Journal of Sonic Studies

About this portal
The portal is used to publish contributions for the online OA Journal of Sonic Studies, the storage of A/V materials, and the storage of previous issues.
contact person(s):
Marcel Cobussen 
,
Vincent Meelberg 
url:
http://sonicstudies.org/about
Recent Issues
Recent Activities
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Home page JSS
(2025)
author(s): Journal of Sonic Studies
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Home page of the Journal of Sonic Studies
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Editorial: Sounding the Contradictions in and of the (Post-)Soviet Realm
(2025)
author(s): Vadim Keylin
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Editorial: Sounding the Contradictions in and of the (Post-)Soviet Realm
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Warbound: Collective Audio Streaming from Ukraine
(2025)
author(s): Olya Zikrata
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Russia’s war of aggression is a multidimensional process of conquest that expands its time and space through sound. As Russian forces continue their advance into Ukraine, seizing Ukrainian territories both “horizontally” and “vertically,” as warfare scholar Svitlana Matviyenko (2024) has argued, Ukrainians across the country find themselves living in the sonic expanse of Russian assault. This research paper refers to this experience as one of warbound, of a (sonically) lived relation to war. To explore this relation and situated relationality it may entail, I turn to the work of Ukrainian sound artists and practitioners who participated in collective audio streaming, seeking to recast the Ukrainian testimony of the Russian invasion as a contingent truth claim. The paper examines the 2022 iteration of the audio stream project Listen Live, constitutive to the Land To Return, Land To Care research-creation laboratory. The project is studied in the scope of its testimonial reach and activist pursuit, as well as its humanist and posthumanist performativity.
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JSS TOCs
(2025)
author(s): Journal of Sonic Studies
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Table of contents JSS issues
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The Chanting Flute: Uncovering Russian Orthodox and Shamanic Sounds in Sofia Gubaidulina's ...The Deceitful Face of Hope and of Despair (2005)
(2025)
author(s): Phoebe Grace Robertson
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
In the early years of the Soviet era, the music of two Russian faith traditions was forced into the shadows. Siberian shamans preserved chants and folk knowledge despite intense persecution, and Russian Orthodox monks preserved early forms of plainchant in remote monasteries away from the watchful eye of the government. Sofia Gubaidulina (b. 1931), herself a member of the richly-historied and often-marginalized Tatar people, became a practicing Russian Orthodox Christian in the 1960s. During the 1970s, she began performing improvisations with her ensemble Astraea, familiarizing herself with many instruments used by Siberian shamans. Her references to shamanism continued to increase among her concert-hall compositions over the following decades.
As a new generation began to embrace the freedom to part from state-sponsored atheism during the 1990s and 2000s, shamanic chanting and Russian Orthodox Znamenny chant experienced a renaissance of practice and scholarly interest. Gubaidulina responded with her music: in her 2005 flute concerto …The Deceitful Face of Hope and of Despair, Gubaidulina’s flute soloist takes on the role of chanter. Drawing on Tia DeNora’s research in the sociology of concerto forms, Kofi Agawu’s framework of musical “topics,” and the composer’s own reflections on the concerto metaphor, this article analyzes how Gubaidulina frames the solo flutist as Siberian shaman and Russian Orthodox cantor within subsequent episodes of this concerto. In this way, the soloist “speaks” through the music of these faith traditions that remained underground for much of Gubaidulina’s adult life.
…The Deceitful Face of Hope and of Despair is a flute concerto deserving of its title, demonstrating the dynamic potential of works by post-Soviet composers to contend with the sociological tensions that affect any individual whose cultural, ethnic, or spiritual identity has been the target of discriminatory policies.
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Intermediality And Text-to-Sound Transmutations. Interview with Maria Vilkovisky and Ruthia Jenrbekova of krëlex zentre
(2025)
author(s): Vadim Keylin
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Maria Vilkovisky is a poetess, musician, artist, and curator born in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She graduated from the Kazakh State Conservatory as a violist, worked in the opera house orchestra, studied at the “Musagethes” literary school for writers in Almaty and at the curatorial summer school in Moscow. She is co-founder of a long-term para-institutional project called Krëlex zentre (together with Ruthia Jenrbekova), and from 2011–2014 she ran an art space in Almaty. She lives and works in Almaty and Vienna.
Ruthia Jenrbekova is an artist and researcher from Almaty, Kazakhstan. She holds an MA in ecology and works as an intermedia cultural organizer. She is co-founder of Krëlex zentre together with Maria Vilkovisky. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and lives and works in Almaty and Vienna. Her fields of interest: queer ecology, material semiotics, arts-based methodologies, transfeminism.
Krëlex zentre is a paranormal art institution that builds on cultural traditions of intermixed planetary diasporas, develops inclusive aesthetics, and promotes queer cosmo-politics.
This interview by poet and Sound Studies scholar Vadim Keylin took place from March to April 2024 via Google Docs and has been edited for clarity. Literature references were added during the editing process.