Gender Relations in New Music is Institutional Critique

This chapter documents key actions of institutional critique by Gender Relations in New Music (GRiNM), a collective advocating for gender equality and intersectional diversity in New Music. The article follows their interventions in major German New Music institutions including the Darmstadt Summer Course, MaerzMusik Festival Berlin, and Donaueschinger Musiktage, as well the group’s own events and the pandemic’s impact on its activism. It also analyses how the group’s tactics have developed in response to these institutions beginning to address diversity questions themselves. The article links the group’s methods to collective critique, para-institutionality, and the question of who is in position to critique the institution at all. It concludes by positioning critique as necessary-but-opposed to the institution, calling the reader to also take action, while underscoring how institutional stratification can undermine criticality.