AUDIBILITY
Audibility is a three-part, year long, online speaker series that explores language, sound and music. Using the thematics found in Jesse Chun’s exhibition And verse (혼잣말의 언어 그리고 cosmos) as a starting point, Casey Mecija, Simon Fuh and Scott Benesiinaabandan present audio, research and ideas that transgress notions of listening and hearing.
Curated by Heather Canlas Rigg
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Listening: land-language-dreams
Scott Benesiinaabandan and Kite in conversation
For the third and final program of Audibility, Scott Benesiinabandan interviews artist, musician, performer and scholar, Kite. Throughout their exploratory conversation Kite shares insight into her visual and musical practice, while the two touch on the differences between listening in the physical versus the dream world, the translation of language and dreams, the etymology and spiritual underpinning of words in Anishnaabemowin and Lakota, memoires, and the relationship between land and language. Perhaps Scott sums up the interview best when he says: “sound really ties us to the human experience.”
An audio track of the interview can be access here:
Click here for an edited transcript of the conversation.
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PAST PROGRAMS
Greenlight: Carlaw
Simon Fuh
Friday, July 22, 4-5pm EDT
Join us in listening to Simon Fuh’s new audio work, Greenlight: Carlaw. Inspired by a group of teens that were caught squatting in a vacant house for sale in Toronto’s east end, this work-in-progress sound piece places the listener in the perspective of a tenant occupying a basement rental unit below. Unfolding like an abstract radio play, listeners become sonic “voyeurs” to the teens’ overnight stay - their movements, conversations, and activities all heard as though passing through floorboards. A cast of characters and sounds unfold as the oblivious youth slowly build a party from initial break in, to crescendo.
Queer Diaspora and the "Sounds that Mark My Words"
Casey Mecija
Thursday, March 3, 12pm - 1pm EDT
In this talk, Mecija responds to Jesse Chun’s video work
술래 𝐒𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐄, by asking: what does it mean to foreground the consonant sound? This question will lead into explorations of Mecija’s own research as a scholar and musician, where she will share insights into the sonic kinships between her practice and Chun’s.
You can access Casey's talk here.
Audibility is made possible with the generous support of TD Bank Group.
Casey Mecija is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication & Media Studies at York University and holds a PhD from the University of Toronto. Her current research examines sound as a mode of affective, psychic and social representation, specifically in relation to diasporic experience. Drawing on sound studies, queer diaspora studies and Filipinx Studies, her research considers how sensorial encounters are enmeshed and disciplined by social and psychic conditions. Her work suggests that media production enables diasporic people to create forms of belonging that defy racialized ascriptions born from racism, colonialism, and their gendered dimensions. She is also a musician and filmmaker, whose work has received a number of accolades and has been presented internationally.
Simon Fuh is an artist and writer based in Toronto, ON. He has a Master’s of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto, where he was awarded the Joseph Armand Bombardier SSHRC Scholarship. His diverse artistic practice is broadly interested in the unending tension between desire and lack, and how collaboration can reframe lack as the site of potential. Often taking the form of video and sound installation, his work incorporates themes of utopian imagination, parties, and memory. Recent exhibitions include Memory Theatre, 1 Spadina Cres. (Toronto, ON) places where sounds turn to dreams…, Hearth Gallery (Toronto, ON), Eternal Wish Radio, Forest City Gallery (London, ON), and Down the Rabbit Hole, 330g (Saskatoon, SK). Simon has published writing with C Magazine, Hearth Gallery, and Susan Hobbs Gallery, and will be publishing an artist book with Gravitron Press in 2022.
Scott Benesiinaabandan is an Anishinaabe (Obishkkokaang) intermedia artist that primarily works in photography, video, audio and printmaking. His research interests are the intersections of artificial intelligence and Anishinaabemowin. Currently, he is investigating audio works, light sculptures, and virtual reality. Benesiinaabandan has exhibited across Canada and internationally, notably Harbourfront’s Flatter the Land/Bigger the Ruckus, Subconscious City at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, GHOSTDANCE at Ryerson Image Centre, unSacred at Gallery 1C03, mii omaa ayaad/Oshiki Inendemowin in Sydney, Blood Memories in Melbourne, and was commissioned by CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto. He has also held residencies at Parramatta Artist Studios in Australia, Context Gallery in Derry, Northern Ireland, University Lethbridge/Royal Institute of Technology iAIR residency, and Initiative for Indigenous Futures and AbTec in Montreal. Benesiinaabandan received his MFA in photography from Concordia University.
Kite aka Suzanne Kite is an award winning Oglála Lakȟóta performance artist, visual artist, composer and academic, known for her sound and video performance with her Machine Learning hair-braid interface. Kite’s practice explores contemporary Lakota ontology through research-creation, computational media, and performance. Kite often works in collaboration with family and community members.