Review: Keep it Simple, Make it Fast! Crossing Borders of Underground Music Scenes, International Conference, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal, 13–17 July 2015 (original) (raw)

Now in its second year, Keep it Simple, Make it Fast (KISMIF) is probably one of the largest conferences of underground music/culture of its kind. Convened by Andy Bennett and Paula Guerra the conference, accompanied by the pre-emptive Summer School, was a week-long event with core themes revolving around the many global underground scenes and drawing upon an impressive international range of established subcultural scholars and postgraduate researchers. As members of the conference scientific committee, and as founders of the Punk Scholars Network, we were invited to deliver keynotes at the preceding Summer School, to chair panels and to convene on a number of Summer School sessions, offering ad hoc summative commentaries to those in the panel. The Summer School offered 'an opportunity for all students (bachelor, masters, doctorate, post-doctorate) to attend specialist master classes and discuss their research work in seminars'. Its inclusion, therefore, was based upon a clear pedagogical model whereby students could discuss, disseminate and contemplate their own research. More than that, it was also important in empowering students to gain control of the academic arena, often a space solely for the 'academic'. Here, postgraduate students presented papers that ranged from political activism to urban communities, from aesthetics to mediation , and from identities to authenticity. As an academic environment, the Summer School beat many a conference: papers were presented in an often-informal basis, with students helping and signposting each other towards unknown areas of research.