- Convenors:
-
Laurent Van Lancker
(Aix-Marseille University)
Savyasachi Anju Prabir (National Institute of Design)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Visual Anthropology is not taking Audio seriously ! This panel will explore, on the one hand, how audio can be used as a way to transmit fieldwork, and on the other hand, how sound could be an alternative form of conference presentation. Three audio presentations will be followed by a roundtable.
Long Abstract:
Visual Anthropology is not taking Audio seriously ! Often considered the poor relative of the audio-visual marriage, sound has however enormous evocative and sensory potentials. Sound often gives more the taste of a place than image.
This panel will explore, on the one hand, how audio can be used as a way to transmit fieldwork, and on the other hand, how sound could be an alternative form of conference presentation - beyond a text or visuals !
Three audio presentations will be followed by a roundtable, which will discuss how sonic ethnography could be a sensory and sense-making way of producing/transmitting knowledge. Both theoretical and practical aspects will be discussed: what kind of knowledge can sound induce that images cannot ? How to evoke a third sense through a creative dialogue between images and sounds, when audio is not merely the slave of the visual ? Can we present pure audio works as academic papers? How to move from Visual to Audio-Visual Anthropology ?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 March, 2023, -Pedro F. Neto (Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa (ICS-ULisboa))
Paper short abstract:
Where complex border settings cannot be depicted, sound becomes a way of feeling and seeing. This contribution proposes the listening of an audio track composed of different border-sound-scapes recorded along different borders between Southern Europe and West Africa.
Paper long abstract:
Sonic methods have not been systematically employed in the study of contemporary borders in spite of the advantages in bringing to the fore individual perspectives and experiences. Where complex border settings cannot be depicted, sound becomes a way of feeling and seeing.
This contribution proposes the listening of an audio track composed of different border-sound-scapes recorded along the borders of Spain-Morocco; Morocco-Guerguerat Strip (Western Sahara)-Mauritania; and Mauritania-Senegal. These recordings took place as part of a research and film project on the movement of “routiers” — routiers being men of African origin that regularly drive decades-old vehicles from Southern Europe to West Africa, carrying a set of second-hand items which are sold, traded, and/or bartered along the way.
Jeff Silva (La Fabrique des écritures ethnographique - CNRS, Centre Norbert Elias (France))
Paper short abstract:
A sonic sensory ethnography exploring interspecies tensions between lifeworlds around the Étang de Berre lagoon in Southern France and the anthropic pressures from its industrialized zones. The fieldwork aims to make tangible these sonic entanglements of nearly imperceptible pollution factors.
Paper long abstract:
Situated between Marseille and the Camargue nature reserve is a zone known as the Étang de Berre, taking its name from the sublime and enormous brackish lagoon that sits at its center. Over the last century, municipalities around the lagoon (Martigues, Fos-sur-mer, Saint-Chamas) along with the French government have invested heavily in petrochemical and energy industries making the area one of the most important economic hubs on one hand and an ecological sacrificial zone on the other. Anthropic impacts on this fragile ecosystem from air pollution and soil and water contamination have been only recently gaining attention. Human, plant, animal, and aquatic lifeworlds are entangled socially by these industrial toxins that are, for the most part, invisible and inaudible. How can we transmit these tainted, yet nearly imperceptible frequencies of this ethnographically complex territory? This sonic sensory ethnography attempts towards evoking these dilemmas and seeking out a way of sharing new kinds of anthropological knowledge.
Hoda Siahtiri
Paper short abstract:
Sonic ethnography evoking the fieldwork on lamentations sung by Bahktiari women, South-Iran. Laments often accompany the process of mourning with music, song and poetry.
Paper long abstract:
Through sounds that convey the patterns and rhythms of lamentation, the research outcome is a reflection and a space of sensation in the form of a Lament, where individual and collective memories come together in a practice of healing.
The researcher's own body is also part of her research. By working with the traces of the past and using personal sound recordings, the researcher becomes herself a living archive and a body of transmission. She performs a practice of "auto-ethnography," claiming the codes of ethnography - a discipline that has a tradition of patronizing or labelling persons and communities as exotic - to tell her own story.
The immersive soundscape represents ‘the song of the mothers’. It is a collection of sounds that draws on the tonalities of earth, water, minerals, alongside recordings of lamentations sung by Bahktiari women living a nomadic life in the Southern Iranian desert.