How do the Balkans sound?
How soundscapes relate to memories?
How sounds exert power?
Memories and powers are not only a matter of social representations and cultural discourses. They entail and produce sensorialities, perceptions, environments, ambiances. They are embodied and experienced. Beyond their ephemeral appearance, sounds constitute a major feature here. They imply forms of perception, acts of judgement, ecological milieus, political stakes. Moreover, sounds are both a mode of knowledge and creation.
Taking the Balkans as a lab, this seminar-workshop explores the potentialities of sound
issues for renewing the approaches of memory and power, by:
- Gathering scholars and artists
- Combining research and creation
- Imagining future networks and projects
It progresses through five sessions:
- Sonic regimes and ideologies
- Soundscapes of/as memory
- Sound intimacies and agencies
- Inquiring and writing with sounds
- Sonic creations, sonic performances
Every session is composed of an input talk and short presentations, including collective
listening and discussions. Each talk is accompanied by a sound track, forming a playlist
with plural, heterogeneous and sometimes intriguing sound pieces, as a kind of aural preseminar
dealing with research and creation. Everybody is invited to address not only a topic,
but processes, methodologies, ways-of-doing, frames of research and creation, intentions,
questions, proposals…
Not open to the public, this seminar-workshop is moreover a collective experience of
brainmixing.
Arriving at the École française d'Athènes