Promise No Promises! 3e1d13

Systems, the sixth episode of the series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them, is based on a talk by Kara Springer, an artist of Jamaican and Bajan heritage, who was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, and raised in Southern Ontario, Canada. Her work is concerned with care and armature — the underlying structure that holds the flesh of a body in place. Working with photography, sculpture, and site-specific interventions, she surveys forms of structural within urban infrastructure and systems of institutional and political power.   The podcast series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them emerges from the autumn 2022 Master Symposium at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, ed by SüdKulturfonds. The symposium was devoted to artists and thinkers whose work addresses the importance of retelling and reinterpreting stories and myths that regard identity and gender with all their ecological and spectral entanglements intact. TThe podcast series features talks and performances by Jumana Emil Abboud, Bani Abidi, Christian Campbell, Astrit Ismaili, Acaye Kerunen, Tessa Mars, and Kara Springer.

Names, the seventh episode of the series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them, is based on a talk by ugandan artist, storyteller, writer and performer Acaye Kerunen. Acaye Kerunen graduated with a BSc in Mass Communication from the Islamic University in Uganda, Mbale. Her installation works—featuring hand stitching, appending, knotting, and weaving—are often made with local craftswomen, querying the line between fine art and craft, and centering methodologies of performance, collaboration, social work, and environmental consciousness.   The podcast series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them emerges from the autumn 2022 Master Symposium at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, ed by SüdKulturfonds. The symposium was devoted to artists and thinkers whose work addresses the importance of retelling and reinterpreting stories and myths that regard identity and gender with all their ecological and spectral entanglements intact. The podcast series features talks and performances by Jumana Emil Abboud, Bani Abidi, Christian Campbell, Astrit Ismaili, Acaye Kerunen, Tessa Mars, and Kara Springer.

Holding on to Writing is the fourth episode of the Feminisms in the Caribbean series, which emerges from a conversation with haitian writer, poet and novelist Kettly Mars. Haiti is at the heart of her creation, being a pretext for her relationship with words, her fondness for storytelling and the exploration of the human soul. During her process of writing words often come before ideas. The writer's body becomes a medium for the words, broadening a visceral relationship with language. One of the extraordinary qualities of words is that they cannot always explain themselves: they are content, but they are also form. They are result, but also process. Writing becomes something that happens and not just something writers do. It is a social, intimate, and responsive encounter with language that allows realities to appear within other realities. Writing can be an ethical tool and a com in moments of disorientation. Moreover, "holding on to writing", an expression of Kettly Mars during our conversation, can make it a way of life. It was not until her thirties that Kettly Mars was able to devote herself fully to writing. Her previous work in istration brought her into with another kind of language very different from that of literature: the language of bureaucracy, which is also the language of institutional power. However, she was not so much influenced by this kind of language as by the people she met at the time. Kettly Mars, who has written extensively in French, also writes in Creole. While the two languages are part of her identity, her emotional relationship is not the same with each of them. This relationship also includes the socio-political context of Haiti over the years, during and after the Duvalier dictatorship. Different from history books, which are a collection of historical facts, names and events, novels and fiction add new meanings, add multiples senses and add everyday lives to official history.

"Rhythms of pleasure", episode twelve from from The Tale and the Tongue series—arises from a conversation with choreographer and performer Julia Barrette-Laperrière. Sonia Fernández Pan and Julia Barrette-Laperrière met at a dance class where everyone danced a lot except Sonia, who just watched the others move as she was unable to follow the steps. After that class they started talking about body, pleasure, desire, and music; about electronic dance music as a kind of continuous orgasm with no beginning and no end, closer to the female logics of pleasure, and rock music, by contrast, being more like a male ejaculation with short, hurried songs. Julia talked about her project Falla, where she moves and is moved by a dildo in collaboration with the musician and guitarist Pia Achternkamp. One of the many motives behind it was to consider the guitar as an icon of masculinity, as a sort of sonorous phallus. The way in which gender takes over bodies, pleasure and music is very present in Falla. Here, Julia expresses and moves an alternative female sexuality, freeing it from so many inherited complexes.   This conversation with Julia Barrette-Laperrière “took screen” at the end of October 2022. Sonia Fernández Pan asked her about her archetype of the dangerous woman: for whom or for what can a woman be dangerous? Julia, who now expands this archetype beyond women, understands this dimension in the plural. Being dangerous, as a form of resistance, happens when people come together and ally themselves for a common cause. When Julia explains her personal and social relationship with femininity, her way of being a boy growing up reminds Sonia of many other experiences she came across. Sonia also feels part of the debate about gender pronouns, which simultaneously widen and tighten, and wonders if the rhythms of pleasure can be part of identities, making them strategic and non-essential for us to move in different ways.

