D A Calf

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

Project title: Sonic Cartographies: sound as a medium of transmission for longitudinal and spatialised memory.

Research questions: 

To what extent can sound be a conduit for accessing a sedimentary and spatialised memory? 

How can we bring to bear on sonic traces those studies of photography which identify a special relationship with the intersections of memory, time and place, and that in the case of sound go well beyond involuntary mnemonic triggers?

Project:

Sonic Cartographies entails a creative imagining of the role of non-musical sound in the transmission and sequestration of memory, specifically as it relates to sites of socio-political upheaval, generational trauma and shifting significance over time. The project focuses specifically on a series of monument sites in the former Yugoslav republics of the Western Balkans within the timeframe spanning from World War II until the present day, particularly focusing on the last three decades. These sites, through this period of time, have been variously exposed to contests of ownership, physical decay, wartime conflict, intentional destruction, theft, commemoration, and neglect. To what extent can sound tell these stories, not as a conduit through which established histories can be told, but more fundamentally as an archaeological phenomenon imbued and persisting in these sites?

To explore this possibility, a series of sonic traces taken from the sites are examined, manipulated and reconfigured to suggest that they may well contain the prints of human activity that we would not normally consider to have remained audible. Sound is thus posited as a sedimentary-type phenomenon that can be excavated and sifted for memory akin to the way geological strata inform us of the conditions of past ages - ie. that within sound we can hear, however faint, the murmured traces of the past. 

The culmination of this research is intended in a work of installation presenting ambisonic sound and incorporating four channels of heavily abstracted image-only video together with printed archival material that further illustrates the passing of time within these sites.

The work draws on the fields of phenomenology, affect theory, speculative realism, psycho-geography, architecture, acoustic ecology, crypto-history, trauma studies and archival practice. 

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Approaches to enhanced listening enable us to achieve a consideration of sound otherwise inaccessible. To listen for the traces of the past is to allow for the possibility of hearing history from the bottom-up and counter to the totalising histories incorporated in projects of nation-building. However, where established notions of deep and active listening, and of acoustic ecology argue for an unmasking of hitherto unheard or forgotten sounds, I seek to delve further. By drawing on the concepts of non-cochlear sound and the sound-affect, this project seeks to uncover those sounds that are imaginable, questioning whether there is any significant difference, pragmatically-speaking, between the sounds we hear and the sounds we think. 

The research emphasises an approach to sound as both a physical and a mental phenomenon and seeks to stretch the definition of both what makes a sound audible in the mind and what constitutes the temporal envelope of sound. Thus the concern is not with ‘hearing’ sounds at the infra- and ultra- ends of the human hearing spectrum (ie. those excluded by frequency) but rather with a ‘listening’ to those at the lower levels of amplitude, that we might consider excluded by time. The masking of these sounds could then be considered to be located in the imagination rather than in the physical environment or the human auditory system.

The research conducts itself in a speculative manner so as to provide an entreaty to the creation of new narrative threads and metaphysical conjecture as well as allowing for sound’s dematerialised conceptual use. As an adjunct to this project it is intended that some form of reconciliation between phenomenological approaches to sound and memory and notions of sound-as-affect can perhaps be bartered.  

Broader Research Context (Community of Practice): 

This research intersects with multiple fields of practice, not exclusively confined to the fine arts. Firstly, with artists working with sound-as-trace. These include Jacob Kirkegaard and his work in historically-charged sites like Chernobyl (Aion, 2006) and archaeologically complex sites like garbage dumps (TESTIMONIUM, 2019); and John Grzinich who uses sound to reconstitute abandoned spaces in new ways (Zeltini, 2008). Alvin Lucier’s phenomenologically-concerned works including I am sitting in a room (1969) were some of the first explorations of environments that employed subtractive means to expose otherwise unheard forces to suggest that we can hear anything in sound so long as we listen avidly enough and for a sufficient period of time. 

Secondly, the field of non-academic literature that grapples with historical trauma and forgetting, most notably the works of W.G. Sebald (post-WWII Mitteleuropa) and Daša Drndić (post-1990’s Croatia and the Balkan diaspora). The significance of these writers is threefold. Firstly, the subject matter of Drndić concerns the geographic region of importance to this project whilst both are concerned with the relevant time period. Secondly, both entertain novel ways of portraying historical memory that emphasise it’s fracturous, non-linear nature and the complex inter-linkages that make memory epistemologically slippery. Thirdly, Sebald, in Austerlitz (2001), explores the connections between photography and memory in a close reading of Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida (2000). This impulse is picked up later in the works of Drndić.

