Contingent Sounds

Contingent Sounds Contingent Sounds is a publishing platform with a focus on sound discourses and listening practices.

presents Border-Listening / Escucha-Liminal Vol. 3 📘✨Berlin: Join us Wednesday, April 23 for a special evening of conve...
14/04/2025

presents Border-Listening / Escucha-Liminal Vol. 3 📘✨

Berlin: Join us Wednesday, April 23 for a special evening of conversation and sound in celebration of the third volume of Border-Listening / Escucha-Liminal.

🔸 Mariana Carvalho on her research “eating and digesting, me alimento de voces” — an experimental essay woven from a patchwork of voices, centered around the practice of “eating voices,” which she’s been developing since 2019.

🔸 Nicole L’Huillier on Surlógicas — a performative framework rooted in improvisation, polyphonic call-and-response, and open systems that challenge linear, hegemonic ways of thinking and being.

(Moderation by: Alejandra Cárdenas)

🔊 After the talk, enjoy a live performance by Bella Comsom, who is also a contributor to the book:

Bella Comsom is a Brazilian transdisciplinary artist and researcher working at the intersection of sound, technology, and perception. Her work investigates the materiality of sound through conceptual composition and experimental electronics, with a focus on electromagnetic fields. Using custom-built antennas, she transforms the inaudible into immersive auditory experiences across installations, audiovisual works, radio art, and live performance.

📍 Morphine Raum
Köpenicker Str. 14, Berlin
📅 Wednesday, April 23

Bella Comson’s Antena-Oca (“Hollow Antenna”) captures electromagnetic waves through a fractal antenna inspired by the Br...
17/02/2025

Bella Comson’s Antena-Oca (“Hollow Antenna”) captures electromagnetic waves through a fractal antenna inspired by the Brazilian Embauba tree, exploring the intersection between human and non-human cooperation in sound, echoing Lynn Margulis’s concept of symbiosis.

BELLACOMSOM (Rio de Janeiro, 1988), transdisciplinary artist and researcher, has been developing performances, installations, videos, album releases; investigating the magical and physical properties of sound, light and matter. With a Master’s degree in Music/Sonology from the University of São Paulo, she has developed technological tools for playing and listening, seeking to establish contact with nature’s imperceptible energies. Her work has taken part in festivals, events and exhibitions, including: Listening to the World: 100 Years of Radio at HKW, City as Forest at Museum of Tomorrow, Sonic Matter Festival, Toda La Teoría del Universo, Virada Sônica: a escalada do som na arte contemporânea at Farol Santander, as well as the Digital Art Biennial.

Third edition of “Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal”
(Our online shop is active again for purchasing the book, link in bio)

Listening to Images in the Archive: Echoes of the Left-Out SoundsEkaterina Golovko proposes „listening“ to photographs c...
13/02/2025

Listening to Images in the Archive: Echoes of the Left-Out Sounds

Ekaterina Golovko proposes „listening“ to photographs collected at IFAN (Institut Fondamental de l’Afrique Noire), drawing on Tina Campt’s methodology to emphasize silence and incompleteness as intrinsic to archival systems shaped by colonial knowledge production. She then goes on to advocate for alternative ways of thinking about archiving sound, exploring how repetition and echo in oral practices in West Africa can facilitate the diffusion, preservation, and transmission of knowledge through sound.

EKATERINA GOLOVKO is a Russian-born researcher, writer, and photographer living between Dakar and Bologna. Her practice focuses on writing and photography, exploring themes related to ethnographic museums, alternative archives, oral culture, and epistemic violence. She has published texts in NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art, The February Journal, and has written on commission for the Center for Experimental Museology, among others. Her photography has been featured in Fotofilmic JRNL 15 and NEA Magazine. In 2022, she exhibited her photographic work during the Dak’Art Biennale at the Hôtel de Ville de Dakar. In 2024, the Italian photo publisher Editrice Quinlan published her monograph “Dakar” in the “20x24” collection.

