Telematic Sound Body: A trajectory of intimacy and defiance

Abstract

This article reflects on telematic soundwalking by initially considering the network as it is experienced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It uses learnings and writings about our networked lives (during COVID) to generate a framework in order to understand the artist’s pre-pandemic work; more specifically, in the context of a series of telematic soundwalking performances titled A Certain Geography, of which two case studies are presented here. The network is analysed through a diverse and cross-disciplinary selection of ideas and writings on networked cultures, experimental radio, listening, philosophy, anthropology and urban design. This cluster of diverse theoretical notions become important for the creation of a type of networked listening where the authorship of I often collapses into a polyphonic intimacy of voices and soundings affected by all that is taking place in between, including the distortions created by the materiality of technologies, the different layers of ecologies at stake, the words and voices of those who sound and listen remotely and site-specifically. It proposes an incomplete reception loop where the aspiration of walking on a planned trajectory is constantly contested and destabilised. The network becomes a porous space where the I constantly morphs into a convivial-collective action.