Ultra-red ab
PROTOCOLS FOR THE SOUND OF F R E E D O M
2012
T hey say that freedom is a constant struggle, They say that freedom is a constant struggle, They say that freedom is a constant struggle, Oh lord, I’ve struggled so long, I must be free, I must be free. ~ Sam Block, member Mississippi SNCC from “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” (1962/64)
WHAT IS THE SOUND OF FREEDOM?
Every sound is a structure formed of many sounds. Every sound is an archive of echoes from spaces, encounters, voices, demands, desires, and the vibrations between.
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Echoing inside the word FREEDOM are scenes of learning
listening
organizing
resisting. How we listen to these echoes aects how we act. How we act aects how power is organized and shared. For some, freedom has the function of property one can monopolize or upon which one can speculate. For others, freedom is a question.
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W hat
is so astonishing about the impoverished condition of
contemporary discourse in the U.S., as well as elsewhere, is the lack of any serious debate as to which of several divergent concepts of freedom might be appropriate to our times. If it is indeed the case that the U.S. public can be persuaded to support almost anything in the name of freedom, then surely the meaning of this word should be subjected to the deepest scrutiny. ~ David Harvey from A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005)
To our ears
Harvey’s analysis
sounds like
an invitation to
embark upon
an investigation.
We begin with
three questions.
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1 IF the practice of freedom is the organization of power and the practice of listening is the organization of a people, THEN what is the sound of freedom and how might we listen for
to
within
that sound?
2 IF freedom is a question that provokes crisis, THEN what vibrations might we generate by asking that question here in the ruins of crisis?
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3 IF the present crisis is an invitation to question
the subject
of freedom, THEN how might passing on the invitation transform the contours of our solidarity with the victims of the war on the poor?
T here is a timbre of voice that comes from not being heard and knowing heard by others
you are not being
noticed only not heard
for the same reason. ~ Audre Lorde from “Echoes� (1993)
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Five individuals and collectives have prepared protocols for listening to the sound of freedom; creative musician George E. Lewis, members of the Vogue’ology collective, playwright Nancy Nevårez and organizer Samuel Sanchez, poet Fred Moten, and members of Ultra-red. Each of the protocols call for improvised listening that we can then reflect upon that we can then analyze that we can then test in action that we can then reect upon that we can then . . . The people who have composed and who will facilitate the five protocols for listening conduct their own practices as
for
within
learning communities.
They come from diverse contexts while at the same time holding a commitment to the on-going project of radical social and political change.
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A s you know, you will be teaching in a non-academic sort of setting; probably the basement of a church. Your students will be involved in voter registration activity after school. They may not come to school regularly [. . .] you will have few materials apart from those you and your fellow teachers have brought. In such a setting a “curriculum” must necessarily be flexible. We cannot provide lesson plans. All we can do is give you some models and suggestions, which you can fall back on when you wish. You, your colleagues, and your students are urged to shape your own curriculum in the light of the teachers’ skills, the students’ interests, and the resources of the particular community in which your school is located. ~ Mississippi Freedom School Curriculum from “A Note to the Teacher” (1964)
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WHAT IS THE SOUND OF FREEDOM? is a five-day sound investigation into organized listening. Convened by the international sound art collective Ultra-red, the investigation is part of A survey is a process of listening curated by the Scottish experimental music and film organization Arika within the performance program of the 2012 Whitney Biennial. For eighteen years, Ultra-red has investigated the contribution experimental sound art can make to political organizing within the base communities where our members are situated. Over time, we have grown increasingly interested in sound as an object cause of the desire to listen rather than as an end in itself. In 2009 Ultra-red launched School Of Echoes, a multi-site initiative in sound research and popular education. In New York, Ultra-red’s experiments in critical learning have occurred within a long term political and artistic collaboration with members of New York’s gender queer art community of the House|Ballroom scene. In Ball culture, the practices of embodied listening are bound up with the question, what is the sound of freedom? This question organizes Ultra-red’s contribution to Arika’s survey into the practices of listening. Members of the House|Ballroom scene and various pedagogical communities around New York join us as co-researchers in investigating how we might listen to that sound. We invite the audiences of the Whitney Biennial to join the investigation. From casually walking through the soundscape, to acting as a witness observer, to assuming the role of a co-researcher, all forms of attention involve some level of inquiry. Feel free to use this workbook to describe what you hear. Record in the margins key themes that indicate avenues for further research. We welcome you to join us for all five sessions and to reflect on your own orientation to the collective interrogation of the conditions of freedom.
