Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 27. Issue 27 Issue 27

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  Sonic Politics: Sonority, Territoriality, and Violence in Urban Cultural Practices in Brazil (2020) author(s): Pedro Silva Marra and Thaise Valentim Madeira published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  In this paper we build upon Gumbrecht’s definition of violence as all acts and all forms of behavior that occupy or block spaces through bodies, against the resistance of other bodies, in order to explore the relationship between sound and violence. Examined within a broader context, it may reveal how conflict and disputes are – as much as acts of exchanging and bonding – engines of society.
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  Navegando hacia un sur sonoro: Two Sound Stories From South America (2020) author(s): Leandro Pisano published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  As a moving and expanding terrain, sound art in South America is a research, application and sharing environment for a work developed by at least three decades of artists who have experimented with methods and processes in which sound intersects with digital technologies and with unconventional approaches to listening. The text presented here focuses specifically on two works produced within this extended context of practices, which offer many types of sound narration in which different elements emerge connected to the complexity of the levels of listening, even political in the South: Temporal de Santa Rosa by Brian Mackern, a recording and installation project that reinterprets popular, religious and traditional elements in a post-digital key and Antartica 1961-1996, an installation by Alejandra Pérez Núñez that investigates the imperceptibility of the political processes of appropriation of the Antarctic territory in recent decades by part of nation states.
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  The City of Noise: an Approach to the Multiple Senses of Sound in Buenos Aires (2020) author(s): Facundo Petit de Murat and Martina Di Tullio published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  In this article we propose a historical approach to noise in Buenos Aires during the first half of the twentieth century. During this period, Buenos Aires consolidated itself materially and symbolically as a modern city. Through the study of historical documents, we identified different meanings of noise in relation to progress, health, culture, silence, space, and time. The main argument is that, at first, social imaginary associated noise to progress; however, this view rapidly changed in the search for an ideal of relative silence. In this process, some specific sonic practices started being classified as uncivilized. In this sense, the modern imaginary? delineates the boundaries of what is acoustically tolerable; this produces human subjects perceived as morally inferior, whose practices must be legally regulated. This is the context for the emergence of devices aimed at controlling and mitigating urban noise: legal norms and measuring systems that intend to regulate – albeit inefficiently – the sonic habitus.
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  Sound and Politics. Shaping Current Artistic Practices in Latin America (2020) author(s): Lukas Kühne published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  In some ways, the current political landscape of Latin America seems to mirror the condition of the world today. However, the impact achieved by the collective creativity of the pueblo, its communitarian understanding and acting, should never be underestimated. Nevertheless, Latin America does not seem to shy away from complexity or change. Without wanting to idealize, this trait can also be seen to work within arte sonoro's current artistic practices and manifestations. These subjective observations are based on my 15 years of work as an artist, curator and academic at the State University UdelaR (Universidad de la República) in Montevideo with a focus on arte sonoro in Uruguay.
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  Fists Up: Orchestrating Silence in Mexico City’s Post-Earthquake Rescuing Activities (2020) author(s): Elisa Corona Aguilar published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  On 9 September 2017, an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale hit Mexico City, causing the collapse of more than fifty buildings and damaging many others. As the usual urban soundscape intensified with the general chaos, the collapsed buildings and their vicinities were filled with new, unusual loudness, but there was also silence, partial and momentary. It was a hope for survivors, a call to listen again and again when there were sounds of life among the ruins. Fists raised up in the air became the generalized call for silence, a way to communicate both attention and pause in the activity around a specific place. As the media spread images of the fists up and how this signal created silence, its layered meanings became present. Through a series of interviews with participants and witnesses of the rescue activities and a compilation of journalistic text and images, I will trace the brief history and transformation of the fists up gesture, and I will explore the implications of orchestrating silence in emergency circumstances.
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  Materials of Sound II (2019) author(s): Caleb Kelly published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  This is the second issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies focused on the Materials of Sound (see issue no. 16). At the heart of these two issues is something of a twist in sonic thinking that sees the authors thinking about sound as more than sound, the opposite of Cage’s dictum of letting sound be itself – as hearing sound as sound. Instead, the materials that produce the sounds under investigation are understood as being more than the sounds that they create. Sound is not heard as innocent, pure, or transparent but rather as a part of a political ecology in which it is deeply linked to various histories and ecologies that form and hold the materials of any sound’s making.
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