consequence; technological questions concerning mediation, automation, access, and agency; institutional questions concerning labour, education, legitimation, and authority; ecological questions concerning resources and environments; and political questions concerning the conditions under which musical art is produced, circulated, and heard.
Participants will develop compositions, performances, installations, texts, curatorial projects, technological systems, and artistic-research processes through sustained discussion and reflection. The aim is not to force projects into an academic format or require discursive explanation to replace artistic experience. It is to strengthen conceptual precision, methodological coherence, ethical awareness, and communicability. Each participant will formulate trajectories for further development, including questions to test, concepts to refine, relations to reconsider, and forms of presentation to prepare before the public residency.
Stage III | Public Presentation and Exchange | June 2027
The programme culminates in research presentations, lectures, performances, demonstrations, and public discussions at the seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week in Bled, Slovenia. This stage brings work developed through the online seminars into a wider artistic and intellectual context.
Participants will present the questions, methods, propositions, and outcomes of their research in forms suited to their practices. The emphasis is not solely on reporting completed results or exhibiting finished works. Public presentation is understood as a further stage of inquiry: an opportunity to test arguments, activate artistic propositions, encounter new responses, refine language, and consider how research changes when it enters a shared social and discursive space.
The Bled residency establishes a concentrated setting for exchange among musical artists, researchers, performers, curators, and audiences. It enables participants to situate their projects within broader debates, develop new connections, and contribute to an international discourse on the conditions and possibilities of the musical arts today.
The public residency also creates a space for comparison among artistic roles and modes of knowledge. A performance can answer a question differently from an essay; a listening session can expose assumptions that discussion leaves untouched; a demonstration can reveal how a tool or method thinks through its operation. These encounters allow artistic and discursive forms to inform one another without requiring either to serve as the final authority.
DATES
MENTORS
PROGRAMME FORMAT
RESEARCH PREMISE
WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS
WORKING METHOD
PARTICIPANT VALUE
WHO THE PROGRAMME ADDRESSES
TOWARDS MULTIPLE PHILOSOPHIES OF MUSICAL ARTS
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