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composed for organizing collective inquiry into how we listen to the sound of freedom. The protocols seek to put the listeners into process by privileging the ear that hears over the sound itself. Repeat the protocols for all five sessions of the investigation. [New York, 180 min, 02—06. 05. 2012]
/ PROTOCOLS FOR THE SOUND OF FREEDOM /
0 1
Introduction (30 min) — Describe the aim of the investigation and the different roles involved. Ask the co-researchers to introduce themselves.
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Sub-Protocols for Listening (60 min) — Invite the co-researchers to collectively perform the sub-protocols for listening to the sound of freedom. Videotape the procedure. The George E. Lewis Protocols [Wed, 02. 05] The Vogue’ology Protocols [Thu, 03. 05] The Nancy Nevárez and Samuel Sanchez Protocols [Fri, 04. 05] The Fred Moten Protocols [Sat, 05. 05] The Ultra-red Protocols [Sun, 06. 05]
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What did you hear? (30 min) — Analyze the collective listening experience in small groups of co-researchers.
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What did we learn? (45 min) — Record the analysis as a large group onto pieces of flip-chart paper. Mount the papers onto the wall in close proximity to the specific protocols for that day and the video-monitor displaying the videotape of the procedure.
Facing page: “Listening To Transgress: An Inquiry into Sonic Intuition,� composed and facilitated by George E. Lewis. George E. Lewis is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), teacher, and historian of experimental music.
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/ LISTENING TO TRANSGRESS: AN INQUIRY INTO SONIC INTUIT I O N /
by George E. Lewis. [Wed,
02. 05. 2012]
The goals of this protocol are (1) to gain additional facility in the performance of “sonic intuition,” or the ability to read minds and intentions through the ears, and (2) to explore instances of “emotional transduction,” or conversions of sound into human emotional and spiritual resonances. These capabilities are considered in the protocol as crucial aspects of the everyday-life improvisation of “listening” (i.e., ear-centered attending). As Yusef Lateef once told us, “The sound of the improvisation seems to tell us what kind of person is improvising. We feel that we can hear character or personality in the way the musician improvises.” Essentially the same notion was advanced earlier by Charlie Parker, who declared that, “Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.” Here, improvised sound becomes identifiable, not with timbre, but with the expression of personality, the assertion of agency, the assumption of responsibility and an encounter with history, memory and identity. Similarly, we can understand the experience of listening as an improvisative act engaged in by everyone, a practice of active engagement with the world in which, as David Rothenberg notes, even “accidental meaning is essential.” This protocol asks us as improvising listeners to join Rothenberg in “look[ing] for connections among things so seemingly incongruous that at first contact they seem to make no sense.” This protocol further asserts that embedded in every sound are complex, indirect, powerful signals that we can and must train ourselves to detect if we are to survive, grow, and change. The intended outcome of our process is to create specialists able to help others to detect these signals, in order to reclaim our infinitely rich, survivaloriented acoustic-psychological abilities from the poverty of sonic experience imposed by anxiety-ridden portrayals of that richness as an alienated collection of objective, autonomous morphologies, apprehensible “in themselves”—radically devalued and ultimately transformed into worthless trinkets ready for the slaughterhouse of commodification (along with those who made and heard them) by dint of being divorced from time, place, and situation, and with all connections to culture, history or memory irrevocably severed. The locally unique and ever-shifting hybrids of agency with indeterminacy embedded in the practice of sonic intuition are posited in this protocol as being available to all sentient and semi-sentient beings, including humans, animals, and computer programs. In executing the protocol, we try to keep in mind Arnold I. Davidson’s understanding: “Collective intelligibility unfolds in real time when the participants in social interaction are committed to making sense of, and giving sense to, themselves and others.” NOTE:
[Continued next page.]
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[Continued from previous page.] The protocol is best pursued with a smallish group of participants sitting around a table, guided either by a single individual or a team of two to four persons. The group will have available a stereo sound system capable of reproducing complex nuance.