Finally, artists working with an archival bent, especially relating to the decay or unearthing of untold or lesser histories, and often employing text, photography and/or literary references. Tacita Dean has used the work of W.G. Sebald to resurrect and invent speculative histories (W.G. Sebald, 2003), using the mundane and chance to draw out underlying poetics. Anselm Kiefer’s grappling with historical trauma and responsibility through his incorporation of less than stable materials and the suggestion that they carry the remains of his historical subjects resonates with the impulse to exhume the past. Tom Nicholson’s work with text and contested history (Cartoons for Joseph Selleny (2012-14/2017/2018) and Stranger at Fountain (2018)) reveal methods of portraying complexity and obscuration. Nicholson’s consideration of the monument can also be seen in his Untitled (seven monuments) (with Murphy Wandin et al, 2019).

Research Methodology:  

The project utilises theoretical approaches to memory in order to frame a mode of non-cochlear listening which enables the listener to ‘hear’ the past in new ways. This requires examinations of both phenomenological and affect theory approaches to memory. Sound in turn is examined from the metaphysical perspective of speculative realism. By positing a novel hybrid of memory-in-the-world and sound-in-the-mind I seek to create a basis for the presentation of a work, primarily sonic in nature, in which one can encounter traces of the past in ways more far-reaching than one would normally entertain. The inclusion of archival material, both textual and photographic, act as seeds for this listening. As a more established bridge between the present and the past these media lead the way for sound to play a similar role. Furthermore, theoretical analyses of photography (Barthes, 2000) and examples of its utilisation from literature (Sebald, 2001, 2002a, 2002b) suggest ways that sound may interface with memory. These methods consider the significance (changing and static) of places as sites of traces of both sound and of memory, entailing readings from anthropology, geography and architecture.					

Bibliography

Books and book chapters:

Aristotle. and Ross, W., 2001. Parva Naturalia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Augoyard, J. and Torgue, H., 2005. Sonic Experience. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.

Augustine, S., 2002. The Confessions Of St. Augustine. Project Gutenberg.

Bachelard, G., 1994. The Poetics Of Space. Boston: Beacon Press.

Bachelard, G., 2016. Dialectic Of Duration. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Baer, U., 2005. Spectral Evidence: The Photography Of Trauma. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Barthes, R., 2000. Camera Lucida. London: Vintage.

Bergson, H., 1998. Matter And Memory. New York: Zone Books.

Bishop, C., 2019. Installation Art. London: Tate Publishing.

Bogdanović, B. and Kulić, V., 2018. Bogdanović By Bogdanović: Yugoslav Memorials Through The Eyes Of Their Architect. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.

Browne, S., Prince, N., Giblin, T. and Millar, J., 2011. How To Use Fool's Gold. Dublin: Project Press.

Cassidy, L., 2012. Salford 7/District 6. The Use of Participatory Mapping and Material Artefacts in Cultural Memory Projects. In: L. Roberts, ed., Mapping Cultures: Place, Practice, Performance. London: Palgrave MacMillan, pp.181-198.

Damousi, J. and Hamilton, P. ed., 2016. A Cultural History Of Sound, Memory, And The Senses. New York: Routledge.

de Spinoza, B., 2020. Spinoza's Ethics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 2014. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism And Schizophrenia. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Drndić, D., 2012. Belladonna. London: MacLehose Press.

Drndić, D., 2013. Trieste. London: MacLehose Press.

Drndić, D., 2018. E.E.G.. London: MacLehose Press.

Ellison, B., Bailey, T. and López, F., 2020. Sonic Phantoms: Composition With Auditory Phantasmatic Presence. New York: Bloomsbury Academic & Professional.

Foucault, M., 2002. The Archaeology Of Knowledge. London: Routledge.

Gissen, D., 2012. Subnature: Architecture's Other Environments. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press.

Glenny, M., 1996. The Fall Of Yugoslavia. London: Penguin Books.

Glenny, M., 2018. The Balkans: Nationalism, War, And The Great Powers, 1804-2012. London: Granta Books.

Groys, B., 2018. The Installation as Novel. In: T. Bishop and D. Grau, ed., Ways Of Re-Thinking Literature, 1st ed. London: Routledge, pp.55-62.

Hemon, A., 2000. The Question Of Bruno. London: Picador.

Hlavajova, M. and Winder, J. ed., 2010. Concerning War: A Critical Reader In Contemporary Art. Utrecht: BAK.

