Thursday 10th June
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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Future Listening
What is to become of vibration? What is its future receptacle? These two sessions extend tentacles into possible aural futures, via specially designed convivial, collaborative and multisensory activities.
How might the world sound if biology and technology meld? What does the radio spectrum have to do with how, where and what we listen to? What is the cityscape saying to us and how is its language encoded in material? What novel possibilities (will) allow us to be heard, to better communicate with (more than human) others?
These sessions will offer a speculative exploration of the future(s) of listening: entwined, networked and multimodal.
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SESSION SIX
Amina Abbas-Nazari
Speculative Listening
Amina explores poetic qualities of voice, through sounding and listening, as a material for research and artistic practises to critically investigate cutting edge technologies, while also speculating on new forms of communication mediated by technology. Her practise utilises sound, performance and objects with elements of interaction to allow public participation.
In this session, she will present her practise-based work including ‘Speculative Listening’ a participatory workshop and listening experience that explores machine and technology enabled listening. The work asks how we'd like to be heard by technology and how we want to listen with technology. Also exploring the future / alternative possibilities enabled for communication and understanding the world through speculative / emerging listening technology.
Amina Abbas-Nazari is a designer and researcher currently undertaking a Techne funded PhD in the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art, in partnership with IBM, around the themes of Artificial Intelligence and Voice.
She is also a trained singer, performing internationally with a number of choirs for over 20 years, as well as regularly for artists' projects including at Zabludowicz Collection, Tate Britain, The Royal Academy of Arts, London and Kunstverein, Hamburg.
Amina is interested in the social, cultural and ethical implications of emerging technology. She employs voice as a medium, exploiting vocal potential to devise stories about alternate arrangements for society via design, technology and politics. Amina has presented her work at the London Design Festival, Milan Furniture Fair, Venice Architecture Biennial, Critical Media Lab, Switzerland, Litost Gallery, Prague, Harvard University, America, Queen Mary University, Barbican Centre and V&A museum.
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Sasha Engelmann (Royal Holloway University)
Planetary Radio
Like many other media, radio is not neutral. It is a carrier, a commons, a host, for political, exclusionary and asymmetrical practices. This hybrid talk and listening session will explore which environmental-climatic dynamics, intersectional modes of listening and sonic possible worlds travel around the planet through the radio spectrum. Using sounds from personal archives and recordings of feminist interventions in radio space, this talk will investigate how long-distance radio signals touch landscapes, bodies, and atmospheres, while imagining what a more equitable planetary radio might sound like.
NB. This information has been updated since the original ticket release. Planetary Radio will now be presented instead of Satellite Séance.
Sasha Engelmann is Lecturer in GeoHumanities at Royal Holloway University of London, where she co-directs the GeoHumanities Creative Commissions programme and teaches at the intersection of geography and the arts and humanities.
Sasha’s scholarship explores interdisciplinary, feminist and critical-creative approaches to environmental sensing. She collaborates with artists and activists to investigate different ways of tracing, monitoring and engaging with our environments that reach beyond models of capture and enumeration. Fascinated by cultural imaginaries of the atmosphere, Sasha examines the role of art in crafting new narratives of atmospheric politics and aerial life. She is an active member of the international Aerocene Community, and a co-founder (with Sophie Dyer) of the feminist weather sensing project open-weather.
www.sashaengelmann.com . www.open-weather.community . www.aerocene.org
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Shirley Djukurnã Krenak with Nathaniel Mann
In this session the objective is to present aspects of the Krenak culture and its direct intersection with healing processes via indigenous ancestry. Listening is an extremely important skill for the indigenous peoples of Brazil, considering a broader meaning of the term. Listening is the possibility of expanding our conceptual capabilities and understanding the multiple relationships in which we are inserted. And this involves humans and other-than-humans in amerindian philosophies, which the session will try to demonstrate through Shirley's experience of amerindian chants and sounds (all from the Krenak culture). However, one cannot fail to mention that all these amerindian experiences suffer varied interferences and we will be experiencing it in this session, highlighting the multiple (and sometimes negative) connections to western society. The ultimate goal, therefore, is to provide an experiment with possible worlds through listening, realising how amerindian peoples understand and practice their relationships with many entities.
For more information about the Krenak people, watch this recording (in portuguese - other language captions available) and visit this website.
João Vitor de Freitas Moreira provides textual translation for this session.
Live translation will be by Thiego Jesus.
Shirley Krenak is an indigenous woman of Brazil. She belongs to the Krenak people, a native group of the state of Minas Gerais. She has been working on many areas related to the native culture since she was 13 years old. Alongside her brothers, she fights for land rights, ancestry rights and against the violence of the State in opposition to indigenous people. She holds a degree in social communication and currently she develops projects relating to the practice of healing through ancestry and how the native culture of the Krenak people can help change the devastation against mother-earth. In times of the Anthropocene, what she has been stating is that we are in need of a collective way of thinking, acting and listening (including humans and other-than-humans in it). This is part of the philosophy of the indigenous peoples of Brazil and she is putting that into practice in schools around the native land and in the national scenario with Articulation of the Indigenous People of Brazil (APIB) and the Shirley Krenak Institute.
Nathaniel Mann is a singer, composer, broadcaster and sound artist, known for site specific performance, radio documentaries and music and tours with experimental folk trio Dead Rat Orchestra. In 2017 Nathaniel began collaborating with Indigenous Brazilian filmmaker Takumā Kuikuro, he has subsequently collaborated closely with traditional singer Akari Waura, filmmaker Piratá Waura and the entire Wauja Community of the Xingu in the restoration of the sacred cave of Kamukuwaká. During the Kamukuwaká project Nathaniel met Shirley Djukurnã Krenak, and their shared passion for sound set the scene for a future dialogue, which is now unfolding around this session.
João Vitor de Freitas Moreira is a PhD Candidate at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He holds a masters degree in legal anthropology and a BA in Law. Currently he conducts field research with indigenous people, and he is interested in legal anthropology, amerindian rights, ethnology, access to justice and conflict resolution concerning indigenous peoples. He works alongside Shirley Krenak in the Shirley Krenak Institute and collaborates with the development of projects regarding cultural rights, healing through ancestry and others.
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Session Contact/Queries:
Helen Frosi | SoundFjord
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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.
Cover image: Gerd Altmann | Pixabay
All activities are supported with CHASE cohort development funding.
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image credit: Gerd Altmann | Pixabay