PROCEDURE:
A.
Sound Intent. We encounter a series of sound examples, taken from everyday social environments. After each example, we record and discuss our responses to the following queries: • What is this sound trying to tell us? • What did the sound tell us inadvertently? • Who benefits/loses from hearing this sound, and how?
B.
Sound Stories. We recall, record, and explore our descriptions of: • • • •
C.
Sound Interactions. We explore these questions collectively and verbally, in real time: • • • •
D.
A sound that oppressed you A sound that deceived you A sound that empowered you A sound that saved you
How do ears create community? Do we know community when we hear it? How can we listen to what we want? How can we hear the intentions of our surroundings?
Sound Action. We leave the space with these questions reverberating in our mind’s ear: • Do we know freedom when we hear it? • Can we tell the world how to hear the sound of freedom?
Rothenberg, David. Sudden Music: Improvisation, Sound, Nature. Athens: University of Georgia Press (2002). Davidson, Arnold I. “Improvisation as a Way of Life.” Unpublished talk given with George Lewis, Center for the Humanities, University of Michigan, October 2011. Lewis, George E. “Too Many Notes: Computers, Complexity and Culture in Voyager.” Leonardo Music Journal 10 (2000), 33-39. Lewis, George E. ”The old people speak of sound: Personality, Empathy, Community.” In Sally Yard, ed. INSITE 97: Private Time in Public Spaces. San Diego: Installation Gallery (1998). Lewis, George E. “Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives.” Black Music Research Journal 16, No. 1 (Spring 1996), 91-122.
Facing page: “Protocols for the Listening in Prophetic Hope,” composed and facilitated by Michael Roberson Garçon and the members of the Vogue’ology collective. The Vogue’ology collective is engaged in a long-term investigation within New York City’s House|Ballroom scene, an intentional kinship and artistic movement formed by transgender, bisexual, lesbian and gay Latino/as and African Americans that has supported decades of radical artistic exploration of style, identity and social inequality. The Vogue’ology collective’s projects include the Arbert Santana Ballroom Archive and Oral History Project, college courses, workshops and performances committed to advancing the scene’s struggles against racism, homophobia, transphobia and poverty . Michael Roberson Garçon is the founding father of the House of Garçon, one of the Ballroom scene’s largest and most successful houses. He is a sexual rights activist who has committed many years of his life to addressing the issue of HIV/ AIDS among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of color.
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have been composed by Michael Roberson Garçon and members of the Vogue’ology collective. These protocols draw on the work of African American feminists and Womanist theologians to dismantle the configurations of oppression formed when racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, poverty and other forms of discrimination intersect. We draw on these histories of analysis and action to consider the terms by which members of the Latino/a and African American lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender House|Ballroom scene strive for freedom. [Thu, 03. 05. 2012] / PROTOCOLS FOR LISTENING IN PROPHETIC HOPE /
1
Arrange two concentric circles of chairs in the center of a large room. There is a small inner circle of chairs and a larger outer circle of chairs.
2
Invite the House|Ballroom members engaged in the listening session to be seated in the inner circle. This is the first investigative team. Invite all others engaged in the listening session to be seated in the outer circle of chairs. This is the second investigative team.
3
Present the first sound object for consideration by the two investigative teams.
4
Ask the first investigative team to share what they have heard and to discuss the implications of this listening for the struggle against racism, sexual and gender oppression, and poverty among members of the House|Ballroom scene. Record the responses in writing.
5
Repeat this process with the remaining sound objects. [Continued next page.]
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[Continued from previous page.] 6
Speak the names of those members of the scene we have lost in recent years. Listen in silence to the memory of these ancestors.
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Ask the second investigative team to share what they heard in the discussions of the first investigative team. Record the responses in writing.
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Ask the second investigative team to share what they heard in the sound objects. Record the responses.
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Bring the members of the two investigative teams together to review the written record of their responses to the sound objects and to the discussions of the sound objects.
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Discuss these responses.
Facing page: “Protocols for Listening to the Sound of Freedom,” composed and facilitated by Nancy Nevárez and Samuel Sanchez. Nancy Nevárez is a Nuyorican poet and playwright. Sam Sanchez is a community organizer and founder of Puerto Rican Equation. Their work is grounded in anti-poverty struggles and the Puerto Rican independence movement.
