As Kodwo Eshun puts it, thinking through and with sound and music gives you an insight into the temporal signature of your era. Sonic thinking engenders the desire to look for substitutes to mainstream, ordered, hierarchical, i.e. neoliberal ways of living. Equally, Fred Moten has stressed the significance of resisting harmony and refusing the call to order, by practicing tumultuousness, disorder, noise, cacophony, and wildness, i.e. joy. This talk considers the possibility of pushing sonic thinking towards investigating ‘new intensities that are on the margins’ (Arthur Jafa), instances of collective joy and rupture in sound art, dance, and music making, as ways of inhabiting the unbearable reality that is imposed on us, whilst simultaneously producing an alternative one.

Eleni Ikoniadou is Senior Tutor in Visual Communication at the Royal College of Art. Her research is situated at the intersection between digital media, theory-fiction and sound art practice. She is author of The Rhythmic Event, Art, Media, and the Sonic (The MIT Press, 2014) and member of the artist collective AUDINT.

Photo credit: Alex Woodward

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