Overtones: Conference on the Politics of the Voice, Sound and Listening
The symposium Overtones: Conference on the Politics of the Voice, Sound and Listening will address how different listening practices, tools and the amplification of or absence of speech function in the context of Palestine. Among the issues discussed will be the history of the radio in Palestine, a discussion about radio practices and production at present, as well as silence as a tool of resistance*.
With artists Dirar Kalash, Ma’n Abu Taleb, Amira Silmi, Nathalie Singer and Shaira Vadasaria.
Full programme
03:00pm - 03:30pmWelcome notes and introductions by Mona Kriegler (Director of the Goethe-Institut) and Lara Khaldi (Curator)
03:30pm - 04:45pm
(Un)Heard for Granted: Towards a Political Phenomenology of Sound
Dirar Kalash
"Taking off from re-defining sound through its historical, social and experiential components, two sets of questions emerge: the first deals with what sound means, and the other addresses what sound does, while in between the folds of meaning and doing, those questions to be raised start to perform as conjunctions that bring knowledge and experience together, and thus set forth a framework that articulates sound as an object at one time and as an event at the other. With a focus on diverse aural and sonic phenomena and experiences in Palestine, the theoretical framework noted above extends the discussion of knowledge and experience into the discussion of power relations and modes of production particular to Palestine, through the discussion of city soundscapes which are defined by socio-economic movement and military interruptions, political songs and radio in their socio-cultural contexts, musical language and expression, and other sound and music related issues."
Dirar Kalash (b. 1982) is a musician and sound artist whose work spans a wide range of musical and sonic practices within a variety of instrumental, compositional and improvisational contexts. Kalash also extends his practice into inter-disciplinary theoretical research. He has produced several solo and collaborative albums and is active as touring musician, in addition to that Kalash also created sound installations, live audio-visual performances, and recently curated an exhibition on sound.
04:45pm - 05:30pm
Cacophonies of Refusal: Listening to Return in Palestine
Shaira Vadasaria
"What is the sound of return in and to Palestine? This question, put another way, also invites us to ask, what does refusal sound like? To pay attention to the politics of refusal, as Black and Indigenous scholarship has theorized elsewhere (Hartman 2018, Simpson, 2014), is to reckon with a cacophony of sovereignties in their multiple forms (i.e. settler-state sovereignty, land-based sovereignty, affective sovereignties etc.). Listening to cacophonies such as the Great Return March in Gaza – the simultaneous and overlapping soundscape of Israeli drones, firing bullets, ambulances, and the demand for a world otherwise, are examples of the “extra-musical” (Moten 2013); the sounds of colonial and anti-colonial violence in chaos and dis-order; the sensorial terrain that exposes the very madness of colonialism itself (Fanon, 1963). This paper introduces a way for hearing the persistence of return as a claim to life and land amidst social and material death. It approaches the sensorial terrain as an epistemic site for thinking further about settler-colonial contestations. I draw from soundwaves of return in Gaza and 48’ to consider what we hear from enactments of a return already present and attenuated to a sovereign afterlife."
Shaira Vadasaria is a scholar and educator that has worked between Canada and Palestine for the past ten years. Her research and teaching engages in the study of colonial formations, race, and decolonial thought. She earned her PhD at York University in 2018 and her doctoral thesis was nominated for “Dissertation of the Year Award”. She has published in scholarly journals including, Social Identities: Race, Nation and Culture; Critical Studies on Security and edited book collections including, “At the Limits of Justice: Women of Colour Theorize Terror,” co-edited by Dr. Suvendrini Perera and Dr. Sherene Razack and is currently working on her first sole authored book manuscript entitled “Temporalities of Return: Race, Refusal and Claims to Otherwise in Palestine”.
05:30pm - 06:00pm
Reading from "A God is All Over Me"
Maan Abutaleb
"In this same time, Arabic has steadily shrunk. Now, in Arab cities such as Beirut, Amman, Dubai, even parts of Cairo, its vocabulary is restricted to tiny jars, often decorated and overtly designed, like some kind of homemade vegan specialty tea. It has been labelled, broken up, only to be used in kitchens and at wakes. Somehow, it is no longer sufficient, nor necessary. Arab intelligentsia think politics and philosophy, even business, in English or French, while discussions of food and small talk are in half-Arabic. No wonder political debate does not inform political action, when the political and cultural class conduct intellectual life in one language and corporal life in another. In these circles, not having a functioning command of Arabic is a sign of having ‘a good education’. Arabic is for the rabble, the unworthy, the uneducated. Glory be to those who falter mid-sentence. It is one thing to be bilingual, to be in command of more than one language, but it is something else to be unable to construct a thought in one. It is patchwork, not bilingualism." - Excerpt from the text A God is All Over Me.
Maan Abu Taleb is a novelist, essayist and cultural editor. He is the founding editor of Ma3azef, the Arab world’s leading online music magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in philosophy and contemporary critical theory. His debut novel, “All the Battles”, was released to critical and popular praise in 2016.
06:00pm - 06:30pm
Coffee break
06:30pm - 07:15pm
The Voice/Silence of Resistance
Amira Silmi
"The paper will address the question of silence in the case of the oppressed, mainly in the case of the colonized. Silence is usually an expression of the absence of voice/movement, and in a certain sense, of life. It usually connotes stagnation, submissiveness, helplessness, which are brought about with an overwhelmingly oppressive situation. The voice of the colonized in such a context appears as an act of resistance, but what if the voice disguises the silence? Instead of speaking oppression, denies and hides by silencing the silence brought about by an oppressive situation. The paper will attempt to tackle the question of the ability of the colonized to voice suffering and resistance without their voices becoming other acts of silencing. The Question is thus how voices become ones of rebellion and resistance, and how they resist becoming conforming voices by allowing for the presence and voice of silence."
Amira Silmi is an associate professor in the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University. She holds a PhD in Rhetoric from the University of California–Berkeley, and an M.A. degree in Gender and Development from Birzeit University. Her research is in the fields of colonial discourse, anti- colonial and revolutionary writing, postcolonial studies, feminist theory, she has also written about development in a colonial situation.
07:30pm - 08:15pm
Radio Silence
Nathalie Singer
"Singer's contribution will center around Radio Silence, which was a curated collection of sound pieces in the context of the touring exhibition Radiophonic Spaces, based on a large research project and archive work on 100 years of radio art which Singer curated with museum Tinguely (Basel), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin) and Bauhaus-University Weimar in 2018/2019. Silence is a key moment in radiophony: listeners must regularly determine whether the signal has been disturbed, the silence is an interval sign, or an artist is consciously using the silence as a stylistic device to foster critical media reflection and make a political statement. Does the radio silence merely mean that the listener must continue searching, or is it loaded with information and meaning? While the listeners inevitably practice classifying silence, radio art plays with its narrative and musical possibilities."
Nathalie Singer is Professor of Experimental Radio and since April 2017 vice president of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. She authors, directs and produces plays for the radio. She is also a music composer for radio, theater and film, and publishes scientific work on electroacoustic music and sound art. From 2002 to 2007, she worked as dramaturge in the radio play department of Deutschlandradio Kultur and developed the radio short drama format Wurfsendung. She was a member of the interdisciplinary research project Radiophonic Cultures and is artistic director of the touring exhibition project Radiophonic Spaces.
08:30pm - 09:30pm
Light reception with music by SIKA
*Simultaneous translation will be provided.
**The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the authors.