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/ PROTOCOLS FOR LISTENING TO THE SOUND OF FREEDOM /
composed by Nancy Nevárez and Samuel Sanchez. [Fri, 04. 05. 2012]
I If possible listen to Scenario 1 be read If not, read Scenario 1 What did you hear? Immediate reaction to this scene What stays with you? Reflection on this scene II If possible listen to Scenario 2 be read If not, read Scenario 2 What did you hear? Immediate reaction to this scene What stays with you? Reflection on this scene III If possible listen to Scenario 3 be read If not, read Scenario 3 What did you hear? Immediate reaction to this scene What stays with you? Reflection on this scene
Facing page: “Hand Up To Your Ear,� composed and facilitated by Fred Moten. Fred Moten is a poet, teacher, and theorist of the black radical aesthetic.
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/ HAND UP TO YOUR EAR /
by Fred Moten. [Sat,
05. 05. 2012]
for Dont Rhine and Robert Sember 24. 01. 2012 / 29. 03. 2012 for CAConrad, Amiri Baraka, Angela Davis, M. NourbeSe Philip 16—20. 04. 2012.
You are a bass community Apprehend before the sound. The cargo, the brutalized openings, which also surround it, but only for a time that can’t be measured, in permeance. It’s an imprecision bordering on misunderstanding to call this “context,” that rapturous silence, shouting, composed in listening so we discompose ourselves in one another. Lose your composure in repose, at rest, in descent, in the general murmur, a general antagonism of noise, the fugue of the absolutely poor, her gift of diving, her depressive largesse of lifting, in study, in series, her overlapped happenings of attendance, lapsed concentricities, submerged cyphers, like a bunch of little churches and ballrooms with the doors open. You are the bottom We care about each other so militantly, with such softness, that we exhaust ourselves, and then record, in the resonance of our slightly opened mouths, the sound of that, in the absence of the enemy that we keep making. A disconnected movement, as if preoccupied, held already in the beautiful gathering afternoon, carried by one another as one another’s play mamas. Listen to the sound through one another’s skin. Preserve the sound through membrane and water, to find our form in corresponding. Your body is a mixing board Come take a listening walk and admire your hand twisting. This listening is in watching how you move to touch in sounding, brushing up against your friend, to see how his position sounds to make the music we are listening to by moving the people moving around. Make soundworks out of rustling to notice the material that comes up on us, that we come upon, do something with. Do something with the sound like it’s your friend, like you met her at the quadrophenic playground. [Continued next page.]
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[Continued from previous page.] You are a child, in a club One night in San Francisco, off the impeccable to fray brocade of a live black hawk, of the more and less than full divided air of a macrophone, like a speaker in a whisper with a monster, her divised air, o master of ceremonies miles, say form a pit and brush somebody hand. Make a mix in violent rubbing till your work is gone. Make a prompt a foursquare then the squares collapse and coalesce as separately but other than before until a work is made to disappear to register its fields as present in the sound and its sources. Everybody brush somebody hand till the work is gone in the alternate slam. How long can you sustain the foursquare? This is how to make little works of art just walking down the street, collaborating with the hand you brush. A shawl serrates the length of the arcade. You have sensory issues Curate the sound you make by jumping. Flap your hands before your eyes. In lengthening, become from another country. Imitate the movement but expel more air. Say this is your house and run a lap in it but dance with the air immediately around the ones who seem to stay there. Repeat a word or phrase, slightly louder, up three steps then down, like a color block in a Hoffman painting. For a minute say every letter of every word but slowly. Hold someone else’s hand up to your ear.
Facing page: “Protocols for Freedom,� composed and facilitated by Ultra-red. Ultra-red is a sound art and popular education collective committed to the practice of listening as a form of organizing. laurie prendergast is an installation artist exploring speculative fictions through sound and smell. Dont Rhine is an artist and AIDS activist based in Los Angeles. Robert Sember is a teacher and member of the Vogue’ology collective.
