ResearchWorks: Sound as Resistance: on what makes sound political

What makes sound political? (How) can you use sound to affect change? And what does the political mean when mediated through an institutional lens? This talk will explore sound as a form of resistance. Using examples of recent social movements - including the 2020/21 Polish Women’s Strike, the 2022 Iranian Feminist Revolution, and the Palestinian solidarity movement in Berlin – the talk will reflect on the limits and potentials of sonic agency, (utopic) sonic fictions created during gatherings, and what the resonances of social movements can tell us about the effects (and affects) of taking up public space.

Finally, the talk will invite a collective reflection on turning sound activism into art works, and how an institutional lens mediates and transforms activist practice.

Speaker

Hanna Grześkiewicz is a curator, writer, and researcher working with sound and words. Her practice is centred on the relationship of art with social movements, listening, and sonic fictions. She works in collective, participatory, and public settings, which comes out of her engagement with queer-feminist, migrant, and anti-capitalist movements. She is currently working on projects that explore sonic agency in feminist protests, and Eastern European sonic fictions through queer-feminism and ecology. She regularly produces work for radio and co-creates the show morning stories on Warsaw’s Radio Kapitał. She is the discourse curator for the IMPULS Festival and member of the SONIC TOMORROW collective, with which she co-curated the festival ‘Situated Ecologies’ at Floating University in Berlin. She was part of transmediale festival’s 2022 research group, and has presented her work at the Akademie der Künste (Berlin), CTM Festival (Berlin), University of Copenhagen, mdw Wien, FU Berlin, and Maastricht University, among others. She has written for a wide range of publications that include the peer-reviewed journal APRJA, Positionen, Glissando, Gramophone Magazine, Arts of the Working Class, and openDemocracy. She has degrees from the University of Cambridge and Humboldt University of Berlin.

Guildhall School’s ResearchWorks is a programme of events centred around the School’s research activity, bringing together staff, students and guests of international standing. We run regular events throughout the term intended to share the innovative research findings of the School and its guests with students, staff and the public.