Listening to dissonances

LISTENING TO DISSONANCES

Sandar Tun Tun

Building a common theoretical framework and engaging questions of emancipatory practice, this two-day workshop will take the form of a collective study and will propose to tune in to what does not appear and yet manifests itself in the many signs, signals, winks and events with which bodies, souls and minds resound. The time together will be dedicated to co-compose and to think with the spectral, spatial presences through the prism of sound and vibrations, resonance and performance, forms of inner listening, of subvocalization as a means to bridge the spiritual and the political in a collective process.

In his 2014 memorial essay, Queer Insists (for José Esteban Muñoz), Michael O'Rourke extends José Esteban Muñoz's thinking and re-visits his articulations with those words: 'Queer does not exist in the here and now; future queerness, as we might call it, always occupies the ghostly temporality and spatiality of the then and there.' 

The two days will be focused on setting up the conversation by sharing practices and experimenting with sonic and performative narrative possibilities. Participants are invited to choose texts and audiovisual materials to introduce themselves and their work.

Sandar Tun Tun (artist, DJ, composer and researcher) will introduce her sonic and collaborative practice, bringing in music, videos, and texts and discussing working methodologies driven by sound, queer and anti-colonial perspectives. On the first day, and to start the conversation, she will present her current research around the Burmese spiritual worship and counter-hegemonic mythologies of the Nat Kadaw (spirit spouse) together with a reading of Tamara C. Ho’s article “Transgender, Transgression, and Translation: A Cartography of "Nat Kadaws": Notes on Gender and Sexuality within the Spirit Cult of Burma” (2009).