WOMEX CONFERENCE - Seismographic Sounds Conference By Norient

photo: Norient

Last week we had the opportunity to visit the 'Club Transmediale' media and art festival, and especially the Seismographic Sounds conference which has been organized by the Norient network.

The speakers featured friends and WOMEX speakers such as Lucia Udvardyová and offered various insights and examples of 'local and global sounds and media culture' from Slovakia, the Middle East, Ghana... as creative and off as it gets.

A whole range of change and protest projects. Some are very serious works in sound art and other musical niches, such as the remarkable video of a Slovakian artist who visualised and vocalised disgusting facebook comments on the tragic deaths of refugees, statements stated by some fellow Slovakian citizens (you can do this with every country though, unfortunately) but visualized using their own family pics on facebook it shows the absurdity of their words. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWKp0Xnjiac

Others are more humorous, such as this long video trailer re the Ghanaian scene around the FOKN Boys who raise money for America on the streets on Ghana arguing that "Ghana is on the way up while unfortunately America is on its way down" – https://vimeo.com/82455475
reminding us of other satirical charities, such as the recent "Adopt a Dane" initiative.

"Scholars, journalists, bloggers and musicians from Bolivia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Switzerland and forty-six other countries discuss artistic expressions that may not make big headlines yet, but anticipate major changes to come. Produced in oftentimes small studios from Jakarta to La Paz, Cape Town to Helsinki, these works experiment with the new possibilities of the Internet age and illuminate new spaces beyond the confines of commercialism, propaganda, and bigotry. They foresee a changing geography of multi-layered modernities, far beyond old ideas of North versus South, West versus East. Discover this through a collage of articles, interviews, quotations, photographs and lyrics."

There is a Seismographic Sounds book available, we can recommend it.

article posted by:Paul Bräuer, Piranha Arts

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