SoundEast. Sonic Inquiries Into Cultures from Central and Eastern Europe & Central Asia
During the last decades, the humanities have seen a sonic turn, opening new approaches to the auditive and multisensorial dimension of culture. Only in recent years, sound studies have included aboriginal culture and the Global South within their spectrum of research, to de-Westernize its perspectives and methodologies. Following this trajectory, the workshop aims to provide a space for analysis and discussion upon the sonic aspects of the still-overlooked cultural territories of the former Eastern Bloc, while reflecting together on new decolonial listening positionalities within the (post-)Soviet and Eastern European studies. Moving across multiple disciplines (media, music, film, performance, literary studies) the workshop interrogates in which ways sound is involved in aesthetic, political, and historic processes in Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Soviet Union, before and after socialism.
The workshop’s scope is both theoretical and historical: How is sound conceptualized in formalist and semiotic theories of art and culture? How are sonic materialities intertwined with concrete historical forms of knowledge? How do cultures of former socialist countries hear across historical trajectories, and how can they be listened to?
These and other questions are addressed by international scholars in a two-days online workshop on 3 and 4 March. The workshop includes academic paper presentations, artists’ talks, listening sessions and two Open Discussion sessions.
The online workshop and its future publication are funded by LMU Munich. Project in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen.Created and organised by Giada Dalla Bontà (University of Copenhagen) & Philipp Kohl (LMU Munich/U Zurich).
Friday, 3 March, 9:30 am-6:00 pm
| 9:30-10:00 | Welcome Speech and State of the Field Presentation |
| 10:00-10:30 | Holger Schulze (Copenhagen): What Are Sound Studies? A Brief Introduction Into a Very Young and a Very Old Research Field |
| 10:30-11:15 | Nikolai Okunew (Potsdam): That “Shhh” Was Totally Good Enough to Fulfil Your Feeling of Being Allowed to Listen to Heavy Metal Now |
| 11:15-12:00 | Iryna Shuvalova (Nanjing): Sonic Landscapes of Russia’s War on Ukraine One Year From the Full-Scale Invasion: Tracing the Shifts |
| 12:00-1:00 | Lunch break |
| 1:00-1:45 | Pavel Niakhayeu (Minsk): Belarusian Music - Between (Anti)Belarusian Dictatorship, Russian Imperialism and Western Orientalism |
| 1:45-2:30 | Stas Sharifullin (Basel): Listening Session: How yır-moñ Helped Bashkirs and Tatars Keeping Their Identity Through the Centuries of Colonial Oppression |
| 2:30-3:15 | Break |
| 3:15-4:00 | Evgeny Bylina (Tbilisi): Between Everyday Life and Utopia. Sound Testimonies of the Kosichkin Family |
| 4:00-4:45 | Ján Solčáni (Brno): Sound Mapping: Cultural Houses |
| 4:45-5:30 |
Listening Session
|
| 5:30-6:00 |
Open discussion
|
Saturday, 4 March, 1:15-6:45 pm
| 1:15-2:00 | Katarzyna Ciemiera (Kraków): The Political Potential of Poetic Voice: The Experience of Voice within Text as an Encounter with the Other |
| 2:00-2:45 | Giada Dalla Bontà (Copenhagen): Sonic Tricksterism Between Anti-Systemic and Far-Right Movements in the Activity of Kuryokhin and New Artists |
| 2:45-3:00 | Break |
| 3:00-3:45 | Matthew Kendall (Chicago): The End of Fidelity: Learning to Speak Soviet in the Cinema of Iosif Kheifits and Aleksandr Zarkhi |
| 3:45-4:30 | Philipp Kohl (Munich/Zurich): Reverberations of the Palace of the Soviets: Engineering the Acoustic Space of Ideology |
| 4:30-5:15 | Gabrielle Cornish (Miami): Sounds Like Lenin: Noise and the Problems of Socialist Modernity |
| 5:15-5:30 | Break |
| 5:30-6:15 | Asell Shaldibayeva (Almaty): bULt: safe spaces and sound in Almaty. Listening Session and Artist Talk |
| 6:15-6:45 | Final Discussion |
Registration
A Zoom link will be provided upon registration.
Inquiries at: philipp.kohl@lmu.de, dallabonta@hum.ku.dk