Auralities: Recent Episodes
Cambridge University
The ‘Auralities’ research network is concerned with investigating, debating and understanding practices of audition, broadly conceived. Our heading is necessarily in the plural: practices of audition are shaped by wider cultural practices that shift across different times and places; differences between ‘hearing’ and listening’ have preoccupied philosophers and scientists alike; and even definitions of sound itself presume a normalized baseline of human sound perception (traditionally cited as 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz), averaged across large populations. On an individual level, too, pluralities prevail, as audition is typically understood as a psychoacoustic process that involves two ears – ‘binaurality’ – in which sound, space and time become closely entangled. Our seminar will explore these plural facets of sound, hearing and listening by bringing together scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines across the humanities, social and natural sciences.
In particular, we aim to extend the current domains of sound studies chronologically, geographically, biologically, and culturally, to question assumptions about shared norms of hearing/listening. We are thus especially interested, somewhat paradoxically, in what we might understand as a post-aural moment in sound studies, where literal audition or the presence of audible sound are no longer presumed as a necessary part of aurality.
To join our email list, contact Dr Andrea Grant
Administrative assistance: networks@crassh.cam.ac.uk
Speaker
Aura Satz (London-based artist) in conversation with Harriet Loeffler (New Hall Art Collection) and Mina Gorji (Auralities Network)
About the Speaker Aura Satz will be discussing her recent work and reflect on her practice as a sound artist.
Aura Satz's work encompasses film, sound, performance and sculpture. Her work centres on the trope of ventriloquism in order to conceptualise a distributed, expanded and shared notion of voice. Works are made in conversation and use dialogue as both method and subject matter. Satz has made a body of work centred on various sound technologies in order to explore notation systems, code and encryption, and ways in which these might resist standardisation, generating new soundscapes, and in turn new forms of listening and attending to the other.
She has performed, exhibited and screened her work nationally and internationally, including Tate Modern (2012), BFI Southbank (2012), the New York Film Festival (2013), Tate Britain (2014), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (2014-15), Hayward Gallery (2014-15), Whitechapel Gallery (2016), Sydney Biennale (2016), NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo (2017), Lentos Museum, Linz (2017-18), SFMOMA, San Francisco (2017/18/19), High Line Art (2018), the Rotterdam Film Festival (2013-20), MoMA NY (2020), Kadist San Francisco (2020) and Sharjah Art Foundation (2020). She has presented solo exhibitions at the Wellcome Collection, London (2010-11); the Hayward Gallery project space, London (2013); John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2015-16); Dallas Contemporary, Texas (2016); George Eastman Museum, Rochester (2015) among others. From 2009-10, she was artist-in-residence at the Ear Institute, UCL, funded by the Wellcome Trust. In 2012, she was shortlisted for the Samsung Art+ Award and the Jarman Award. Between 2015-2016 she was awarded a Leverhulme artist's residency. Her films are distributed by LUX.
Speakers Vahni Capildeo (Trinidadian British poet)
Xasan Daahir 'Weedhsame' (Somali poet)
Martin Orwin (Linguist and Translator, University of Naples "L'Orientale")
Abstract This session will explore the poetics of place and displacement through the poetry of Vahni Capildeo and Xasan Daahir Ismaacil ‘Weedhsame’. Vahni, a Trinidadian-British poet, and Weedhsame, a Somali poet based in Hargeysa, will each read from their recent work, with a translation by Martin Orwin. The reading will be followed by a discussion of the intersection of sound, listening, migration and place (including in translation), as well as ample time for questions and conversations with the poets.
About the Speakers Vahni Capildeo (FRSL) is a Trinidadian-British poet whose writing explores the poetic imagination’s ability to encounter, try on, and transform other selves and other voices. Capildeo's poetry is marked by intensely engaged experimentation, ranging from the sparse forms and calligrams of Simple Complex Shapes (Shearsman, 2015) to the extended prose poem sequences of No Traveller Returns (Salt, 2003) and Measures of Expatriation (Carcanet, 2016). Their non-fiction is distinct in voice and approach from their poetry, though often treating similar themes. Their latest full-length book Skin Can Hold (Carcanet, 2019), is the result of collaborative investigations of ‘kinetic syntax’ during Capildeo’s Judith E. Wilson Fellowship. The Dusty Angel (Oystercatcher Press, forthcoming), completed while Writer in Residence at the University of the West Indies, is a dialogic record of real and imagined walks, many taken with pandemic precautions. Their practice-based research includes silence, expanded translation, performance, and interdisciplinary collaborations. As Douglas Caster Fellow at the University of Leeds, Capildeo edited a special issue of Stand magazine on ecopoetics. Capildeo is contributing editor at PN Review, and a contributing adviser for Blackbox Manifold and has published seven books and numerous pamphlets. Capildeo’s work across genres is characterized by an abiding interest in plurilingualism and in place.
Xasan Daahir Ismaacil ‘Weedhsame’ is widely regarded as one of the leading Somali poets of his generation. He has written more than 90 poems on various social and political issues, as well as the lyrics to more than 100 songs, mainly on the theme of love. Born in Kalabaydh, a village to the west of Hargeysa, Weedhsame was displaced as a child to a refugee camp in Ethiopia by Siyaad Barre’s military regime. After Somaliland declared independence in 1991 he returned home, eventually pursuing a degree in mathematics at Cammuud (Amoud) University. Weedhsame—a name given to him that means ‘[the one who] makes good words’—first began composing poetry when he was 16. He was mentored by the esteemed (late) Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac ‘Gaarriye’, who encouraged his craft and instilled a deep respect for the complexities of Somali orature. Weedhsame currently teaches the course in Somali literature at the University of Hargeysa that Gaariye first developed. His poems and songs circulate widely on Somali media platforms. Some of his poems have been translated into English by a team of translators and poets at the Poetry Translation Centre in London.
Martin Orwin is an associate professor at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” where he teaches Somali language and literature from beginner to advanced level. His research centres on the use of language in Somali poetry. He has written articles on metre and alliteration both from general perspectives and in relation to specific poems and how these features are crafted in them, including a recent article in Journal of African Languages and Literatures (2020) that specifically compares the use of sound in poems by Gaarriye and Weedhsame. He has also written a little on the relationship between language and music from a theoretical perspective with reference to Somali. Orwin has a strong interest in the translation of poetry and has published translations of poems by famous poets such as Maxamed Ibraahim Warsame ‘Hadraawi’ and Xasan Xaaji Cabdullaahi ‘Xasan Ganey’ as well as by Xasan Daahir Ismaaciil ‘Weedhsame’.
Rebecca Glover, Foley/sound artist, London
Part 3 Listening_ Foley and inhabiting the other
Rebecca Glover, Foley/sound artist, London
Part 2 Listening_ Orientation and Perspective in Sound
Michael Bull (University of Sussex)
Melissa Dickson (University of Birmingham)
Salomé Voegelin (University of the Arts London)
Respondent: Steven Connor (University of Cambridge)
Moderator: David Trippett (University of Cambridge)
The new book of Michael Bull, Professor of Sound Studies (Media and Film) is availble now 'Sirens'.