Interdisciplinary Study Days
Sensory Atmospheres: Breathing and Sounding Modern Airs
3–4 December 2026
Festsaal (Seilerstätte 26, 1010 Vienna)
These interdisciplinary study days explore air, atmosphere, breath, and their sensory dimensions from c. 1800 to the present. With particular attention to sonic experience, the event brings together perspectives from across disciplines to consider questions of pollution, disease, toxicity, climate, noise, fragrance, and more-than-human interconnection. Particular emphasis is placed on the embodied and historically situated ways in which listening and breathing shape relationships between bodies, environments, and social worlds.
Programme
Thursday, 3 December 2026
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9:00 |
Arrival/Registration |
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9:15 |
Welcome |
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9:30 |
SESSION 1 | Breath, Singing, Voice |
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Chanda VanderHart Consumptive Voices: The Sonic Aestheticization of Tuberculosis from the Opera House to the Blues |
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Kirsteen McCue Air(s), singing, and national song in Romantic period Britain |
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Sarah Westwood Breath as a Condition of Listening |
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11:00 |
Coffee Break |
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11:30 |
SESSION 2 | Wind and Breath |
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Marcus Zagorski Hearing the Wind: Phonognosis in Mountain Soundscapes |
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Andrew Gumataotao Appeasing Squalls: Chanting out Archipelagicity in Låguas yan Gåni |
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Rosa Prosser & Darinka Szigecsan En-sounding Wind (artistic research: film) |
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13:00 |
Lunch Break |
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14:30 |
SESSION 3 | Dance and Collectivities |
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Julia Ostwald |
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Firdevs Mizan Can Air Be Perceived? Atmosphere in a Sufi Zikr |
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Maria Alexandra Urbano Breathing the Dancefloor: Sonic Atmospheres, Embodied Intensities, and Environmental Perception in Global Psytrance Festivals |
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16:00 |
Coffee Break |
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16:30 |
Reflection Discussion |
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17:30 |
Coffee Break |
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18:00 |
KEYNOTE |
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Tatiana Konrad The Color of Crisis: Air, Environmental Racism, and the Aesthetics of Extinction in Breathe (2024) |
Friday, 4 December 2026
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10:00 |
SESSION 4 | Sensorial Atmospheres (Object Lessons) |
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Emma Schrott Dis-eased Atmospheres: Listening during the Influenza Pandemic |
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Silke Felber Listening to the Pomander: Cross-Modal Analysis of Early Modern Colonial Air and Time |
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11:00 |
Coffee Break |
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11:30 |
SESSION 5 | Health and Wellness, Home and Away |
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Maria Heidegger Glacial Air and Sonic Dimension of Therapeutic Landscapes in the Alps around 1900 |
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Sadie Menicanin On the Air of the Vienna Woods |
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Agnese Sile Thinking with Dust: OCD, Visual Image, and Embodied Experience |
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13:00 |
Lunch Break |
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14:30 |
SESSION 6 | Multispecies Agencies |
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Karin Lillevold |
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Federica Nardella People of the Air: The Weight of Agency and Weather Interspecies Bonds in Kyrgyz and Kazakh Eagle-Hunting |
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Leendert van der Miesen |
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16:00 |
Coffee Break |
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16:30 |
Reflection Discussion & Closing |
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18:30 |
Conference Dinner |
Organizers:
Emma Schrott (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna)
Sadie Menicanin (University of Oslo)
Andrew Gumataotao (University of Göttingen)
Sponsored by the ERC project GOING VIRAL: Music and Emotions during Pandemics (1679–1919).
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