//Unheard_Landscapes - listening | resonating | inhabiting 10th FKL/ENP/AAU_CRESSON International Symposium on Soundscape BLOIS | October 27 -30

Unheard landscapes: this metaphor leaves space to imagination, to the un-thought, to the un-known, to past and future, as well as unexplored sound scenarios. It also reaches the field of auditory perception, the acoustic domain. Sound, through auditive qualities, acoustic phenomena, design practices, artistic creations, and listening experiences, offers an inspiring transversal entry onto landscapes and ambiances. Beyond the discussions on “soundscape”, approaching ordinary environments through sounds increases the awareness of our own capacities to feel, while we inhabit and move across different worlds. From an ecological perspective, resonance appears a key word, too. It puts sound and space together. It implies the idea of a plurality of bodies, things and living beings vibrating all together, sharing common contexts of time and space. The act of listening bypasses the passive meaning it usually receives. It contains in itself a completely unexpressed potential, connoted with «project», «pro-action» and «active decision» by individuals. What will be the sounds of the future and the soundscapes in which we will live, or would like to? How can listening practices evolve, how will we listen or how differently could we listen to the world around us, tomorrow? Inhabiting the world brings to us questions about how we want to manage our being in it. How do we want to inhabit the world sonically? How sound and listening do actually affect our way to inhabit it? Have we lost some of our abilities to resonate with the world? What remains to be heard? Where could the practices of listening and attuning take us to?

Hubert GENDRON-BLAIS, DEVENIR-ENSEMBLE | CA |

Soundwork

Résonances manifestes

Abstract

Montreal, May 2015: a demonstration passes under the Berri overpass, whose walls amplify the clamours of the crowd, an incitation to show its sonic intensity generating a vibratory force that will be felt for a long time after the march. This singular moment, which illustrates the way non-living elements can contribute to the ambiances of the collective actions, has inspired the third movement of Résonances manifestes, a comprovised music piece based on a sound score composed of field recordings from various autonomous demonstrations that shook the streets of Montreal in the recent years. The piece can be understood as a sound study on how the ambient sounds can participate actively to the gain of consistence of the moments of community and how some musical processes can orient the experimentation of new ways to gather in the event. Résonances manifestes is the musical expression of a project of research-creation at the confluence of philosophy, music and politics, aiming to understand how sound and music contribute to the (trans)formation of affective communities, these communities in movement which do not stand on pre-established identities or shared interests, but are moved by the intensity and the density of the affects that circulate among them. The process of research-creation underlying the piece involved a sound study on the acoustic ecologies of demonstrations, the composition of a sound score expressing different affective tonalities of these events, and the organization of a series of training workshops on the collective perception of sounds. These experimentations, which address aesthetics, social and environmental issues, show how an ecological perspective can offer new understandings of the affective communities, then understood as the common becoming of the multiple bodies (living or not, human or not) taken in an intensive field of affective resonance.

The Author

Academic Background Postdoctoral Fellowship in Philosophy/Research-creation, McGill University (Montreal), 2020-today -IICSI associated researcher, student member of the CIRMMT Ph.D. in Philosophy – Humanities (research-creation), Concordia University (Montreal) 2014-2019 *Recent Knowledge Mobilization "A Community Attuned to the Outside: Reverberations of the Montreal Balcony Drone". Journal of Sonic Studies, 22 [forthcoming]. “Music Thinking Process. Unfolding the creation of the piece Résonances manifestes”. Organised Sound, 25:3 [forthcoming]. "Music, Ecology and Affective Communities. On Some Emergent Techniques of Résonances manifestes". Pitea Performing Arts Biennial, Oct. 26 2020. “Music, Desire and Affective Community Organizing for Repair. Note for the piece ‘Le désert est un exil…’”. ephemera, 19:2, May 2019, pp.415-425. *Selected Performances/Events « Contribution to the Dark Outside », The Dark Outside, The People’s Forest (UK), 2019. « Le désir est un désert, le désir est un exil... ». Vivre : le futur nous appartient 2k19 (compilation), Jeunesse Cosmique, 2019. Devenir-ensemble. "Résonances manifestes". Suoni per il popolo off-season concert series, Feb.18 2019. “Performer Lab Concert”. International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation. Montreal: Concordia University, May 26 2018. (w/ Joel Mason & Joel Gorrie). “the struggle hears and plays all that we forget is still happening”. DARE 2015. Gent: Orpheus Institute, Nov. 11 2015

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