This spring semester 2023, I am on research leave. As a Senior Fellow at CINEPOETICS – Center for Advanced Film Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, I mainly work on book publications as well as participate in workshops and give talks. My colleagues here asked me three questions about my research. You can also read my three answers as a kind of written self-portrait.

In a few words, can you tell us about your current research interest?

For some time now, memes in all their crazy abundance have dominated public and political discourse in mediatized and networked societies all over the planet – for better or for worse. Yet their sonic and temporal structure has been mostly ignored in comparison to the text-image combinations they offer. However, with the emergence of TikTok in 2016 and the use of parodies, remixes, reworkings, and musical sampling, it has become clear that sound and music are an integral part of meme culture and all “unruly media” (Vernallis) around us. The new genre that emerges from this viral vortex is what I tentatively call “meme music”: it resists a whole set of common characteristics of a musical genre while painfully adhering to others. In my research, I ask myself and others: How does meme music succeed in using its consumers as incubators, “memecubators”, so to speak? How does meme music actually manage to make its impressive contributions to politics and pedagogy, to art and music? Can the craft of “mememagic” be understood as musical practice in a narrower sense? At what point does meme music become a sonic vernacular of our present?

How do you relate the term poiesis to your work?

After studying comparative literature in the 1990s, my early research focused on poiesis in the form of a generative theory of artifacts. In my first three monographs, I examined a range of poetological approaches in 20th-century literature, visual art, music, film, and design. Using detailed work analysis, field research, and media phenomenological studies, these monographs proposed to understand the process of creating an artwork as occurring in three different arenas: improvisation and combinatorics generate the formats and mannerisms of modernist artworks through a variety of aleatoric games (“Das aleatorische Spiel,” 2000); artistic practices of reflection on driving forces, working environments, and the development of a form of movement within the genuinely material continuum of the work provide heuristic strategies for moving from a decidedly arbitrary, improvised sketch to a more coherently structured work (“Heuristik,” 2005); and the contemporary tectonics of public presentation and publication employ and shape creators’ identities as media personae, including their performative media narratives, and place all of this on media stages to make their works accessible to a wider audience (“Intimität und Medialität,” 2012). This early research then led me to focus further on generative practices within sound art, sound design, and music production.

Which film or other audiovisual format has resonated with you lately and why?

Recently, an image by German photographer Marius Michusch was quickly and widely shared across all social media platforms. Taken in the coal-mining region of the Rhineland, at the site of the climate protest against the relocation and factual destruction of the village of Lützerath, it shows three police officers, heavily armored like black stormtroopers, that are protecting the gigantic metal cog of a mining operation that can only be partially seen behind them, looming giantly. Michusch’s photo immediately became a meme of the struggle against a violent culture of fossil fuel extraction and the combustion engine, a meme of resistance against the capitalist climate catastrophe. Although not an audiovisual format in the strict sense of the word, this image gained viral traction because it immediately captured the cinematic imagination of readers and viewers who recognized in this photo a scene from George Lucas’ “Star Wars” or Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune”: the overbearing, thanaticist Empire destroys the very substance of life in its greed for extraction, massive territorial gains, and the greatest possible financial and military revenues that alone keep the empire alive. “Thanaticism: a social order which subordinates the production of use values to the production of exchange value, to the point that the production of exchange value threatens to extinguish the conditions of existence of use value.” (Wark) Now, however you interpret the dynamics of this social and generational conflict, “mememagic” has once again worked wonders: it has transformed a rather random picture on rough terrain into a merchandise-friendly and sound-driven blockbuster movie. Can’t you hear the massive sub-bass of the metal cog in the glare of the paramilitary police operation?

Whenever I attend the live set, even though I am surrounded by my closest friends, I’m dealing with a sense of isolation. Shouldn’t music be what empowers the sense of social identity?

I am hard of hearing as well as an electronic music enthusiast. I have always been an observer and I have always seen that my companions’ reactions to the music we listen to together are different from mine. I tried with all my might to feel what they felt – with poor results. Which made me sad and irritated. Would I never be able to fully appreciate the aesthetics of sound? Eventually, I began to look more deeply into my experiences.
I noticed that in certain parts of music works, the only thing I was able to perceive was the rhythmical bass (I always started to get a little bored in these parts). However, upon deeper concentration, I realized that there are sounds behind the “rhythm”. Sounds that I can’t reach, as if they are behind a wall that I can’t tear down. Then, the wall itself came down, and I was met by a cascade of sounds – which I fully appreciated for the first time. I looked at my brother, who was standing next to me, looking unfazed. That’s when I realized that my perception of sound is not inferior, what is more sometimes it can be even more interesting than my companions’ one.