“Hi, How Are You?”—episode eleven from The Tale and the Tongue series—arises from a conversation with Era Qena, an enthusiastic storyteller. Era is currently an active member of the social centre Termokiss in Prishtina. She was also part of the team of the European nomadic biennial Manifesta14, which took place between July and October 2022 in the capital of Kosovo, where Era Qena and Sonia Fernández Pan first met.   The words “hi, how are you” came up a few times during their conversation, connecting to basic forms of hospitality and mutual care. This seemingly simple question is not always easy to answer. In some texts Sonia read about Kosovo and Prishtina, the notion of hospitality was a constant. Era would refer to an ancient book where hospitality already appears as a set of rules and principles. Far from written or spoken rules, conversations and shared stories are a place where hospitality can also happen.   The conversation for this podcast episode took place in October 2022. Sonia and Era started talking about the difficulty of owning your own place when you are very young. Half of Kosovo’s population is under thirty years old. In addition there are the severe limitations imposed by the EU on Kosovars, who need a visa to travel to other states. This reconnects with imbalances in hospitality: when it happens on the one side but not on the other. The conversation however led also to other directions: to private spaces with public uses, to Termokiss and its influence on other projects and social structures, to taking care of street dogs, to relationships in digital times, to the many lives that appear in one’s own... For the question “how are you” is both a personal and collective one.

Labour of Listening by Kate Lacey is the first episode of the new podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, based on the 2022 symposium with the same title. In her contribution the author and Professor of Media History and Theory at the University of Sussex talks about the act of listening as a form of labor, about listening out and listening in and what it means to create a space, where speech and listening can take place. The podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening; emerges from the Spring 2022 Master Symposium, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, in collaboration with Vuslat Foundation.

Sirens, the second episode of the series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, is based on a talk by artist Aura Satz. She speaks about the sound of sirens and emergency signals and about turning bodies and things into speakers, transducers, antennaes or musical instruments. The podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening emerges from the Spring 2022 Master Symposium, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, in collaboration with Vuslat Foundation.

Hunger, the third episode of the series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, is based on an online conversation by xwélmexw (Stó:lō/Skwah) artist, curator, writer and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University Dylan Robinson with Quinn Latimer. Dylan Robinson’s work spans the areas of Indigenous sound studies and public art, and takes various forms, offering him a space to integrate the sonic, visual, poetic, and material that are inseparable in Stó:lō culture. The podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening emerges from the Spring 2022 Master Symposium, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, in collaboration with Vuslat Foundation.

Subject, the fourth episode of the series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, is based on a talk by Bill Dietz, composer, writer, and co-chair of the Music/Sound Department in Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts in New York. Within the setting of his talk he speaks to the audience unamplified, reflecting on the power of the structural and infrastructural preconditions of audibility in spaces specially designed and equipped for talks and presentation. The podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening emerges from the Spring 2022 Master Symposium, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, in collaboration with Vuslat Foundation.

Repetition, the fifth episode of the series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, is based on a talk by artist Nour Mobarak. In her talk she shares the composition Father Fugue which is composed of conversations with her father, a polyglot who has a 30-second memory, and improvised a capella songs by Nour Mobarak. The podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening emerges from the Spring 2022 Master Symposium, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, in collaboration with Vuslat Foundation.

Score for Bellapais Abbey, the sixth episode of the series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, is based on the online performance with the same title, by Berlin-based writer Jazmina Figueroa. Score for Bellapais Abbey includes instrumental music and ambient sounds intermingled with spoken word. The podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening emerges from the Spring 2022 Master Symposium, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, in collaboration with Vuslat Foundation.

