Social Recordings presents:
Collateral & Devotional Listening
03/10/2023
10:00- 12:00
RITCS, Visie en Luistercel.
Dansaertstraat, 1000 Brussel.
Language: English
Collateral Listening
Mhamad Safa
Presentation, films, audio & talk
10:00
Mhamad Safa elaborates on the concept of ‘Collateral Listening’, as an inherent aural condition to atmospheres of loudness, particularly in armed conflict. Informed by the controversial category of collateral damage, that operates within the fundamental principles of the Laws of Armed Conflicts, Collateral Listening examines the obscured zones of violence. Territories where untargeted bodies absorb the audible excess of armed conflicts. Spaces, where sheltering victims experience the diffused yet “legitimate” sonic repercussions of shockwaves.
As neither targets nor collateral casualties, ear witnesses to aerial strikes are systematically excluded from legal consideration and categorisation. The alienation of the listener, as such, is instrumentalized further by retributive and coercive military practices. Through this extreme listening dimension, entanglements between acoustics, psycho-social trauma, laws of war, geography and technology come to matter.
Additionally, this investigation exposes the uncertainties in the laws that oversee hostilities and govern the usage of weapons.
Devotional Listening:
Sonic Practices at the Nexus of the Spatial and the Otherworldly
Mhamad Safa
Lecture Performance
11:30
This lecture performance examines the obscure modes of listening and sounding within the Arabian Peninsula. It unpacks the way in which subcultural practices are entangled with narratives of migration, transborder soundscapes, and devotional imaginaries. Departing from the phenomenon of Istinzal, that occurs during performances of Saamiri, the sonic environments in focus, are re-organised across diverse temporalities and geographies. Through the spirit possession of devout listeners, a sonic sense is distorted, stretched, and accelerated. Sound in that case can act as both a source of trauma and its examination beyond the established Western-scientific accounts. As it surpasses the audible and transcends borders, the region’s sonic cultures reconfigure how knowledge is produced and distributed.
Social Recordings 