Third edition of “Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal”
(Our online shop is active again for purchasing the book, link in bio)

Radio Alhara and The Question of Funding: Infrastructure as an Art Practice, and Listening Through Communal MediaA conve...
27/12/2024

Radio Alhara and The Question of Funding: Infrastructure as an Art Practice, and Listening Through Communal Media

A conversation with Yazan Khalili

In this conversation, Yazan Khalili explores the intersection of infrastructure and artistic practice, emphasizing the urgency of rethinking the frameworks that underpin cultural and artistic production. Through initiatives like The Question of Funding and Radio Alhara, Khalili highlights the need to reclaim agency over the platforms and infrastructures. His practice is informed by a critical approach to donor economies, examining how funding mechanisms exert political influence, taking as a departure point the Palestinian context, and advocating for alternative systems rooted in communal exchange and trust. Khalili frames infrastructure itself as an artistic practice, a dynamic space for reimagining the relationship between economy, community, and culture.

Yazan Khalili is a visual artist, architect, and cultural activist. Khalili operates in and out of Palestine and is currently based in Amsterdam, where he is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam. His work has been featured in major exhibitions, including Documenta Fifteen (2022), MoMA’s New Photography (2018), and the Sharjah Biennial (2013). He was the artistic director of Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, and co-founded Radio Alhara in 2020 and The Question of Funding collective in 2019.

New edition of “Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal”
(Link in the bio)

“eating and digesting, me alimento de voces” by Mariana CarvalhoCarvalho’s experimental essay is a patchwork of voices c...
27/12/2024

“eating and digesting, me alimento de voces” by Mariana Carvalho
Carvalho’s experimental essay is a patchwork of voices centered around the idea of eating voices, a practice she has been developing since 2019. The essay is intricately woven in colors, signaling the interweaving of different voices—transcribed conversations (with Elena Azzedín, Moana Hollenstein, Pedro Oliveira, and Valéria Bonafé); bibliographic references; excerpts from her performances; and other writings by the artist.

Carvalho is a performer, sound artist, and musician whose work explores the body and interactions between bodies, primarily through voice, technological mediation, improvisation, internal listening, contact, materials, self-built instruments, and prepared piano. She holds a master’s degree in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts from Berlin University of Arts and a bachelor’s in piano at the University of São Paulo, where she was part of Sonora: músicas e feminismos, NuSom—Research Center on Sonology of USP, and Orquestra Errante. Collaboration is central to her practice, with recent projects focusing on performative arts and dance.

Read more in the new edition of “Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal”
(Link to buy in the bio)

“Tropicanibalism: Kitsch, Camp and Decolonization” by Nico DalemanNico Daleman explores Tropicanibalismo—a movement that...
07/12/2024

“Tropicanibalism: Kitsch, Camp and Decolonization” by Nico Daleman
Nico Daleman explores Tropicanibalismo—a movement that blends traditional Colombian cumbia with avant-garde experimentation—to defy the polished borders of exoticized stereotypes and commodified Macondismo. Through this lens, Daleman unpacks the complex dynamics of Colombian class and regional identity, foregrounding the adoption of kitsch and camp aesthetics in cumbia’s recent global reimagining and in music releases such as Lido Pimineta’s “Miss Colombia” and Meridian Brother’s “Cumbia Siglo XXI”.

Nico Daleman is a Colombian sound artist and researcher based in Berlin. His work proposes radical forms of sonic perception through reconfigurations of the spectral and spatio-temporal characteristics of sound. Using audio data analysis and machine listening models, he generates dynamic soundscapes that blur the boundaries between the digital and the human. With a background in audio engineering and musicology, his research explores the influence of music technology on practices of contemporary music and sound art, focusing on cybernetics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and trans-traditional music. He is a member of Errant Sound and hosts the show “The Rest is Music” on Cashmere Radio. Nico studied in Bogotá, Boston and Berlin.

Read more in the new edition of “Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal”
(Link in the bio)

“Earshot: Earwitnessing and Sound as Self-Determination”A conversation with Caline Matar, deputy director at .ngoAn arch...
04/12/2024

“Earshot: Earwitnessing and Sound as Self-Determination”
A conversation with Caline Matar, deputy director at .ngo

An architect by training, CALINE MATAR is Deputy Director of Earshot, a non-profit organisation that produces audio investigations for communities affected by corporate, state and environmental violence. She was previously Assistant Director at the Beirut Art Centre—where she carried out curatorial, educational and production work—Cultural Projects Coordinator at the Goethe-Institut Lebanon and Scientific-Coordinator at the Orient Institut Beirut (Max Weber Stiftung).

