Thursday 10 December | 10:00 - 18:00 | Online Event
Auraldiversities
A year-long programme addressing the ‘auraldiverse turn’ in Arts and Humanities research and theory, questioning how and what we hear, what we listen to and why, as situated within our contemporary milieu: that of ecological, existential, social, economic and epidemiological crises.
Entwined with sonically sensile organisms, sessions extend well beyond human worlds into speculative acoustic realms of future listening.
Sessions are virtual with some materials sent in advance. SIGN UP to be sent a session link and password.
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Listening in the Present Tense
A focus on the particular moment of listening now, inside a pandemic. What do we hear and why do we listen? What are we listening for and what might we be missing? Can we listen with collective ears - together apart? How is listening useful - early warning system, or diagnostic tool?
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Session Two
Ella Finer
with Yorgos Samantas and Urok Shirhan
in the light of distant stars
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
- Arundhati Roy, The Pandemic is a Portal, April 2020
Pandemic data are like the light of distant stars, recording past events instead of present ones.
- Ed Yong, America is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral, September 2020
A talk-in-transit, as we move “between one world and the next”, in the "light of distant stars", I invite us to consider what the present-tense in perpetual motion sounds like. With “call-ins” from artist Urok Shirhan and sound anthropologist Yorgos Samantas - correspondents from other time-zones and other cities - we will open into a collective discussion. This session will hold a space and time to think through different conceptions of/investments in composing History now and what we want and need from doing so. What are the ways we can both imagine and make our world anew on our way, as we go, in this shared and singular present-tense? And how might we attune to such a tense – a temporality Gertrude Stein named the 'continuous present' – by ear: as a sonorous tense, honouring time-travel and listening across/to difference?
Ella Finer’s work in sound and performance spans writing, composing, and curating with a particular interest in how women’s voices take up space; how bodies acoustically disrupt, challenge, or change the order of who is allowed to occupy–command–space. Her research continuously queries the ownership of cultural expression through sound, informing lectures, performances, and events, including current projects: her moon is a captured object, an experiment in "orbital translation" for The City Talks Back (Theatrum Mundi and Onassis Stegi); Burning House/Burning Horse, a bonfire night sound essay for Almanac Projects and Wave Studies, three co-authored interconnecting essays for Infrasonica.org. Recent writing includes Feminism and Sound (CUP, 2020) and Listening in Common in Uncommon Times (Kenyon Review Online, 2020). Her first book Acoustic Commons and the Wild Life of Sound (Errant Bodies, Berlin) is forthcoming. www.ellafiner.com
Yorgos Samantas is engaged in urban anthropology and the environment, sound, voice and contemporary art, and has worked as a sound designer, field-recordist, scientific editor for the radio, art mediator and educator, and a dj. His work with sound, walking and locative media aims in the production of anthropological knowledge "beyond text". He is participating in TWIXTlab, in akoo-o transdisciplinary group, and has taken part in research projects between art and social sciences such as “learning from documenta” & “Fones”.
Working at the intersection of performance, visual arts and critical theory, Urok Shirhan’s practice explores the politics of image, sound and speech in relation to (national) identity. Manifesting mainly through performance and writing, her projects are often entangled with found materials and narratives informed by her family history of political migrations. As an Iraqi-born, once asylum-seeker turned “new” Dutch citizen, issues surrounding displacement and belonging are of particular interest. Shirhan is currently a Research Fellow at BAK basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht, The Netherlands. https://urokshirhan.com
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Charlie Fox
Charming Foxes - listening in and with a non-human ear
As cities emptied - hollowed out in lockdown - by night, a skulk of urban foxes leaves their comfortable earths to set out on a hunt for food and entertainment, listening and tracking their territories for rival scavengers and ‘wildlife’. In this session, we will be exploring what was heard, what sensed, witnessed and experienced precisely in this period of interregnum; of the other, walking the city, and of our co-existence with other inhabitants, other species and ways of hearing.
