Cover of "Five Protocols of Organized Listening," one of 9 texts collected in URXX, published on the occasion of Ultra-red's 20th anniversary (image, courtesy of Ultra-red)
WHEN: Thursday, October 26, 2017, 6:00 - 7:30 pm
WHERE: 606 W 122nd Street, Knox Hall 509, Columbia University
Since 1994, Ultra-red have been developing sound-based methodologies for collective reflection and analysis of lived experience. These sound investigations employ instructions, or protocols for collective listening that guide participants through listening together to audio recordings from everyday life places, events, and speech. This experience of listening together serves as a catalyst for sharing, discussing and analyzing what people hear in the recordings themselves and in the ways others listen. Ultra-red will present on different aspects of its work and methods in two different sessions.
This first session will focus on the history of the collective, specifically its roots in the HIV/AIDS social movements of the 1990s, and its investigation of listening practices within community organizing initiatives. For this session, Ultra-red will draw on materials from long-term investigations in Los Angeles, New York, and London that are part of the “School of Echoes” phase of its work.
Please also view part two of the History of Echoes series.
Robert Sember works at the intersection of art and public health. He is a member of the international sound-art collective, Ultra-red, which helped establish the Arbert Santana Ballroom Archive and Oral History Project, an initiative by and for members of the African-American and Latino/a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community in New York City.
Robert is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at The New School’s Eugene Lang College and is on the faculty of the Summer Institute on Sexuality, Culture, and Society at the University of Amsterdam’s Graduate School of Social Sciences.
This event is part of a yearlong series on Oral History and the Arts.
INFORMATION: For more information, please email Amy Starecheski at aas39@columbia.edu.
This event is FREE and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.
No registration is required, but RSVPs on the event Facebook page (to be posted) are appreciated to gauge attendance.