South, Sud, Sur, Süden, Sul, Etelä, Νότια, al-janúb: how can we approach it, without reducing it to a mere geographical term we might use to define ourselves? How can we listen to it as it has been establishing itself as a method, a multipolar, multifaceted and complex phenomenon, from which a plurality of voices, perspectives, practices and questions are surfacing?

While listening South, Süden Radio wants to problematize its discourse by acknowledging those sound productions and listening practices that both echo back to the new geo-political and cultural panorama and question the way we listen to reality. What do we listen to?

Süden Radio aims to explore and promote practices, radio and sound projects that adopt sound as a critical tool of knowledge, beyond any dominant and clichéd identity or otherness discourse. It is a call to share thoughts around the politics of listening – choreographic, ritual, active, relational, affective and generative; around its value in the socio-cultural-political realm in the Southern Mediterranean region; around the listener’s – and the artist’s – position in space and time as it emerges from the act of listening and recording.

This three-day symposium will gather practitioners, curators, artists and radio producers in order to address the surfacing and establishment of other geographies of sound from the South of the Mediterranean basin; to use sound to investigate new possible understandings of the world from the perspective of the South; and to explore the radioscapes between aesthetics and politics of transmission and sound as a platform for reappropriation, empowerment and re-territorialization. It will also open up the discourse around the bias, limits and projections of our own investigation.

Lectures, listening sessions and radio sets will take place in the late afternoon, while mornings will be dedicated to more informal conversations and meetings. Write to suden@radiopapesse.org to take part in the Symposium and for general queries.

Participants | Leandro Pisano, Simone Frangi, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Anna Raimondo, Claudia Wegener, Emeka Ogboh, Fari Bradley, Golo Főllmer, Andrea Borgnino, Chloé Despax, Iain Chambers.

THE PROGRAM

Thursday April 20th
18.30 Leandro Pisano | Southscapes/Soundscapes: Other Geographies of Sound
19:30 Simone Frangi | ‘With my burnt hand I write about the nature of fire’ – The persistence of ideological South in western de-colonizing cultural practices. The Italian easy way out
20:30 Wine break
21:00 Chloé Despax | Süden Radio – Listening Session

Friday April 21st
17.00 Lucrezia Cippitelli | Transatlantic Connections – cultural practises South-South
18.00 Anna Raimondo | To be or not to be – In the middle: the becoming
19.00 Wine Break
20.00 Golo Főllmer | When airwaves cross borders. Observations on the radiophonic construction and perception of identities
21.00 Claudia Wegener | ‘This is Radio Continental Drift…’
22.00 Andrea Borgnino | Interferenze: Radio in Syria

Saturday April 22nd
11.00 Fari Bradley | Uncertain Soundscapes: Mapping as a Misnomer
12.00 Emeka Ogboh | Lagos Soundscapes
13.00 Coffee Break
13.15 Chloé Despax | Süden Radio – Listening Session
14.00 Iain Chambers | Sound territories and tattered maps – The challenges of the South
15.00 Light Lunch in the garden

The audio recordings of the Symposium will subsequently be released online.

Süden Radio is a project by Radio Papesse in collaboration with Villa Romana and supported by Comune di Firenze.

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