Ears to the Ground: Ecology, Environment and (Sonic) Media Technologies (beyond Eurocentric models)
Published
As part of the seminar Ears to the Ground: Ecology, Environment and (Sonic) Media Technologies (beyond Eurocentric models) there will be an evening of performances at BEK. The seminar is curated by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay and is a collaboration between KMD, UiB and BEK.
Friday, June 6. 19:30–22:30
BEK, C. Sundts gate 55, floor 9.
Free entry
Performers
Aldana Duoraan & HMOT
Paola Torres Núñez del Prado
Juan Duarte Regino
Marie Yevkiné Tirard
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay
Hexorcismos aka Moisés Horta Valenzuela
Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela (Cronica Electronica)
The second seminar from the MSCA Postdoctoral Project Connecting Resonances (2023 – 2026) at KMD, UiB, examines the cultural and spatio-temporal limitation of “technology”, oftentimes understood as a Western anthropogenic concept for facilitating linear progress, control and profit within a capitalist model. Technological modernity is celebrated as an outcome of European enlightenment and industrial revolution, and a wartime innovation in electronics, such as transistors, sound recording and photography, which always thought to be travelling from Europe to the othered worlds, received without resistance and impacting modernizations of non-Western societies. This view is propagated within a colonial narrative of Europe’s superiority. Within this narrative, Premodern technologies and tools, especially born outside of Europe, are not considered or recognized.
However, technological innovations in the vast regions of the Global Souths in the wider fields of agriculture, disaster management, geoengineering, as well as cultural practices such as musical instrumentation, tuning and design, were as intricate and as sophisticated as their global counterparts. This seminar will demonstrate how these premodern and precolonial sound-producing technologies were more integrated and embedded in the natural systems on ecological, as well as material, temporal, and spatial considerations. The seminar will not only help a reassessment of media technological history, but also de-modernize Western-born technologies on a planetary scale for democratizing electronic arts field.
Organised and curated by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow at KMD, University of Bergen.
Accessibility
BEK’s space unfortunately is not wheelchair accessible. Please send us an email at bek@bek.no if you’re using a wheelchair, and we’ll do our best to facilitate your needs. Our space has all gender toilet facilities. Service dogs are welcome. We also provide the option of a quiet room.
Image: Design: Blank Blank Studios