Conversation
Listening to History: Sound, Space and Remembrance
A conversation between Louis Chude-Sokei and Emeka Ogboh
Please note, this event takes place at 12:00 PM EDT (18:00 CEST).
How can listening to a space of historical trauma, like the Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nürnberg, help us find lost or new narratives in history? Can sound help re-tell the story of colonization and histories of Africans in the contemporary world? In this online conversation, scholar and author Louis Chude-Sokei and sound artist Emeka Ogboh consider their sound practices within the context of memorialization and ask if the medium of sound can point to new ways to remember and honour all narratives of the past.
The conversation begins with the following presentations:
History is Listening: Race, Sound and Living Archives
Louis Chude-Sokei, founder of the Echolocution Project discusses the project’s dependence on a history of Black engagements with history and technology via sound and its commitment to archiving spaces of historical trauma ranging from Nuremberg, Germany, to slave sites in the African Diaspora.
More on the
The Spaces of African Memory
Nigerian Sound Artist Emeka Ogboh will discuss his evolving methods of creating sound installations rooted in both his culture and his ongoing engagement with the experiences and histories of Africans in the contemporary world.
Below images from Ogboh's sound installation Ámà: The gathering place (Multichannel sound. Sculpture. Fabrics)
at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2019.
“Listening to History" is a series of transatlantic conversations between sound artists, historians and musicologists around the relationship between sound and remembrance. With monuments being called into question around the world, many are asking if there are more flexible and effective alternatives to classical marble and bronze statues. What qualities should we be looking for in the monuments of the future – can sound point us in new directions? What advantages does sound as a medium offer for connecting the past with the present?
Shaping the Past is produced in partnership with the Goethe-Institut, Monument Lab, and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Federal Agency for Civic Education). The project connects to the activist and artistic work of local, national, and transnational movements as a reflection of memory culture and discusses new perspectives on forms of memory.