grounded symposium: multidisciplinary forays into gardens, waste, and eco-art
grounded symposium
Department of Musicology, University of Oslo
28-29 October 2024
Salen in ZEB building at University of Oslo, Akerselvsa river, and Botaniske Hage Hovedgård
Oslo, Norway
This week I stepped out of my comfort zone and into the world of musicology and environmental humanities for the grounded symposium, hosted by the Department of Muiscology at the University of Oslo. The international two-day symposium was organised by University of Oslo Postdoctoral Fellow Sadie Menicanin and PhD Candidate in Historical Musicology at Harvard University Cana F. McGhee.
The hybrid symposium is described as “multidisciplinary forays into gardens, waste, and eco-art”. I attended the event as part of the audience and not a speaker. The topics covered were broad, from graveyards to parkaeets to mining and mycology. There were a mix of formats including the typical paper presentations that you might expect at an academic symposium but also included participatory moments of critical listening, sensory walking, in-depth discussion over pre-assigned readings, and “object-lessons”. The settings for the symposium offered international visitors a glimpse of different sides of Olso that might otherwise go univisited during the full schedule of an academic conference. I particularly enjoyed the river walk and time spent at Oslo’s beautiful Botanical Gardens.
I found myself especially quiet in the sessions, soaking up as much as I could like a sponge. Though my work touches on the environmental humanities, this was my first formal academic foray into the discipline and my first exposure to the fascinating field of musicology. The mix of experiences and disciplines were, well, grounding. I will no doubt be ruminating over all these freshly un-earthed ideas for some time to come.
Autumn sunset in Oslo’s Botanical Gardens (October 2024)
About grounded symposium
This 2-day hybrid symposium hosted by the University of Oslo’s Department of Musicology explores garden-related notions of groundedness, soil, trails, reclamation, decomposition, and rewilding and considers such concepts’ relevance for critical approaches to the environmental humanities. Together we will examine how gardens enable alternative perspectives on human relationships to space and time, especially amidst ongoing anthropogenic climate change.
The symposium will include three panel-style discussion sessions, a viewing, a reading session, and an optional group excursion along the Akerselva river. A diverse group of invited scholar-thinkers from across the humanities will discuss ideas-in-progress or offer an “object lesson” to introduce their work.
This abridged about text is written by the organisers Sadie Menicanin an Cana F. McGhee and is taken from the grounded symposium website, where you can find out more information about the event, including the programme and speakers.
Memini Aqua (Remember the Water) by Petter Aleksander Hepsø near Vøyenbrua along the river Akerselva marking the site of Oslo’s first water intake (October 2024)
