Sounding Conflict: Aural Experiences in the Everyday

This talk will present methodologies and strategies associated with recent participatory sound arts projects in the UK (Sounds of the City, Belfast), Brazil (Som da Maré, Rio de Janeiro) and Portugal (Sou Cigano, Castelo Branco). These projects explore how sound is related to ideas of place, identity and the everyday. The participatory strategies rooted in authors such as Paulo Freire and the notions of broadcast creativity (Georgina Born) inform this work that aims to affirm the sound arts as a vehicle for social intervention, documentation and change. These projects have identified the power of sound when it comes to space, territorial politics and conflicts.

Belfast's sound stories reveal segregated and shared conditions, articulated by memories and stories of sound. Rio Favela's territorial conflicts play out in sound, as events like military occupations are meant to control local discourse and politics. Sound arts function as an environment in which to explore these tensions of identity and territory in the context of everyday life. Field recordings, interviews, sensory ethnography, sound sculptures, immersive audio are strategies that engage participants in revealing their own histories of sounds that are intrinsically embedded in space. The talk will share recent work in the context of two research projects funded by the Association for Conflict, Crime and Security Research.