Listening is Action: A Soundwalk with Hildegard Westerkamp

In the sound documentary Listening is Action, the composer Hildegard Westerkamp engages in a conversation with Luis Velasco-Pufleau at her home in the city of Vancouver, which is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She talks us through her first field recordings and her soundwalking practice, her work at the Vancouver Co-operative Radio, and her participation in the World Soundscape Project, all of which started or took place in the 1970s. Furthermore, she takes us on soundwalks at places she used to go and record more than thirty years ago, such as those now called Kitsilano Beach and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and that constitute the sources for her soundscape works A Walk Through the City (1981) and Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989). This sound documentary is an invitation to listen more attentively to the multiple voices that inhabit our environments in order to imagine new, plural, and unforeseen realities. The sound work Listening is Action is enhanced by a written commentary in which Luis Velasco-Pufleau explores the radical relationality of listening and the connection between Westerkamp’s thinking with the work of Pauline Oliveros and Hannah Arendt. Finally, he engages with critical listening positionality in order to reflect on some of the limits and contradictions present in the sound documentary

Reflections on Music and Propaganda

In general, the concept of propaganda refers to a method as well as the symbolic object mobilized by it. Propaganda equally constitutes a particular type of communication that involves not only the mobilization of objects, but also of discourse, places, acts, and rituals. This essay employs the writings of Max Weber, Paul Ricœur, Jacques Ellul, and Jacques Rancière to analyze propaganda as a particular type of symbolic political dispositif linked to a specific performance and utterance context. I examine humanitarian songs as a propaganda tool in democracy, and show the conditions and the limits of their mobilization through their contextualization. I argue that the link between music and propaganda could be defined as the willingness of a particular power or organized opposition to control the symbolic and emotional dimension of musical works. Through giving the music a meaning in this way, they try to impose a certain social order or to invalidate other possible political configurations of reality. I discuss the contradiction between the specific polysemy of musical works and the fictional construction of reality produced by propaganda, and conclude that the political dimension of music should not necessarily be reduced to the propaganda dispositif. These musical works require consideration of the possibilities offered through fiction in contexts of specific representation, as well as the political dimension of collaborative musical practices

Listening to Terror Soundscapes: Sounds, Echoes, and Silences in Listening Experiences of Survivors of the Bataclan Terrorist Attack in Paris

Listening experiences provide valuable insights in understanding the meaning of events and shaping the way we remember them afterwards. Listening builds relationships with places and subjectivities. What kinds of relationships and connections are built through listening during an event of extreme violence, such as a terrorist attack? This article examines the relationships between sound, space, and affect through an acoustemology of Bataclan survivors’ sensory experiences of both the terrorist attack and its aftermath. I draw on the testimonies of nine survivors of the Bataclan terrorist attack in Paris, which unfolded on the evening of 13 November 2015 during a rock concert, as well as interviews with three parents of survivors and victims. This article explores how the study of listening experiences and aural memories of survivors contributes to understanding mnemonic dynamics and processes of recovery related to sound following violent events

Listening is Action: A Soundwalk with Hildegard Westerkamp

In the sound documentary Listening is Action, the composer Hildegard Westerkamp engages in a conversation with Luis Velasco-Pufleau at her home in the city of Vancouver, which is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She talks us through her first field recordings and her soundwalking practice, her work at the Vancouver Co-operative Radio, and her participation in the World Soundscape Project, all of which started or took place in the 1970s. Furthermore, she takes us on soundwalks at places she used to go and record more than thirty years ago, such as those now called Kitsilano Beach and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and that constitute the sources for her soundscape works A Walk Through the City (1981) and Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989). This sound documentary is an invitation to listen more attentively to the multiple voices that inhabit our environments in order to imagine new, plural, and unforeseen realities. The sound work Listening is Action is enhanced by a written commentary in which Luis Velasco-Pufleau explores the radical relationality of listening and the connection between Westerkamp’s thinking with the work of Pauline Oliveros and Hannah Arendt. Finally, he engages with critical listening positionality in order to reflect on some of the limits and contradictions present in the sound documentary