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/ PROTOCOLS FOR FREEDOM / composed by Ultra-red from sections of the Mississippi Freedom School Curriculum. In the summer of 1964, in conjunction with community center and voter registration programs, forty-one Freedom Schools opened as part of the Freedom Summer, a coordinated movement to transform the violent racist power structure that oppressed poor people. The students were native Mississippians of all ages. The teachers were volunteers and many were from the North, often college students themselves. By encouraging teachers to use questions as their primary tool, to draw upon the lived experiences of the participants, and to improvise rather than adhere to the curriculum itself, the Freedom Summer Curriculum supported black Mississippians in naming and then changing the reality of their lives. [Sun, 06. 05. 2012]
PART I 1.
Getting acquainted. It is perhaps better if the teacher initiates this activity by introducing himself to the class. The students may be reluctant to discuss themselves in a group and the teacher could arrange for private interviews.
2.
Informal discussion. The students could report events, summarize the day’s activities, discuss issues. The teacher should encourage the expression of conflicting points of view.
3.
Oral reading. This could be tape recorded and played back. The teacher can make a brief and factual explanation of dialect differences by pointing out that his pronunciation is different from the students’ (if it is) and that speech variations also include Boston (Kennedy), British, etc.
4.
Development of competence in real life verbal situations. Skill in asking directions, giving instructions, using the telephone should be developed. The telephone company could be contacted for tele-trainer material (two model telephones) so that the students could practice the social and practical uses of the telephone. The telephone directory provides an opportunity to develop skill in alphabetizing. [Continued next page.]
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[Continued from previous page.] 5.
Presenting material in several different ways. For example, saying the same thought in a: 1) formal, 2) informal, and 3) slangy manner.
6.
Improvisations. This is usually presented in terms of a real life situation where each participant is trying to achieve a specific goal, to get something from the others. PART II
The BASIC SET OF QUESTIONS is: 1.
Why are we (students and teachers) in Freedom Schools?
2.
What is the freedom movement?
3.
What alternatives does the freedom movement offer us?
The SECONDARY SET OF QUESTIONS is: 1.
What does the majority culture have that we want?
2.
What does the majority culture have that we don’t want?
3.
What do we have that we want to keep?
[Part I is from “Academic Curriculum: Verbal Activities,” pgs. 122-23; Part II is from “Introduction to Citizenship Curriculum,” pg. 129. The full Freedom School Curriculum including extensive historical research by Kathy Emery, Sylvia Braselmann, and Linda Gold can be accessed at the Education & Democracy website: www.educationanddemocracy.org.]
In memory of Arbert Santana Evisu.
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Special thanks to the following: Tyra Allure, Ernest Baker, Brittany Bartlett, Colin Bedell, Kia Benbow, Courtney Bryant, Erica Cardwell, DJ Carlton, Jon Clarke, James Colgrove, Trevor Davis-Darde, Aisha Diori, Sean Ebony, Ayana Elliot, Jermaine Ellis, Barry Esson, Eugene Lang College at The New School, Dashaun Evisu, J’Lin Evisu, Michael Roberson Garçon, Twiggy Garçon, Trey Garret, Gerard Gaskin, David ‘Dodi’ Gitman, Ian Hatcher, The Hetrick-Martin Institute, Susan Jahoda, Jesal Kapadia, George E. Lewis, Mariah Lopes, Bryony McIntyre, Jack Cerant Mizrahi, Ayla Morris, Fred Moten, Derrick Murphy, Nancy Nevárez, Jordan Pilato, laurie prendergast, Ivan Raykoff, Lillian
Rivera, Edgar Rivera-Colón, Kareem Samuels, Samuel Sanchez, Gabriella Santini, Kate Simmons, members of Hetrick Martin’s Stars of Change, Terre Thaemlitz, Ricky Tucker, and Pony Zion For the realization of listening to the sound of freedom, Ultra-red consist of laurie prendergast, Dont Rhine, and Robert Sember Thanks to our co-investigators in Ultra-red: Manuela Bojadzijev and Ceren Türkmen in Berlin; Janna Graham and Chris Jones in London; Elizabeth Blaney, Pablo Garcia, Walt Senterfitt, and Leonardo Vilchis in Los Angeles; and Elliot Perkins in Torbay ab
Published for Arika’s A survey is a process of listening program as part of the 2012 Whitney Biennial. For more information go to www.arika.org.uk Presented by:
Support for this Biennial residency is provided by:
www.ultrared.org info@ultrared.org