Horvatinčić, S., 2018. Heritage from below. In: Micropolitics. Zagreb: BLOK.

Horvatinčić, S., 2018. Memorial Sculpture and Architecture in Socialist Yugoslavia. In: M. Stierli and V. Kulić, ed., Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980. New York: MOMA, pp.104-111.

Husserl, E., Schrag, C., Heidegger, M. and Churchill, J., 1964. The Phenomenology Of Internal Time-Consciousness. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Jergović, M., 1994. Sarajevo Marlboro. London: Penguin.

Jones, D., 2016. Installation Art And The Practices Of Archivalism. London: Routledge.

Kim-Cohen, S., 2014. In The Blink Of An Ear: Toward A Non-Cochlear Sonic Art. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Kiš, D., 2003. Garden, Ashes. Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press.

LaBelle, B., 2010. Acoustic Territories. 1st ed. New York: Continuum.

LaBelle, B., 2015. Background Noise; Perspectives On Sound Art. 2nd ed. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Levi-Strauss, C. and Wilcken, P., 2014. Tristes Tropiques. New York: Penguin Books.

Lucretius, 2013. The Way Things Are. Lanham: Start Publishing LLC.

Macdonald, S., 2013. Memorylands: Heritage And Identity In Europe Today. London: Routledge.

Mačkić, A., 2016. Mortal Cities, Forgotten Monuments. Zurich: Park Books.

Meckfessel, S., 2009. Suffled How It Gush: A North American Anarchist In The Balkans. Oakland: AK.

Meek, A., 2010. Trauma And Media: Theories, Histories And Images. New York: Routledge.

Miessen, M. and Chateigné, Y., 2016. The Archive As A Productive Space Of Conflict. Berlin: Sternberg Press.

Moran, D., 2008. Introduction To Phenomenology. New York: Routledge.

Morton, T., 2013. Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality. Ann Arbor (University of Michigan Library): Open Humanities Press.

Nancy, J., 2009. Listening. New York: Fordham University Press.

Niebyl, D., 2018. Spomenik Monument Database. London: FUEL Publishing.

Papoulias, C., 1998. Hypertopos: Two Architectural Projects. Bonn: Cantz Verlag.

Ricœur, P., 2004. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

In referencing Ricoeur’s towering final work, I wish to confine my notes to a reading of the opening chapter Memory and Imagination. While there are numerous sections of the 600-page work that bear great relevance to my project, it is in the opening chapter that Ricoeur lays out some fundamental groundwork that both acknowledges his intellectual forbears and future paths for his work on this topic. The former provides springboards to related research while the latter shows a way forward to artistic creation based on studies of memory. 

Ricoeur structures his phenomenology of memory around the twin questions: ‘Of what are there memories’ and ‘Whose memory is it?’ The author states that it will be the Aristotelian position of ‘All memory is of the past’ that will guide his findings (Aristotle, 2001). Belying the apparent mundanity of this phrase, Ricoeur shows how memory is an affection associated with the past, just as conjecture is associated with the future and sensation with the present. Additionally, by adopting Aristotle’s approach to time as a phenomenon only perceived through movement he comes to claim that the relation to time is the ultimate guideline to a phenomenology of memory. 

Ricoeur moves on to outline the corporeal nature of memory (via Bergson, (1998)) and it’s relation to affect, the enigma of slippage in memory and forgetting (forgetting ultimately denies a knowledge even of what it is that we have forgotten - from St. Augustine, (2002)), and Spinoza’s (2020) notion of time/duration as the continuation of existence, before noting Husserl’s (1964) use of a sound envelope as a means of thinking about memory, meaning and temporal duration. 

This text is poignant to my research interests for a number of reasons. Firstly, it serves as an aggregator of other relevant texts within phenomenology whilst updating these for employment in discussions of historical memory and forgetting. Secondly, by treating memory as object-oriented phenomenology Ricoeur alludes to the opportunity for affect to play a role. Thirdly, the chapter introduces the project of a larger, even more valuable resource, in the in toto form of Memory, history, forgetting. 

Finally, the author notes the phenomenological significance of what he calls the otherness situated in the field of memory. Here, absence serves as the other of presence - the absent entity being the memory of the (once) present entity. This establishes a special identity which is incorporated into what Ricoeur calls his ‘happy conception of memory’ - that is, the absence is never seen as a deficiency but as a productive thing-in-itself. This is pertinent in that I am seeking to exalt the trace rather than bemoan it’s dimensional deficiencies. It also segues into the following text by way of a partially dematerialised phenomenology.

