About

The Canada Research Chair in Opera Creation, the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ), the Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique (OICRM) and the Groupe de recherche sur la médiatisation du son (GRMS) warmly invite you to the colloquium:

"Music and Transcendence in a Posthuman Age".

This colloquium is presented as part of the Montreal/New Music Festival (MNM) and is based on the theme of the 2023 edition of the festival: Music and Spirituality.

This colloquium seeks to explore the links between music and spirituality through the lens of post-humanist thought. Much of the work that has examined the relationship between music, spirituality and transcendence focuses on the experience of individuals and communities modelled on the humanist ideal of a universal Man (i.e., white, male, heterosexual and without physical or mental limitations). Post-humanist thought thus seeks to revise the place of humanity as a dominant species separate from the rest of the living world. This posture emphasizes both human diversity and the permeability between our species and its environment.

What are the implications for artistic practice and spiritualities of seeing the world as a connected entity of which humans are only a part? How does music contribute to the emergence of this ecosystemic thinking? How does a vision that is no longer human-centered question the limits of the human being, which are increasingly blurred by transhumanism – especially with regard to our relationship with technologies – and what are the repercussions of the emergence of these new forms of thought on musical composition and our relationship to spirituality?