It occurred to me that my sense of isolation was due to the fact that instead of appreciating my experiences, I was striving for a perception of sound that is considered standard. In my experience, people often think that as a hearing impaired person, I just perceive music more quietly. I used to think so, too. Such a view of hearing loss evokes compassion – completely unnecessarily. Jonathan Sterne in his recent book Diminished Faculties: On Impairment (2022), explains that each of us has our hearing scarified* in some way. Our lifestyles, noisy cities, musical preferences, all leave a mark on our hearing. Some of the scarifications are considered disabilities, others no longer. So, we all hear the same piece of music differently, we are all
somehow alone with our experiences – and realizing that, may gather us together.

So why do we so hardly ever look at the difference in sound perception? Why do we fail to see the beauty that comes from the range of diversity in our experiences? Why do we strive for so-called perfection that no one can achieve? In my opinion, it stems from the fact that we don’t know how to talk about them. Our imagination appeals to experience. I believe that we won’t be able to understand and, moreover, talk about the idiosyncrasies of music perception until the differences are shown to us.

My solution is an experiment – an event in which participants will experience and debate how the reception of the same soundtrack changes according to different hearing conditions. These changes will be based on the results of audiograms of pre-selected individuals. You can see an example of such an audiogram in the graphic at the beginning of the post.

What possibilities would this knowledge open up for music composition and production? For design? For communication?

Stay tuned!
More info soon…

^{*Jonathan Sterne believes that terms Hearing Impairment or Hardness of Hearing are restrictive. Instead, he proposes the term Hearing Scarification, as a person’s hearing condition reflects their lifestyle.}

NOTE: Registration is now open. Click right here!

Sounds are ever present: They continue to envelop and move through you and me in every single moment. But what agencies drive those sounds, what sort of personae are performed, in historical periods as well as today or in the near future? What social relations occur as a result of sound? And how might our embodied experiences and sensibilities create new bodies of knowledge? 

To which forms of experiences with our bodies, with objects, within social relations and with peculiar situations and sensibilities might this lead? Which sonic fictions escort us and how do we listen with our sonic corpus?

In this four-day conference between September 13-16, 2022 researchers from the Sound Studies Lab at the University of Copenhagen and international scholars such as Andrey Smirnov, Jordan Lacey, and artists like Niels Lynne Løkkegaard invite you to explore these questions of an anthropology of sound.

The conference includes keynote lectures by Salomé Voegelin and Dylan Robinson, research workshops by Jenny Gräf Sheppard, Ania Mauruschat, and Giada Dalla Bontà, sound works and performances as well as roundtable discussions ​that contribute to the ​work on an Encyclopedia of Sound Studies, ​currently conceived by ​Michael Bull, ​​Holger Schulze, ​and Jennifer Stoever.​

Join us, the Sound Studies Lab, into these sonic experiments of sensing and thinking.

​

WHAT

SOUNDS

DO

New Directions in an

Anthropology of Sound

Date: Tuesday to Friday, September 13-16, 2022

Location: Rhythmic Music Conservatory Copenhagen, Leo Mathisens Vej 1, 1437 Copenhagen/Denmark

A Conference of the Sound Studies Lab at the University of Copenhagen, Department Arts & Cultural Studies – in collaboration with the Rhythmic Music Conservatory Copenhagen and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen.

Funded by Carlsbergfondet, the Rhythmic Music Conservatory Copenhagen, and the Department Arts & Cultural Studies, the research clusters Global Entanglements and Art & Earth at the University of Copenhagen.

​

These days the sixth volume in the Sound Studies Series (since 2008) is being published by Transcript Publishing:

Postcolonial Repercussions:

On Sound Ontologies and Decolonised Listening

Edited by Andi Schon and Johannes Salim Ismaiel-Wendt

You will encounter in this publication a series of exciting, groundbreaking and thoroughly original contributions e.g. by Marie Thompson, Pedro Oliveira, Shanti Suki Osman, Gilles Aubry, Birgit Abels, Henrique Souza Lima and many more!

Like the previous volumes, this publication in our book series explores and opens up another new area of research within Sound Studies:

And it does so in a way that allows readers to continue, sharpen, and advance their own investigations on a new level – and to bring them into conversation with relevant authors, artists, and researchers.

Many thanks to the great and dedicated editors for bringing together such a lively group of contributors and putting together such a great volume!

Thank you all for continuing to push the envelope of sound research….

