Postcritical Listening: Political affordances in participatory sound art

Abstract

This article makes an argument for the postcritical treatment of the politics of sound art. Counterpointing an autoethnographic analysis of Kristina Kubisch’s Electrical Walks with Seth Kim-Cohen’s critical reading of the same work, I show how a critical position detached from the lived experience leaves behind a wealth of meanings necessary to understand the political potential of sound art. This gap, I argue, necessitates a ‘radical empiricist’ approach shifting the focus from the artistic intent to the lived experiences of the audience and the effects sound art may have on their lives. Drawing on autoethnographic and ethnographic accounts of Kaffe Matthews’s sonic bike rides and Benoît Maubrey Speaker Sculptures, as well as Rita Felski’s project of postcritical reading, I develop a theoretical framework for the politics of sound art based around the concept of affordance. The term ‘affordance’ in this context refers to the possibilities of political meaning or political action an artwork offers to the participants without imposing a particular interpretation on them. I finish by discussing three aspects of political affordances in sound art: meaning-making, uses of sound art and access to participation.

Creative Agencies in Participatory Sound Art: Two case studies

“…Dissociating soundmaking from music, participatory sound art liberates its audiences from the culturally entrenched protocols of aesthetic judgement, revealing its underlying ableism and exclusivism. It furthermore facilitates empathy and openness, manifesting in the altruistic performativity of Let Us Sing Your Place or in the chance social encounters that Speaker Sculptures encourages (see Keylin 2020). In that manner, participatory sound art further questions the connection between voice and subjectivity – both through the explorations of the constructed and mediated character of literal and metaphorical vocality and through offering horizontal and altruistic ways of exercising creativity, beyond the egocentrism of self-expression.…”