Charlie Fox is the artistic director of counterproductions. counterproductions promotes socially and politically engaged artistic practices: collaborating with different publics on live art, education, and experimental art projects both in the UK and Internationally. Recent projects, “Itinerary” and FoodFace/FaceFood, Smile More Please and The Comm(o)nist Gallery have taken place within art spaces, and without, in parks, public squares, shops. In 2007 counterproductions produced and co-curated a large-scale exhibition, SHIBBOLETH (Dilston Grove, CGP London) and in 2008 international project exchange PAVILION (Art Caucasus, Tbilisi). counterproductions also produced a twenty-four month programme with decentrederspace (Decentrederspace - Marseille-Provence 2013/14, France/UK). Since 2015 he has been Director of the collective artist-led project InspiralLondon, producing and curating an array of artistic performances, interventions, festivals and expositions across London. He is currently exploring live sound, and the intersection of art and urban ecology, particularly aspects of our Watery Commons. https://www.inspirallondon.com . https://charliefox.org
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Ingrid Plum
Still Life
Towards a new language of qualifying descriptors of listening states.
An online interactive AV work where viewers observe, engage with and participate in creating a foundation of new language for describing the various listening states and the attributes of these different states.
Attendees will be asked to sign up in advance and peruse a series of questions and prompts. The audio and visuals of the work focus on content that extends listening states, within the existing canon of: deep listening (Oliveros); reduced listening (Schaeffer); Critical Listening & Analytical Listening (Moylan); and, Listening-In-Search (Truax).
Together attendees will focus on developing a new language, or terms, for listening states that are pertinent to our current existence within both the pandemic and further developments in listening and sound production, and will investigate the impact online compression, choice of listening hardware and surrounding environments have for the viewer inengaging with these sounds and videos.
Ingrid Plum (UK/DK) is a singer and composer who uses her voice with extended technique, improvisation, field recordings, percussion and electronics. Described by The Guardian as “gorgeously atmospheric vocal techniques woven around field recordings & electronics” she has performed and exhibited internationally since 2002, creating work that combines Folk Music, Contemporary Classical Music and Sound Art.
Incorporating her research into folk traditions with field recordings, and studying directly with Meredith Monk, her recent performances have been described as “succinct and nourishing... a luxuriant space between almost excessive precision and looser improvisation" by The Wire. Her work has been featured in The Quietus, reviewed by The Wire, played by Late Junction, BBC Radio 3, and performed live in session at Maida Vale Studios. Plum was commissioned for International Women’s Day 2019 by The Verb, BBC Radio 3. Recently, her self-soothing sculpture, sound and scenes series ‘Dulme’ featured on Radio 3’s Unclassified.
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Dawn Scarfe
Navigating Remote Soundscapes
Given that there is no ‘land’ in soundscape (Schafer 1967), how do we orient ourselves when we listen to sounds from remote, unseen places? This listening session and workshop explores live ‘open microphones’ from the ‘Acoustic Commons’ network. These audio streams are tuned to the ambience of particular places, and positioned as ‘intangible resources’ to be shared with listeners elsewhere. So what might we make of these resources, individually and collectively?
We will experiment with different ways of identifying and describing our personal responses to the sound of distant places. We will consider how the specific technical means of engagement might impact on our listening. And we will explore whether the practice of listening together to remote streams might, over time, become a route into new understandings of the environment.
NB. All attendees will need a pair of headphones.
Dawn Scarfe’s work involves tuning into things. She uses devices such as ‘bivvy broadcasts’ and ‘listening glasses’ to explore fragile connections between people and places. She co-curates SoundCamp: an annual international festival of sound and ecology with a base at Stave Hill in Rotherhithe, and Reveil: a live, crowd sourced, 24hr broadcast of daybreak sound. Other collaborations include remote exchanges with B-PLOT (NY) and Jiyeon Kim (SEL).
Her compositions have been aired on BBC Radio 3 and Resonance FM. She has shown work at Café Oto, Union Chapel, Tate Modern, Full of Noises, Q02, ZKM, La Casa Encendida, Museumquartier Vienna, and New Mart Seoul. Residencies include an 'Embedded' programme with Sound and Music and Forestry Commission England. She has contributed texts to Performance Research, Uniformbooks, Leonardo, Soundscape, and Environmental Sound Artists (Oxford University Press). She is a visiting lecturer at London College of Communication.
www.dawnscarfe.co.uk . www.soundtent.org
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Session Contact/Queries:
Helen Frosi | SoundFjord
With thanks to:
Those facilitating, leading, and chairing sessions.
Department of Music, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Sussex Humanities Lab, University of Sussex.
Curated by: John Drever, Alice Eldridge, and Helen Frosi.
All activities are supported with CHASE cohort development funding.