What is sound art in the 21st century? Who are today’s performers, and what do they do to find and create sounds that make us listen, think, discuss, doubt, or imagine? What sounds have been made and presented recently to attract an audience of listeners, artists, fans, researchers and aficionados? How do genres of popular culture relate to sound art?

On June 9th, from 7pm we want to celebrate at Errant Sound in Berlin Kreuzberg the publication of a handbook that addresses precisely these questions: Sanne Krogh Groth and Holger Schulze’s “Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art” (2020). The 24 chapters by 37 authors from 13 countries examine a range of performances, installations and practices, including sound, listening and sensing.

Together with you, we wish to listen to three performances and presentations by Janine Eisenächer, Jeremy Woodruff and Laura Mello – and to explore the aspects of these works, and to discuss the current state of sound art in the 21st century with Elke Moltrecht, Rolf Großmann, Macon Holt, Sanne Krogh Groth and Holger Schulze.

Join us & let us listen to the handbook, let us explore the performers’ achievements together!

A book release evening for:

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art

Edited by Sanne Krogh Groth & Holger Schulze

Errant Sound, Rungestr. 20, 10179 Berlin

Thursday, June 9th, 2022

19:00 – 21:30 (doors 18:30)

Programme

18:30 Doors

19:00 „Voices-Castles-Clouds“ (Lecture Performance) by Laura Mello (BRA/Berlin)

19:20 What is Sound Art in the 21st Century?

With Elke Moltrecht (Berlin), Sanne Krogh Groth (Lund), Macon Holt (Copenhagen), Rolf Großmann (Lüneburg), Holger Schulze (Copenhagen)

20:00 Break, drinks, chats

20:15 „Klangkompost“ (presentations) by Jeremy Woodruff (Berlin)

20:30 What can Sound Art do?

With Jeremy Woodruff (Berlin), Laura Mello (BRA/Berlin) & Janine Eisenächer (Berlin)

21:00 „THING SOUNDS/ SOUND THINGS — An alphabet of sound-practical actions vol. 1“ (Sound Performance) by Janine Eisenächer (Berlin)

21:20 Drinks and chats

What is sound art in the 21st century? Who are today’s performers, and what do they do to find and create sounds that make us listen, think, discuss, doubt, or imagine?

What sounds have been made and presented recently to attract an audience of listeners, artists, fans, researchers and aficionados?

On Wednesday, 23rd of March 2022 we wish to celebrate in Copenhagen’s Statens Værksteder for Kunst two recent publications:

Lars Lundehave Hansen’s “20 Years of Sound Art” (2021) and Sanne Krogh Groth and Holger Schulze’s “The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art” (2020).

The box set and the handbook presented examine a range of performances, installations and practices, including sound, listening and sensing. Together with you, we want to explore the different aspects of both of these works.

We invite you to an exciting afternoon that delves into various aspects of sound art through talks with authors and researchers who contributed to both publications, as well as an artist talk and sound performance from Lars Lundehave Hansen.

Where: ‘Formeriet’, Statens Værksteder for Kunst, Strandgade 27 b, 1401 København

When: Wednesday March 23rd, 2022, kl. 17.00-19.00

Let us listen to the handbook together,
let’s read the record album in company!

“What do we want? Climate justice. When do we want it? Now!” Battle cries of climate change activists like that can be understood as evidence for the proposition that especially in recent years climate crisis and species extinction have become a sounding crisis. Responsible for this novel energizing sound of the crisis are – despite the long history of the green movement – in particular the climate activist movements Fridays for Future (FFF) with its female spokesperson Greta Thunberg and a majority of female activists, and Extinction Rebellion (XR). They started their protests in European metropolises in and around 2018; over the course of 2019, European climate activism transformed from a local and regional into a global, hybrid off- and online movement with allies and offshoots on every continent.

One of its most important allies’ are artists researching via the means of sound political and energetic alternatives to contemporary practices, institutions, rationalities, and sensibilities of western, capitalistic societies, which are of European origin. The lecture series is intended to spur the discussion about the potential of sound to uncover new analytical and methodological approaches and tools, which are needed to cope with the current climate crisis as the biggest threat to humanity.

The lecture and workshop series comprises two events in March 2022, which will be focusing on artistic, feminist, and new materialist approaches to the relationship of climate change and sonic agency.