Said, E., 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Sansi-Roca, R., 2015. Art, Anthropology And The Gift. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Schaeffer, P., North, C. and Dack, J., 2013. In Search Of A Concrete Music. Berkely: University of California Press.

Schafer, R., 1977. The Tuning Of The World. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

Schrimshaw, W., 2013. Non-cochlear sound: On affect and exteriority. In: M. Thompson and I. Biddle, ed., Sound, music, affect: theorising sonic experience. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp.27-43.

Will Scrimshaw’s chapter in Sound, music, affect: theorising sonic experience is concerned with the sonic affect. The affect theories of Massumi (1995) et al hold that an emergent property of both bodies and events are their affects - ways they are potentially both changed in-themselves and change others in terms of emotional valence. Whatismore, these affects are autonomous. They sit outside of both the affected and the affecting entity. The connections to Ricoeur here are helpful, despite being most probably unintentional.

The author marries these notions of affect with the idea of the non-cochlear sound - a concept popularised by sonic theorist Seth-Kim Cohen (2009) and referencing Duchamp’s concept of non-retinal art. A non-cochlear sound is, in essence, extant independent of any potential it has to be heard. To merely think of it as directly perceivable, as audible is enough, and so, a way is paved towards a pure conceptualisation of sound. This approach to sound has benefits for a research project such as mine which posits certain phenomena as theoretically and conceptually plausible and at the same time practically imperceptible. For my research it is enough that one is invited to think ‘what if, and if so?’ As Schrimshaw writes, and quoting only for its extreme prescience: 

‘Considering sound as a sometimes silent signal that nonetheless retains affective efficacy moves us through a continuum of experimental practice, from sound as the object of music to signal as the object of sound. The perceptible remains efficacious, inaudible yet functional.’ (Schrimshaw, 2013) 

This serves as a profound invitation to indulge the more speculative components of my research project. My question regarding the possibility of accessing historical sound lying dormant in a geological sense has always been decidedly anti-scientific. However, an intellectual basis for some alternative has until now eluded me. The notion of the non-cochlear sonic affect presents a potential way forward.

Sebald, W., 2001. Austerlitz. London: Penguin.

Sebald, W., 2002a. The Emigrants. London: Vintage.

Sebald, W., 2002b. The Rings Of Saturn. London: Vintage.

Smith, R. ed., 2011. Art And The Performance Of Memory. New York: Routledge.

Thompson, M. and Biddle, I., 2013. Introduction: Somewhere between the signifying and the sublime. In: M. Thompson and I. Biddle, ed., Sound, music, affect: theorising sonic experience. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp.1-24.

Todorova, M., 2009. Imagining The Balkans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Toop, D., 2005. Haunted Weather: Music, Silence And Memory. London: Serpent's Tail.

Toop, D., 2010. Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship Of The Listener. New York: Continuum.

Tronzo, W., 2009. The Fragment: An Incomplete History. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute.

Tuan, Y., 2018. Space And Place: The Perspective Of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ugrešić, D., 2008. The Ministry Of Pain. London: Telegram Books.

Film and Documentaries:

Silent Balkans. 2014. [film] Directed by A. Apostolidis. Athens: Anemon.

Unwanted Heritage. 2016. [film] Directed by I. Škorić. Zagreb: Artizana.

Journal articles:

Abazi, E. and Doja, A., 2018. Time and narrative: Temporality, memory, and instant history of Balkan wars. Time & Society, 27(2), pp.239-272.

In this text, written from a social history perspective, the authors examine and critique the historicisation of the three Balkan wars of the twentieth century (1912-13, 1990s). They note the many ways in which ‘official’ histories have been written of the period, both by internal sources situated in official postings and institutions, which in turn serve nationalist ends; and by western european and north american sources that have perpetuated the ‘sick man of Europe’ tag (being the idea that violence and conflict are intractable and endemic to the region and hence serve as a brake on euro-inclusory trends). The authors contrast these with bottom-up approaches to remembering which we can think of as both polysemous and rhizomatic and hence forms of anti-state thinking (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, xi).

The text's approach is pursued through the lens of Orientalism - Edward Said’s seminal study of the portrayal and marginalisation of ethnic and national otherness used to serve geo-political ends (Said, 1978). The authors show how this concept can be updated for a Balkan context, spawning a nested otherness first identified by Todorova (1997) as Balkanism. 

