Transitions/
Transmissions
a Sound Installation
2023 AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting | Toronto
Ethnographic Listening Workshop
➤ November 16 | 10 AM – 12 PM
➤ Metro Toronto Convention Centre (map)
➤ Room 703
Organizers: Joella Bitter and Marina Peterson
Listening is a practice that people do as a way of being in and knowing the world – it is something in which we are all experts, even if not always acknowledged. The goal of the workshop is to explore listening as an ethnographic mode of attention that is neither separable from other senses nor neutral in its orientations. The ethnographic process is layered—there are relationships, activities, notes we take, scribblings, recordings, feelings, sensory experiences, extra-sensory experiences, and with time, there are also memories, things-forgotten, things-imagined and -revised. And then there’s the writing, analysis, story-telling, making arguments, and perhaps even the ever-elusive research conclusions. We ask, what role can listening play in ethnographic research and writing? In this workshop, we will consider how listening with can support an understanding of sound as socially meaningful. We will experiment with several different modes of listening and consider what emerges through sensory attunements.
This workshop is widely applicable to anyone interested in deepening attention to their listening practices, particularly to those engaged in ethnographic research within or beyond anthropology. The workshop may be of particular interest to students and others interested in developing experimental methodologies as part of their professional development. As part of Digital Curatorial Collective’s efforts to foreground multimodal processes, this is a hands-on workshop in which participants will actively participate in various listening exercises and prompts. Workshop materials will be provided for participants. The workshop is funded by the Society of Cultural Anthropology (SCA) and Wenner-Gren Foundation, in support of public pedagogy. As such, we will document our collective learning as a resource to make available online afterwards, and are collaborating with the Music and Sound Interest Group (MSIG) to support a public ethnographic sound installation that will also take place at the same location (Rm 703) during the 2023 AAA meetings. Participants must be in Toronto, but need not be registered for AAA meetings.
Disco Ethnography: Transitions/Transmissions Afterparty
➤ November 17 | 8 PM – 12 AM
➤ Tranzac Club (map)
Organizers: Leonardo Cardoso, Farzaneh Hammasi, and Alexandra Lippman
During this post-installation party, scholars will perform their soundworks as selectors, DJs, and curators to amplify the installation and bring the conference out into the city. We ask: What if the anthropologist were a DJ? How would she perform scholarship, fieldwork, and research? How can we push the creative, collaborative, or dance-able possibilities for multimodal ethnography? Each selector will perform their set comprised of fieldwork videos, curated music videos, archival recordings, vinyl records, and DJ-ready field recordings. Participants will explore unexpected resonances, echoes, and friction rather than seamless and perfectly beat-matched transitions.
