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Contribution short abstract

This audiotextual performance centers around filesharing and digitalization. “Is sharing caring?” is a session based on mixing, field recordings, thoughts, and musical snippets. The stories of Muslim women in Chad forward the cultural understanding of sharing.

Contribution long abstract

Sharing is central to how humans distribute resources. Sound filesharing knows many formats which, due to digitalization, has become seemingly more accessible and egalitarian, yet imbued in social implications and physical lifeworlds.

The sound piece and performance is about listening to networks of students and Muslim scholars. Based on examples of eight months of ethnographic research conducted in N'Djaména, I reflect on the joint wish that exists to share and the digital and physical specifications that encourage why and where Chadians share. Muslim women of the Niassene branch use applications like WhatsApp, TikTok and Xender to distribute files. The objects of attention are panegyrical poems. The filesharing is part of women’s activities in religious spaces. In between field recordings, I relate stories of N’Djamenoise women and blend these with droney ambient that I collected, as a DJ. By mixing music into a subtle dialogue with empirical contemplations and ethnographic data, I explore a sonic, artistic mode of ethnographic telling.