Open Call: Sound Arguments 2026 4_Jan_26
Sound Arguments is an innovative laboratory-atelier for creative artists and researchers dealing with sound. Presented by the Orpheus Instituut, Ghent (BE), and the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, University of Leiden (NL), Sound Arguments transcends the boundaries of art school or conservatory, art space or university to propose a new kind of creating-researching-learning community. It reaches into the broad and complex space of current art-sound practices. At Sound Arguments, participants will share, invent, listen, learn and discuss.
Do you want to join the monthly sessions in which you will meet and discuss with invited artists and experts for 2-3 days? Application is open until 4 January 2026.
Our creative, imaginative relationship with sound has entered a fantastically rich period, facilitated and necessitated by cultural, social and technological evolution. Sound acts as a new parameter in a world evolved from the practices and theory of the visual arts, and as a highly sophisticated art form in music composition and improvisation. It acts as a dimension of the plastic, installation and interactive arts. It provides a perspective on place and time. It is a vital component of environmental art and a conveyor of information, e.g. through sonification. It emerges as algorithmic surface, as the trace of virtuoso improvised performance or of informal social behaviour. And it provides an interface with technology.
Each of these perspectives has its own discourse, practices, techniques, cultural infrastructure and institutions. Sound Arguments is a locus for this rich tapestry, a space that aims to bring together people interested and working with sound with diverse, and complementary, backgrounds. Through sustained cross-fertilisation, they will participate in the evolution of new common discourses and individual critical practices.
At each of five monthly, two to three day encounters, you will meet and discuss with invited artists and experts, addressing issues from the abstract to the technical, from the social to the practical. Guest artists and scholars will act as catalysts for sharing and reflection between participants; you will acquire new techniques in workshops and lectures led by international experts, to stimulate and inform your practice. Alongside invited guests, in recurring activities led by Orpheus’ faculty throughout the program, you will explore different modes of sonic thinking and doing in guided listening sessions, movie screening, and gustatory explorations. All participants will be able to share their own projects in a wide-ranging, critical and supportive environment. As a community, we will expand horizons, vision and practice – and together hopefully evolve new discourses on contemporary sound-based practices.
Topics include:
- Microphones and loudspeakers as musical instruments; composing movements for electronic sounds.
- Craft; critical listening; site.
- Sound art infrastructures; co-learning; networks; knowledge ecology; care.
- Experimentalism in folk music; composition and performance with live electronics; artistic collaboration.
- Obsolete technology and media; acoustic recording; analogue recording.
- Sound archives; close listening; listening to colonial history.
- Fabrication as a narrative tool; craft and materiality.
- Telos / tinkering; thinking with Simondon.
- Guided listening, early electronic music
- Food and sound
Registration
Sound Arguments will meet monthly from February – May 2026. Meetings will be held both in Ghent and Leiden, according to the calendar below.
Ghent sessions (February, April and May) will run on Mondays 14:00-20:00, Tuesdays 10:00-18:00, and Wednesdays 10:00-16:00.
Leiden sessions (March) will run on Mondays 14:00-18:00 and Tuesdays 10:00-18:00.
- February 09-10-11 (Orpheus Instituut, Ghent)
- March 02-03 (Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden)
- March 30-31 (Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden)
- April 27-28-29 (Orpheus Instituut, Ghent)
- May 18-19-20 (Orpheus Instituut, Ghent)
The nature of this series is such that numbers must be limited. Prospective participants are invited to apply by responding to this call here.
The form requests a brief description of the role of sound in your practice, which will allow us to balance the series appropriately. Application is open until 04 January 2026 (no extension). Applicants will be notified by 12 January.
Sound Arguments is made available at no cost to participants, regardless of institutional affiliation. At Sound Arguments we aim to create a safe and inclusive environment for all those involved; we particularly encourage applications from historically under-represented groups in the field. As organisors, we commit to taking that into account during evaluation of the applications received.
General inquiries can be sent to soundarguments@orpheusinstituut.be