“To find each other, again,” the tenth episode of the The Tale and the Tongue series, follows a conversation with artist Sylbee Kim. The title stems from a comment Sylbee Kim made, when she refers to the situation of meeting again with people, we haven't seen for quite some time. For her the intensity and fragmentary intimacy of many relationships happen during intense work processes, where she collaborates with many other people who also shape her projects. To find each other is a way to find oneself. Being in relationship allows us to perceive that which remains and that which wanders along the way. Sylbee Kim’s projects radiate a strong interest in life and body consciousness, both social and individual at the same time. Watching Sylbee Kim’s videos, conversations or ideas resonate, that come up recurrently when talking to others: a certain mythological self-expression of capitalism, the confusion between spirituality and religion, the Western tendency to scepticism, the moral superiority of secular and scientific knowledge, socially scripted feelings… In her projects, videos are elements that are part of a larger whole: an environment or an aesthetic ecosystem. Several objects, colors, lights, different intensities of space and sound are equally important in providing an experience for the viewer, who becomes a temporary inhabitant of a temporary setting. The conversation with Sylbee Kim took place in Berlin in July 2022. She refers to Berlin as a locus of affection. Having grown up mainly in Seoul, ing through other places, and having come to during her student years, her place of belonging is not a specific place, but a constant situation of feeling “in between”. Her words on belongingness remind that to feel at home we need certain places but that we can also feel at home being with certain people. Again, finding each other can be a way for finding oneself.

WITNESSES by Kateryna Botanova, a curator, cultural critic and writer, and Quinn Latimer, a California-born poet, critic, and editor, is the sixth episode of the podcast series Seeing Into the Heart of Things; Earth and Equality Within Indigenous and Ancestral Knowledges. This collection of episodes emerged from the Master Symposium in fall 2021, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW in collaboration with CULTURESCAPES 2021 Amazonia. The contributions to the symposium were devoted to discussing Indigenous thought, decolonial feminisms, and the political possibilities of the mythic imagination, raising questions like: How do Indigenous cosmologies create forms for resistance? How does the Western imaginary of the Amazon, from its roots in racial capitalism to its corporate-tech, paternalistic present, cloud our understanding of how its peoples and nonhuman spirits narrate themselves?

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LAND, HAPPENS TO THE PEOPLE by Katya García-Antón, Director and Chief Curator of the Office of Contemporary Art Norway, in Oslo, is the third episode of the podcast series Seeing Into the Heart of Things; Earth and Equality Within Indigenous and Ancestral Knowledges. This collection of episodes emerged from the Master Symposium in fall 2021, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW in collaboration with CULTURESCAPES 2021 Amazonia. The contributions to the symposium were devoted to discussing Indigenous thought, decolonial feminisms, and the political possibilities of the mythic imagination, raising questions like: How do Indigenous cosmologies create forms for resistance? How does the Western imaginary of the Amazon, from its roots in racial capitalism to its corporate-tech, paternalistic present, cloud our understanding of how its peoples and nonhuman spirits narrate themselves?

DEPRESSION by theater and film writer and director Pauliina Feodoroff, is the fourth episode of the podcast series Seeing Into the Heart of Things; Earth and Equality Within Indigenous and Ancestral Knowledges. This collection of episodes emerged from the Master Symposium in fall 2021, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW in collaboration with CULTURESCAPES 2021 Amazonia. The contributions to the symposium were devoted to discussing Indigenous thought, decolonial feminisms, and the political possibilities of the mythic imagination, raising questions like: How do Indigenous cosmologies create forms for resistance? How does the Western imaginary of the Amazon, from its roots in racial capitalism to its corporate-tech, paternalistic present, cloud our understanding of how its peoples and nonhuman spirits narrate themselves?

EXTRACTION by Jeremy Narby, a Switzerland-based writer, activist, and anthropologist, is the second episode of the podcast series Seeing Into the Heart of Things; Earth and Equality Within Indigenous and Ancestral Knowledges. This collection of episodes emerged from the Master Symposium in fall 2021, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW in collaboration with CULTURESCAPES 2021 Amazonia. The contributions to the symposium were devoted to discussing Indigenous thought, decolonial feminisms, and the political possibilities of the mythic imagination, raising questions like: How do Indigenous cosmologies create forms for resistance? How does the Western imaginary of the Amazon, from its roots in racial capitalism to its corporate-tech, paternalistic present, cloud our understanding of how its peoples and nonhuman spirits narrate themselves?

