Rim Irscheid

Rim Irscheid is an ethnomusicologist and curator working on contemporary and experimental practices in the Middle East and its diasporas. Her postgraduate research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via the London Arts and Humanities Partnership, with additional support from the British Forum for Ethnomusicology. She holds a Master’s degree in Musicology from the University of Oxford and a joint honours BA in Musicology and Psychology from the University of Heidelberg.

Contact: rim.irscheid@kcl.ac.uk

Rim Irscheid is a doctoral candidate in the Music Department at King's College London working on experimental music, curatorial discourse, and the cultural policies of 'world music' festivals in Europe. Combining ethnographic research, policy-in-practice, and curatorial theory, her PhD is looking at the social and cultural implications of musical collaborations across Beirut, Berlin, and Mannheim.

The project aims to find out how artists in emerging cross-border networks produce, showcase, and experience experimental music in places that facilitate and amplify affective encounters between artists and curators with shared beliefs and value systems marked by antagonism against narrational strategies of 'world music' productions at European festival sites.

Focusing specifically on representations of difference, movement, and uncertainty in collaborative music projects, this project aims to shed light on the significant role of mediated audience engagement and the sonic reclaiming of physical and digital spaces as a pedagogical tool to contest 'world music' narratives. This includes the textual analysis of images and video material used in the marketing of these projects with regard to cultural representations of Arab musicianship in German media texts.