Stridentisme et antifascisme dans le Mexique postrévolutionnaire

International audienceDans le cadre de la commémoration du bicentenaire du début de l’Indépendance du Mexique (16 septembre 1810) et du centenaire du début de la Révolution Mexicaine (20 novembre 1910), le gouvernement mexicain a réalisé durant l’année 2010 un grand nombre de manifestations politiques, artistiques et scientifiques à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur du pays. Cet article analyse certains des enjeux politiques de l’historiographie officielle mexicaine en rendant hommage à deux mouvements artistiques du Mexique postrévolutionnaire engagés dans la transformation de la société de leur temps : le Stridentisme, seule avant-garde radicale du Mexique, et la Ligue des Ecrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires (LEAR), organisation d’intellectuels antifascistes.În anul 2010 Mexicul a celebrat prin diverse programe cultural-artistice bicentenarul independenţei sale (1810) şi centenarul revoluţiei mexicane (1910). Aceste manifestări au avut, printre altele, şi efectul unei reveniri asupra istoriografiei oficiale referitoare la cu-rentele artistice postrevoluţionare. În acest context, prezentul articol abordează tendinţele artistice de după revoluţia mexicană, care sunt date uitării de critica de artă contemporană: curentul de artă avangardistă numit " stridentism " (1921-1927) şi mişcarea promovată de Liga scriitorilor şi artiştilor revoluţionari (LEAR), care reuneşte o mare parte din inte-lectuali în jurul ideii antifasciste (1934-1938). Manifestând o accentuată angajare pentru transformarea societăţii din epoca postrevolutionară, aceste curente artistice reprezintă, azi, un prilej de înţelegere a diversităţii fenomenelor culturale din Mexicul contemporan, mai cu seamă a influenţelor conceptuale ale LEAR, care aderând treptat la ideea realismului socialist, cade sub dominaţia propagandei comuniste şi a dogmatismului ideologic

Quand les célébrités s’exhibent : régimes de visibilités et abandon de la justice sociale dans les chansons humanitaires

Ce chapitre étudie les régimes de visibilité de l’Afrique et de l’action humanitaire mobilisés dans les chansons humanitaires. A partir de l'analyse de la chanson Des ricochets et la campagne de communication du collectif Paris-Africa, il s'agit d'explorer ce que ces chansons nous disent à propos de l’exhibition progressive des célébrités "humanitaires" depuis le milieu des années 1980 et des transformations des discours sur les droits humains dans la seconde partie du XXe siècle. Plaidant pour la seule aide d’urgence aux victimes, l’exposition médiatique des artistes "humanitaires" cadre notre regard exclusivement sur le droit de certains êtres humains à la survie. De ce fait, les chansons humanitaires ont eu une importance certaine dans la légitimation du renoncement progressif aux idéaux de justice sociale au profit de la banalisation néolibérale des inégalités matérielles et l’aspiration au seul droit à la subsistance

Composing for the State. Music in Twentieth-Century Dictatorships

Dir. Esteban Buch, Igor Contreras Zubillaga et Manuel Deniz Silva. Abingdon: Ashgate,2016.224

On Music and Political Concerns: An Interview with Hilda Paredes

En esta entrevista, la compositora mexicana Hilda Paredes habla de las preocupaciones poliÌticas y eÌticas que estaÌn implicadas en su muÌsica. Expone sus ideas sobre la relacioÌn de su muÌsica con la poesiÌa indiÌgena mexicana, la conexioÌn entre cuestiones de geÌnero y la justicia social, el peso del racismo, la experiencia corporal de la violencia, la destruccioÌn del lenguaje, y la relacioÌn que tiene su proceso creativo con preocupaciones medioambientales. Abordamos estas cuestiones en relacioÌn con varias de sus obras, en especial Kamex ch'ab (2010), El Palacio imaginado (2003), La tierra de la miel (2013), Harriet (2018) y Rainy days (2019). El resultado es una exploracioÌn de coÌmo aborda en cada obra las cuestiones mencionadas mediante la construccioÌn de redes de eventos, lugares y personas

Music, Noise and Conflict: Sociotechnical Imaginaries, Acoustic Agency and Ontological Assumptions about Sound

How are sociotechnical imaginaries and ontological assumptions about sound related to affect and conflict spaces? What do sociotechnical imaginaries tell us about social and individual control of sonic environments? Why is it important to think about ontological assumptions of sound when recovering aural experiences of the past in archives? The three books under consideration in this review article address these questions in different ways. They explore the use of media devices to produce affect and social relations, the role of categories of music and noise in the control of urban spaces, and the politics of archival sounds and silence

One says Mexico: The Mexican Soundscapes of Stefano Scodanibbio

This essay discusses one of the most ambitious and personal art project of the Italian double-bassist and composer Stefano Scodanibbio (1956-2012): his Hörspiel One says Mexico. In the composition of this work, Scodanibbio used three main types of materials in heterogeneous sound spaces: fragments of pieces for solo guitar or two guitars, which he composed during his stays in Mexico; soundscapes recorded in Mexico during many of his trips; and the texts of twenty-four foreign writers about Mexico (read by a variety of speakers). The three elements are mixed in the work, which consists of four contrasting movements with independent formal structures, in the manner of a sonata cycle. One says Mexico is an intimate tribute to Mexico, a sound portrait, and a musical means of remembering a country that the composer loved and where he decided to die