IndieRE 2.0 Conference

The two-day conference includes seven lectures by various experts, researchers, university professors, music journalists and freelance writers, whose research and journalistic work address a variety of interesting musical topics and music-related social phenomena.

The lecture ‘Generating Musical Taste’ by Robert Bobnič, a PhD student in Media Studies and a researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, will shed light on how recommender system algorithms have driven music consumption online in the past decade.

In her lecture ‘No Country for Old Punks: Is There Still a Link Between Subcultural Theory and Practice?’, Jasna Babić Zrimšek (Klub Gromka, The Peace Institute) will analyze to what extent the premises of basic subcultural theories and concepts and the practices of contemporary “subcultures” differ and overlap.

UK music journalist JR Moores will join us with the lecture ‘Reflections on Writing a Book About Heavy Music’ to discuss the writing process behind his book Electric Wizards: A Tapestry of Heavy Music, 1968 to the Present (Reaktion Books, 2021), dedicated to “heavy music”, the origins, variety and trajectory of heaviness, and the seminal significance of The Beatles’ song ‘Helter Skelter’ (1968).
The lecture ‘On Auditory Poverty’ by Slovenian is poet, composer and award-winning writer, dr. Nina Dragičević, will be dedicated to the concepts of audibility and auditory poverty. “Where there is poverty, there is discontent. And where there is discontent, there is potential for an uprising.”

Acclaimed Serbian academic, dr. Irena Šentevska, will present the lecture ‘Singing Belgrade: Popular Music in Serbia in the Bermuda Triangle ‘Global-Regional-Local’. Based on her award-winning book Singing Belgrade: Urban Identity and Music Videos (CLIO, 2023), Šentevska will discuss the opposition between the genres of global popular music and home-grown genres of neo-folk in the Serbian context.

In her lecture ‘Hinterlands: Exploring the Hierarchies of Musical Genre’, BBC journalist, broadcaster and author of the seminal book Sound Within Sound (Faber, 2022), Kate Molleson, will explore the hierarchies of musical genre and how the industry is complicit in upholding the borders.
The final act of the conference will be the live documentary performance ‘What Is This That Stands Before Me? Heavy Metal And Modernism’ by UK music journalist and editor John Doran (The Quietus, The Guardian, BBC) and artist and filmmaker Sapphire Goss – a unique live cinema experience that presents heavy metal as the last true form of mass modernism.

PROGRAMME

THU, 26 September @ Projection Hall, City Museum of Ljubljana  
14:00–15:15 Robert Bobnič (SI): Generating Musical Taste
15:30–16:30 Jasna Babić Zrimšek (SI): No Country for Old Punks: Is There Still a Link Between Subcultural Theory and Practice?  
16:45–18:00 JR Moores (UK): Reflections on Writing a Book About Heavy Music

FRI, 27 September @ Projection Hall, City Museum of Ljubljana  
14:00–15:00 dr. Nina Dragičević (SI): On Auditory Poverty
15:15–16:30 dr. Irena Šentevska (RS): Singing Belgrade: Popular Music In Serbia In The Bermuda Triangle 'Global-Regional-Local'
16:45–17:45 Kate Molleson (UK): Hinterlands: Exploring the Hierarchies of Musical Genre
18:00–19:00 John Doran & Sapphire Goss (UK): What Is This That Stands Before Me? Heavy Metal And Modernism

About IndieRE 2.0
IndieRe 2.0 (Independent Radio Exchange) is a continuation of the project of the same name, which Radio Študent implemented as lead partner between 2019 and 2022. The project facilitates production and exchange of radio broadcasts that promote local, less known alternative and urban European music artists. Each project partner is an independent radio station with capable music journalists and good connections to local, alternative and underground music scene in their respective countries. Partners will increase the visibility and facilitate potential breakthroughs of prospective young music artists with more than 200 radio broadcasts presenting over 900 music artists from 2022 – 2024.

Presented by Radio Študent, Radio NOR, Radio MARŠ, the City Museum of Ljubljana and IndieRE 2.0 partners.