Paper short abstract:

In a multi-site fieldwork that took place between Montreal and Ottawa, my practice has consisted in a becoming-noise. I listened to and recorded the noises of the circulation and transformations of matter and meaning of oil's concretion into plastic and plastic's deconstruction.

Paper long abstract:

In a multi-site fieldwork that took place between Montreal and Ottawa, I have attended, through sounds, to the circulation and transformations of matter and meaning of oil's concretion into plastic and plastic's deconstruction. I have been listening and recording noises emerging from the frictions of oil and plastic's circulation, and have myself entered into a becoming-noise by interfering with a viscous milieu.This practice of "noising", as I call it, has been a synesthetic mode of engagement with the milieu whereby I try to render sensible the plastic touch (which in the original sense of the latin word fingere refers to both friction and fiction) by paying attention to, and recording, another field of sounds, exposing what has been rendered inaudible, sounds to which we have become insensible (Thompson 2017). Rendering sensible has also meant conveying how the slippery oil and plastic fields have been noising, messing up with me, at times incorporating me into their flow and at others throwing me away. As such, 'noising' has been a practice of resistance amidst a regime of undifferentiated sounds that work at silencing alternatives to the monologue of power (Attali, 1977).