Read more in the new edition of “Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal”
(Link in the bio)

Images: Zifzafa, 2024, film still. Courtesy of the artist.

Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal Vol.3 explores sound and the socio-political dimensions of listening. The publicatio...
04/12/2024

Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal Vol.3 explores sound and the socio-political dimensions of listening. The publication brings together essays, practices, conversations and artworks from artists, researchers, and activists who are actively engaged in practicing and thinking about sound and listening as an anti-hegemonic gesture. The themes that they dissect and historicize span diverse geographies and contexts, from environmental and military violence to communal agency, indigenous technologies, colonial archives, radio practices, cultural cannibalism, and more-than-human ontologies. Here, borders—both physical and metaphorical—are the sites where the authors position themselves and where knowledge is contested. At the core of these texts are questions of methodology and positionality, but also a concern for action and form—performing, dialoguing and instigating as ways of research.

Contributions by Adrián Sallo Sallo, Alejandra Ríos Ruiz, BELLACOMSOM, Ekaterina Golovko, Karen Werner, Mariana Carvalho, Mariano Rosales, Nico Daleman, Nicole L’Huillier, Paola Torres Nuñez del Prado, Wilwer Vilca.

Conversations with Caline Matar and Yazan Khalili.

Artworks by Alan Courtis, Laura Mello, Pisitakun Kuantalaeng, Romi Ron Morrison, Yara Mekawei.

More:
https://www.contingentsounds.com/border-listening-escucha-liminal-3/

Last week, presentation of “Switched On. The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women”, at Elebash Recital Hall ...
14/11/2024

Last week, presentation of “Switched On. The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women”, at Elebash Recital Hall (New York), organized by and , .

We were finally able to meet the authors and in person, in a very special and emotional evening.

Ph: .che

Our beloved „Switched On: The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women“ will be presented in the US.There will b...
27/10/2024

Our beloved „Switched On: The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women“ will be presented in the US.
There will be copies of the book for sale at all events.

Our first stop is in Bloomington at w/ at 4:30 p.m.
Thanks to for making this happen.

Nov 2 Listening Session w/ at Inga Books (Chicago)

Nov 4 Presentation at - CUNY (NY), at Elebash Recital Hall, The Graduate Center on November 4th, 6:00-7:30 pm
This free presentation will feature chapters by various authors who contributed, including Natasha Tiniacos , who wrote a chapter on Venezuelan composer Oksana Linde, and Alma Laprida , who wrote about the Argentinian artist Margarita Paksa! Closing with a concert by
Thanks to the invitation of

Lanzamienzo en Colombia, con las investigadoras y artistas y En de la No se lo pierdan!
11/08/2024

Lanzamienzo en Colombia, con las investigadoras y artistas y
En de la

No se lo pierdan!

We will have a small presentation Listening Session of “Switched On - The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Wom...
05/08/2024

We will have a small presentation Listening Session of “Switched On - The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women” this Friday in Berlin at

7 pm. at Admission is free (Reichenberger Str. 150, Berlin, 10999)

The official history of 20th-century avant-garde electronic music has been predominantly narrated from the point of view of Anglo-American and Western European experiences and largely remained focused on its male protagonists. To destabilize this history, SWITCHED ON presents a collection of perspectives, essays, interviews, archival photos, and work reviews centered on the early electronic music production by Latin American female creators, who were active from the 1960s to the 1980s. The book was edited by Alejandra Cardenas and Luis Alvarado .

Authors: Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Lílian Campesato, Susan Campos Fonseca, Susana Sánchez Carballo, Constanza Castagnet, Cristina Collazos, Daniela Fugellie, Isabelia Herrera, Nicole L’Huillier, Alma Laprida, Marcela Perrone, Marcela Lucatelli, Ana María Romano G., Adaivis Marrón Pérez, Jacqueline Nova, Sofía Scheps, Madelline Sevilla, Natasha Tiniacos, Paola Torres Núñez del Prado, Gabi Yaya.

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