240097 SE Gender Perspectives on Sound Art (2023W)

The course Gender Perspectives on Sound Art provides an interdisciplinary overview of the changing relations between sound-based creative practices and gender, sexuality, class, race and ethnicity in the contemporary era. During the course, we will examine relevant sound art practices as sites of production, negotiation and contestation of discourses associated with gender, sexuality, class, race and ethnicity in an intersectional way.

The following questions will remain fundamental: how does sound art become a gendered field of artistic practice? How does gender sound and how does sound become a gendered subject? How can sound be political, socially engaged and emancipatory? How it can be feminist, queer, anti-racist, or Afrofuturist? What role do gender discourses play in sound artists' musical and technical competence? How can gender be represented in acoustic parameters and timbral qualities of sound, that is, how social relations are embedded in the aesthetics of sound art? How to address and overcome systemic institutional exclusions, constraints, and limited professional opportunities experienced by minority groups? And finally, how sound art practices can further problematise and destabilize categories of gender? How to think about diversity beyond mere representation and diversity quotas? The above questions will constitute a point of departure for further discussions, theorizations and re-assessments of gender-related matters in the present-day and past sound art practices.

Throughout the course, we will survey scholarly and critical articles, including feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, media theory, art history, musicology, and sound studies. We will look critically at different artistic practices employing diverse theoretical perspectives and engaging in debates that address gendered readings of sound art and technology (artworks, artists’ statements, exhibition catalogues, publicly available archives, online media). At the same time, will examine gendered roles, modes and agencies related to the extended field of sound art practices and technologies, including gendered debates related to listening and display strategies, involving constructions of gaze and spectatorship respectively, including the processes and inequalities resulting from canon formation. On top of that, we will touch upon issues related to identity politics, self-definition, institutional gatekeeping, equity, inclusivity, accessibility and diversity in various social and artistic contexts. The course will end by discussing the most recent and compelling debates on gender balance, incorporating 'otherness' and diverse identity construction strategies in sound art.