March 10, 2022, 17:00 to 18:30, University of Copenhagen, Southern Campus, room 15a.0.13

Guest speaker: Dr. Åsa Helena Stjerna, Sound Artist and Artistic Researcher, Stockholm (S)

Sonic Visions of the Arctic:
Tracing Sound’s Inherent Agency

March 24, 2022, 17:00 to 18:30, University of Copenhagen, Southern Campus, room 15a.0.13

Prof. Dr. Salomé Voegelin, Sound Artist and Professor of Sound, London College of Communication, London University of the Arts (UK)

Listening to Wicked Problems:
Sound Studies as Transversal Studies

You can find more details on both lectures right here — on the project website of Sounding Crisis: Sonic Agency as Cognate Energies for Climate Action in Denmark/Greenland & Australia

Sonic fictions are everywhere: in conversations about vernacular culture, in music videos, sound art compositions, and on record sleeves; in everyday encounters with sonic experiences and in every single piece of writing about sound. Where one can find sounds one will also detect bits of fiction.

In 1998 music critic, DJ and video essayist Kodwo Eshun proposed this concept in his book “More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction”. Since that year I wanted to explore all the ramifications and repercussions of Eshun’s work. In 2020 Bloomsbury Academic published my little introduction, “Sonic Fiction“, to the wide variety of activist, political, epistemological, decolonial, social, and aesthetic interpretations and applications of sonic fiction in the last two decades.

For our evening on “HOW TO DO THINGS WITH SOUND?” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin on March 3rd, we invited three artists, curators, and scholars who will take you on a journey into some of the more unexpected sonic fictions of this or the last century:

Artist and scholar Ayesha Hameed discusses with me the activism and heuristics inherent to sonic fictions, with a special focus on her artistic practice and his thought figures. Curator and scholar Giada Dalla Bontà brings to the table the sonic fictions within underground sound art of the late Soviet Union. Marcela Lucatelli, composer and performer, presents to us sonic fictions as part of a new performance and composition. And scholar and artist Pedro Oliviera will safely guide us through this variety of thoughts and creations.

In this podcast, produced by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Giada Dalla Bontà and trace selected developmental lines of sonic fiction: in the final years of the Soviet Union, how did the subculture win over conceptual and real freedoms? Did a trail lead from occupied houses in Moscow and St. Petersburg to the Afrofuturism of Sun Ra and Missy Elliott? We follow the mythical language around the term coined by Kodwo Eshun and explore the potential of sounds and their narratives as a liberating force.

Join us, on Thursday, March 3rd, 2022, 8pm at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin for an evening on sonic fiction in the arts and in activism!

Tickets can be purchased right here.

On September 1st, Giada Dalla Bontà started to work at the University of Copenhagen as a PhD researcher within the Sound Studies Lab. In her project she investigates the role of experimental sonic practices in the non-official art circles of late Soviet Russia. Her guiding question is: What did the end of USSR sound like? This blogpost is her first on this website:

Sounding the Dissolution aims to fill a critical lacuna on an unexplored area of research, while also seeking to collect and preserve the heretofore unarchived material and testimonies. Being the first study dedicated to late Soviet underground sound art, the project aims to enrich and de-centralize a still Eurocentric field, while introducing Sound Studies and Sound Anthropology to the contemporary post-Soviet discourse. Beginning in the late 1970s-’91 in Russia, the project historically situates the impact of the decline of USSR ideology in order to identify the political significance of sound practices together with their concurrent cultural, artistic and sensorial ones.

A particular focus is given not only to the ability of sound to connect otherwise short-ranged underground circles and catalyze cross-pollination between artistic disciplines, but also to contribute to the erosion of political ideology in spite of its apolitical intention to solely ‘be and experience together’. This apparent political ambiguity is analyzed through the lens of cultural and political theory while interrogating the sensorial aspect of sonic experiences and the sonic fictions they generated through four case studies – ranging from conceptualist performative poetry to industrial rituals, electroacoustic experiments and the early raving culture.

This analysis also considers the role of corporeality and sonic fiction in sociopolitical dynamics, contemplating how ephemeral and idiosyncratic sonic experiences generate effects and affects in more tangible realms, even in contexts where unplugging from ideological dispositifs seems unimaginable. These dynamics of de- and re-territorializations from within the system allow to draw parallels and to expand the concepts of hypernormalization and Capitalist Realism in both synchronic and diachronic terms.

With the aim to establish the foundation for a future archive on late Soviet sound art, Sounding the Dissolution includes also primary sources such as audio interviews and fieldwork in order to deploy the concept of sonic fiction as both a tool and object of inquiry: besides considering the effects of affectivity and atmosphere, sonic fictions are examined as spaces of invention and desire-production; ultimately, processes able to de- and re-territorialize the empty yet inescapable rituals of hypernormalized dispositifs.