The present Multimod Festival for Composer-Performer is an outgrowth of a research project with the same name run at the Geneva Haute école de musique. The intention of our team is to put together diverse contemporary composition/performance practices under the same conceptual and practical umbrella, while using for its basis the multiple modernities or plural modernities theory.
According to this theory, instead of the concept of a monolithic and homogenous history of modernity, we are facing a “continual constitution and reconstitution of a multiplicity of cultural programs” (Eisenstadt, 2000). Multiple modernities concept is an inclusive theory that takes into account new geography in creation, which is not only characterized by multiple cultural locations, but also multiple origins and aesthetic fundaments on which these modernities are based. Accordingly, we think that the logical consequence of multiple modernities theory is an acknowledgment of a culturally decentered world.
Using this idea as a starting point, this festival will present and explore musical works primarily created by composers-performers based on a larger, international and multifaceted overview of modernity. We will offer a variety of concerts, master classes, workshops and lectures. We believe that it represents a unique opportunity for adventurous artists, students and scholars to examine and experience the transforming world of artistic creativity in the crosscurrents of improvisation, written-out composition, multimedia and research. The 2016 edition of the Festival will be held at the Haute école de musique in Geneva, Switzerland.