This text is highly pertinent for my research for a number of reasons. Firstly, it charts the dynamic between personal, communal and national memory as it has unfolded in both historical studies and south-east european nation building. It examines how evocation of memory can be co-opted to serve numerous purposes before the authors propose a history-from-below approach. While my project is, at this point at least, not concerned with presenting a people’s history it is interested in the concept of a multiplicity of voices, even if they are unheard. This in turn connects with Scrimshaw’s notion of the unheard-as-still-present.

Secondly, the authors’ discussion of the effect of Balkanist approaches to histories of the region flag a series of no-go zones. Whilst I was probably not in danger of approaching these fields, my readings of the region and its history have previously included many of the texts of which they are highly critical (most notably Glenny (1996, 2018)), forcing a reappraisal of these. My greatest concern to date has been to find a way into my research which grants me a status as an agnostic and respectful onlooker without being in any way voyeuristic or guilty of othering, all the while acknowledging that the project is necessarily moored to a specific site and field of time.

Bishop, C., 2013. Archival Myopia. [Blog] Still Searching... Modernist Revisitations, Available at: <https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/articles/26962_archival_myopia> [Accessed 1 April 2020].

Bishop, C., 2013. Delirious Anthropology. [Blog] Still Searching... Modernist Revisitations, Available at: <https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/articles/26964_delirious_anthropology> [Accessed 7 April 2020].

Bishop, C., 2013. Displaying Research. [Blog] Still Searching... Modernist Revisitations, Available at: <https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/articles/26963_displaying_research> [Accessed 7 April 2020].

Bishop, C., 2013. Monumental Bling. [Blog] Still Searching... Modernist Revisitations, Available at: <https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/articles/26961_monumental_bling> [Accessed 7 April 2020].

Brazil, K., 2017. W. G. Sebald’s revisions of Roland Barthes. Textual Practice, 33(4), pp.567-584.

Brown, S., Kanyeredzi, A., McGrath, L., Reavey, P. and Tucker, I., 2019. Affect theory and the concept of atmosphere. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 20(1), pp.5-24.

Cifor, M., 2015. Affecting relations: introducing affect theory to archival discourse. Archival Science, 16(1), pp.7-31.

Cox, C., 2011. Beyond Representation and Signification: Toward a Sonic Materialism. Journal of Visual Culture, 10(2), pp.145-161.

Croose, J., 2016. Ear Trumpet: investigations in ‘sonic geology’. Theatre and Performance Design, 2(3-4), pp.233-249.

Dean, T., 2003. W. G. Sebald. October, 106, pp.122-136.

Derrida, J. and Prenowitz, E., 1995. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Diacritics, 25(2), pp.9-63.

Enwezor, O. and the International Center of Photography, 2008. Archive Fever: Uses Of The Document In Contemporary Art. Göttingen: Steidl Publishers.

Haddox, T., 2016. Between History and Aesthetics: Dirt and Desire in Dialogue with Affect Theory and Paul Ricoeur. South: A Scholarly Journal, 48(2), pp.192-211.

Horvatinčić, S., 2015. Monument, Territory, and the Mediation of War Memory in Socialist Yugoslavia. Život umjetnosti, (96), pp.34-60.

Kane, B., 2012. Jean-Luc Nancy and the Listening Subject. Contemporary Music Review, 31(5-6), pp.439-447.

Kane, B., 2015. Sound studies without auditory culture: a critique of the ontological turn. Sound Studies, 1(1), pp.2-21.

Kolozova, K., 2011. Slavoj Žižek imagining the Balkans. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 16(3), pp.299-306.

Lydon, M., 1988. The Forgetfulness of Memory: Jacques Lacan, Marguerite Duras, and the Text. Contemporary Literature, 29(3), p.351.

Massumi, B., 1995. The Autonomy of Affect. Cultural Critique, (31), pp.83-109.

O'Sullivan, S., 2001. The Aesthetics of Affect: Thinking art beyond representation. Angelaki, 6(3), pp.125-135.

Simecek, K., 2017. Affect Theory. The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, 25(1), pp.418-435.

Internet/Websites:

Horvatinčić, S. and The Museum of Transitory Art, 2018. Nonument Symposium / Sanja Horvatinčić (HR). [video] Available at: <https://vimeo.com/266111788> [Accessed 9 April 2020].

International Center of Photography. 2008. Archive Fever: Uses Of The Document In Contemporary Art [Exhibition Page]. [online] Available at: <https://www.icp.org/exhibitions/archive-fever-uses-of-the-document-in-contemporary-art> [Accessed 22 April 2020].