ETHNICITY by Ashfika Rahman, a visual artist from Dhaka, Bangladesh, whose work straddles visual art and documentary practices, is the fifth episode of the podcast series Seeing Into the Heart of Things; Earth and Equality Within Indigenous and Ancestral Knowledges. This collection of episodes emerged from the Master Symposium in fall 2021, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW in collaboration with CULTURESCAPES 2021 Amazonia. The contributions to the symposium were devoted to discussing Indigenous thought, decolonial feminisms, and the political possibilities of the mythic imagination, raising questions like: How do Indigenous cosmologies create forms for resistance? How does the Western imaginary of the Amazon, from its roots in racial capitalism to its corporate-tech, paternalistic present, cloud our understanding of how its peoples and nonhuman spirits narrate themselves?

CONNECTION by Vandria Borari, Brazilian artist and activist from the Borari people of Baixo Tapajós, Brazil, is the first episode of the podcast series Seeing Into the Heart of Things; Earth and Equality Within Indigenous and Ancestral Knowledges. This collection of episodes emerged from the Master Symposium in fall 2021, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW in collaboration with CULTURESCAPES 2021 Amazonia. The contributions to the symposium were devoted to discussing Indigenous thought, decolonial feminisms, and the political possibilities of the mythic imagination, raising questions like: How do Indigenous cosmologies create forms for resistance? How does the Western imaginary of the Amazon, from its roots in racial capitalism to its corporate-tech, paternalistic present, cloud our understanding of how its peoples and nonhuman spirits narrate themselves?

DIALOG by artist duo knowbotiq (Yvonne Wilhelm and Christian Huebler) with researcher and project coordinator Ana Garzón Sabogal, is the seventh episode of the podcast series Seeing Into the Heart of Things; Earth and Equality Within Indigenous and Ancestral Knowledges. This collection of episodes emerged from the Master Symposium in fall 2021, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW in collaboration with CULTURESCAPES 2021 Amazonia. The contributions to the symposium were devoted to discussing Indigenous thought, decolonial feminisms, and the political possibilities of the mythic imagination, raising questions like: How do Indigenous cosmologies create forms for resistance? How does the Western imaginary of the Amazon, from its roots in racial capitalism to its corporate-tech, paternalistic present, cloud our understanding of how its peoples and nonhuman spirits narrate themselves?

Birds and cats is the ninth episode that follows a conversation with artist Laure Prouvost. The title of this podcast stems from one of the first questions Sonia Fernández Pan, the curator of this podcast asked Laure Prouvost during the conversation, inspired by the multiple characters Laure embodies through her projects.  Her answer to the question about who she would like to be if she wasn't herself was "a bird", commenting on this animal's ability to fly. Sonia added that she would like to be a cat, perhaps because one of its great talents is the daily right to laziness in a world where life works relentlessly. They ended the conversation by returning to our animal relationship as bird and cat, with Laure flirting with the possibility that one catches and eats the other.   In the many biographies that Laure Prouvost has written about herself over the years the artist strays from traditional artist biographies, describing her work according to the narrative and experiential drive of her projects and her way of naming them to ones where the institutional curriculum is replaced by a list of situations that her projects were able to create: Melting Into Another, an Occupied Paradise, Deep See Blue Surrounding You, a Waiting Room with objects, a New Museum for Grand Dad, A tearoom for Grand Ma, a lobby for love among the artists… Within these places we are no longer an impersonal audience, but characters who enter temporal worlds where fiction becomes materially present and real.   The difference between fiction and lying is a question Sonia Fernández Pan also shared with Laure Prouvost, inspired by how she never fully reveals what is fiction and what is not in her work. The storytelling surrounding her artistic practice is another element of her work, strategically confusing spheres that the traditional art system insists on keeping apart.   This conversation with Laure Prouvost took place in April 2022 in separate places. Sonia Fernández Pan was listening to Laure Prouvosts words from the computer and paying attention to the sound of the strokes of a drawing that Laure brought into their meeting. There are many similarities between writing and drawing. Both arise from the body; both produce a physical and intimate relationship between head and hands. The strokes of Laure's drawing added sound textures to her words. To listen to her voice and strokes, come in and enjoy.