ABOUT THE PROJECT

In the face of climate crisis, the project "Sounding Crisis. Sounds and Energies within Climate Change" researches the concept of ‘sonic agency’ within climate change discourse as an alternative knowledge of ‘energies’. Therefore it focuses on sound practices of indigenous and non-indigenous activists and artists in Denmark, Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland and Australia. In contrast to the Western concept of ‘energy’ in sources and systems of fuel and power generation, the principal investigator of the project, Ania Mauruschat, understands ‘energies with the sound and energies scholar Douglas Kahn ’as ‘multi-faceted and interrelated phenomena that emit sound and can be listened to in productive ways.' ‘Sonic agency’ is a term coined by the sound artist and scholar Bradon LaBelle and defined in the context of this research project as ‘acoustic as well as electronically amplified and transmitted sounds as levers to the senses and creators of potential change’. This anthropological notion of sound encompasses both the sound practices of Indigenous peoples addressing environmental and relational issues as well as urban climate activism and its sound practices across all the sites in which it may be present, such as classical media reports, the a/v in social media, music and street protests, artistic expressions and new techniques and practices. The aim is to unveil the continuities and variations of different forms of ‘sonic agency’. The project is innovative in its understanding of ‘sound’ as an analytical point of access to the complex concept of ‘energies’. It understands sound itself as energy in three ways: (1) Sound waves as mechanical energy, (2) Indigenous sound practices as expressions of 'energy intimacy', as artist and scholar Warren Cariou calls it, and (3) sound practices of urban climate activists as articulations of the so-called ‘energy unconscious’ (Patricia Smith Yaeger) as well as urban examples of ‘energy intimacy’. The project will have a synchronic and diachronic perspective, as it also will refer to historic protest movements and the role of ‘sonic agency’ within them. Thus, it aims at providing new and decolonial insights for enhancing the terminology, methods, and theories of Sound Studies and for re-thinking the Western concept of ‘energy.’ 

The project and its field research will be accompanied by blog posts, video lectures, and podcast episodes and seasons. For further information, please register for the newsletter or subscribe to the weblog and podcast via RSS feed.