Paper short abstract:

This paper takes up frequency across energetic forms of weather and sound, writing through frequency as it comes in and out of mattering, receding into imperceptibility and surfacing into detectibility.

Paper long abstract:

There is a rare and stunning cloud formation that looks like ocean waves in the sky – ocean waves if they were drawn in a highly stylized manner, one wave following another in a regular, arcing formation. Referred to as a Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability (or cloud or wave), it occurs when the upper layer of wind moves faster than the lower layer, drawing moisture upward into a visually stunning display. The nineteenth century physicists after which it is named investigated the pulsing dynamics of energy and physicality of atmospheric forms, addressing topics that spanning meteorology, thermodynamics and acoustics. The general quality of frequency puts pressure on disciplinary divisions and modes of classification, amplifying dynamic relations across divergent processes, demonstrating the coextensiveness of heat and sound, or, following Deleuze and Guattari, the molecular and the molar. Though frequency is general, its variations lend it an instability that is at once epistemological and ontological. This paper takes up frequency across energetic forms of weather and sound, writing through frequency as it comes in and out of mattering, receding into imperceptibility and surfacing into detectibility.

Paper short abstract:

Studying transborder labour migration to places in Brandenburg where thousands of workers come to Tesla factory, asparagus fields, and warehouses of Amazon and the like, we look at our field through the prism of frequencies: of movement, sound and feel, hisorical change and our own research.

Paper long abstract:

In VISION Project we study migration from Eastern Europe to places in Brandenburg where thousands of workers come to the Tesla factory, asparagus fields, and warehouses of Amazon and the like. Inspired by the idea of looking at our field through the prism of frequencies we distinguish several overlapping sets of frequencies.

We start with the frequencies of transborder movement – workers coming to work one shift, two, three, a week, a month; going back home or staying in the car, waiting for the next shift; the wave of increased mobility before Christmas or in the asparagus season.

Undertaking sensory ethnography we pay special attention to frequencies of sound, vibration of the ground, cold and heat, emotions, acting and waiting, fullness and emptiness (of parking lots, streets, buses, local services). We reflect on our sensorially rich experiences of the field: walking along the roads we fill vibrations caused by delivery trucks, we hear music from cars parked outside factories, dogs barking with different frequency in different places.

We also think of frequencies of change – Grossbeeren – a recent no-place that now hosts multiple warehouses and suddenly became a daily destination for thousands from across Europe can be compared to Lodz which 150 years earlier turned from a tiny Polish town to a multiethnic metropolis (and later again into a monoethnic periphery). What comes next for Grossbeeren?

Finally, the frequencies of our research – the patchwork ethnography; the rhythm of observations; our own embodied and sensual understanding of the field.

Paper short abstract:

This paper experiments with frequency to work on the concept of an Anthropocene-present. Using, Rutherford’s idea of frequency, this paper presents the application of frequency to two particular temporalities: time of death and burial and the time of flood.

Paper long abstract:

This paper experiments with frequency to work on the concept of a Anthropocene-present. This current epoch exerts two ‘frequent’ pressures on the chars (river-islands) on the tributaries of the Brahmaputra River. Firstly, the frequency of erratic floods have increased which results in more untimely deaths. Secondly, the lack of burial spaces in the wet season overwhelms the community. The materiality of frequency can be translated to the unavailability of land and the availability of burial spaces. Whereas, the frequency of emotions, deriving from the two (Deleuzian) folded concepts entangles with their meta-mythical worlds which shapes their quotidian lives. The burgeoning relationalities with religion and the structures of government change as this situation accelerates. The concept of frequency moves the material, relational and affective entanglement during the temporality of the flood. Using, Rutherford’s idea of frequency, this paper presents the application of frequency to two particular temporalities: time of death and burial and the time of flood. While, the perception of the flood is attenuated to the ontology of the Chardweller, the erratic nature of recent floods tests their social relationalities vis a vis the occurrence of deaths. Emotions, identities and religious rites are similarly tested. How can frequencies grasp this specific time period? While, this experience is not isolated from other phenomenon, the frequencies during the intersection of two temporalities open-up a room to question socio-climatic futures in an already dynamic riverine condition. This paper seeks to depart from the oft-used apparatus of diffraction- derived from Bohr’s quantum theory and made anthropological by Karen Barad- to understand epistemology and ontology of Anthropocene-islands. Instead, the paper shows the role of frequencies in understanding the pressures of a particular bracket of time in the present.

Paper short abstract:

A practice based presentation exploring how a natural burial for a relative leads to speculations on our affective relationships with transience, through time spent listening to frequencies from the soil. N.B. If good quality speakers are available it would be possible to include field recordings.

Paper long abstract:

Presentation of art-based research on how undertaking a natural burial for a close relative led to realisations about the difficulty Western secular societies have dealing with death, dead bodies and transience. There are of course different types of deaths and dying is not a monolithic experience, but this presentation will argue, with Akomolafe, that we need different approaches to dying and thinking about life that are not so distant from demise, dying, compost, grief and loss .

I speculate on how a different set of affective relationships might be triggered through listening to the ground, a space overlooked because it is over-trodden. For centuries, many cultures have interred their dead. Creating an audible connection with frequencies from the soil might open different material relations with the ground; its processes, the living, the dead and the inert.

Part of this conjecture concerns the effective dynamics involved in listening to sounds that are not every day noises. There are questions alongside how we perceive sound itself; its ephemeral nature, and (through the testimony of workshop participants) its use as a lament and its ‘state of either emergence or decay’ are key. My aim is to explore how soil vibrations might initiate more lively ways of engaging with essential transience.