Papers by Brandon LaBelle
[sic] - a journal of literature, culture and literary translation, 2012
Acoustic Spatiality Experiences of listening can be appreciated as intensely relational, bringing... more Acoustic Spatiality Experiences of listening can be appreciated as intensely relational, bringing us into contact with surrounding events, bodies and things. Given that sound propagates and expands outwardly, as a set of oscillations from a particular source, listening carries with it a sensual intensity, whereby auditory phenomena deliver intrusive and disruptive as well as soothing and assuring experiences. The physicality characteristic of sound suggests a deeply impressionistic, locational "knowledge structure"-that is, the ways in which listening affords processes of exchange, of being in the world, and from which we extend ourselves. Sound, as physical energy reflecting and absorbing into the materiality around us, and even one's self, provides a rich platform for understanding place and emplacement. Sound is always already a trace of location. Such features of auditory experience give suggestion for what I may call an acoustical paradigm-how sound sets in motion not only the material world but also the flows of the imagination, lending to forces of signification and social structure, and figuring us in relation to each other. The relationality of sound brings us into a steady web of interferences, each of which announces the promise or problematic of being somewhere. I'm interested in exploring the particulars of this acoustical paradigm and specifically how it articulates temporal and spatial geographies-to follow sound as it imparts meaningful exchanges for and against the singular body, and further, to explore how it locates such a body within a greater weave. From my perspective, sound operates as an emergent community, stitching together bodies that do not necessarily search for each other, and forcing them into proximity, for a moment, or longer. Such movements bring forward a spatiality that is coherent and inhabitable, that opens up spaces for sharing, as well as being immediately divergent and [sic]-a journal of literature, culture and literary translation The Zone and Zones-Radical Spatiality in our Times No. 2-Year 2 06/2012-LC.1
Law Text Culture, 2020
The essay poses acoustics as a critical and creative framework, one that gives entry onto the iss... more The essay poses acoustics as a critical and creative framework, one that gives entry onto the issues of cultural situatedness and social recognition. In particular, acoustics is underscored not only as a property of architectural space, or as a knowledge within the field of physics, but equally as a social and political question. In what ways do acoustic norms shape the experiences and capacities of listening and attunement within certain environments? Acoustics is highlighted as a performative arena, giving way to specific understandings of relationality and struggles over recognition. This leads to investigating how acoustics functions as the basis for a range of practices that, following Sara Ahmed, undertake the work of social, cultural, and bodily reorientation. Acoustic practices of rhythm and echo, noise and vibration, for example, are highlighted as operative within social movement action as well as informal daily encounters. This critical view allows for articulating an acoustic justice model, capturing sound and listening as important capacities and paths for working at social equality.
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art
The Oxford Handbook of Sound Art
The essay explores sound as a dynamic medium for facilitating and enabling unique forms of relati... more The essay explores sound as a dynamic medium for facilitating and enabling unique forms of relationality. Specifically, this leads to investigating how sound contributes to socially engaged and sited art work, affording involvement in radical forms of sharing and affinity. From nonhuman species to abandoned buildings, found matter to strange publics, practices of sound art often steer us towards experimental forms of relationality, where experiences of contact are elaborated beyond the strictly social. Such an auditory position may challenge and extend a politics of identity and community, shifting the dominant discourses of social recognition. Following such relational views, sound is underscored as a means for enriching the complexity of what it means to live together in this global environment.
Performance Research, 2002
2006 The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 The Cont... more 2006 The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX www.continuumbooks.com Copyright © 2006 by Brandon LaBelle All rights ...
Voice: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media, 2010
Shifts in technology bring with them new configurations of embodiment, and in addition, resituate... more Shifts in technology bring with them new configurations of embodiment, and in addition, resituate how voicing comes to make incarnate a sense of self. For instance, the analogical fragmentation and doubling of the body initiated with radiophony and telephony set momentum to refiguring the individual in modern times. From radios to telephones, phonautographs to speaking machines, modernity opened up a space for a range of vocal coordinates defined by the electronic imagination. Considering such developments, the article analyses the culture and practice of sound poetry, reflecting upon how voice is positioned materially and conceptually. This leads into a consideration of electronic machines and digital platforms, and how these impact not only onto how we use and hear the voice, but additionally cultures of experimental vocal practices.
Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art, Second Edition, 2015
Lexicon of the Mouth Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary, 2014
Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary examines how the gestu... more Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary examines how the gestural and performative qualities of the mouth can be understood to lend significantly to acts of both verbal and non-verbal communication. By focusing on the paralinguistic, kinesic and gestural attributes surrounding speech, I have been intent on underscoring the mouth as an extremely vital focal point for querying voice and notions of the signifying body. In doing so, the mouth is considered a major site or arena through which to negotiate processes of identity formation and socialization. To do so, attention is brought to the fluid, quivering and, at times, stubborn architecture of the oral cavity. If voice is fundamentally an embodied oral action, what kinds of performative significations can be found in its flexed and sounded movements? Might important forms of communication be found within the yawn, the laugh, the grunt or the sigh and that by often exceeding the linguistic enable other forms of contact beyond the strictly human or apparent? And might deeper inquiry into the mouth lend to a greater critical view onto what constitutes voice and its social and political status? To explore such questions, Lexicon of the Mouth sets out a series of chapters devoted to specific oral modalities or micro-oralities. My particular method throughout the publication has been to closely follow the qualities of a range of micro-oralities, giving critical attention to their physicality and expressivity, while associating each with specific cultural histories, theoretical positions, and related sonic and performative projects.
Books by Brandon LaBelle
The Other Citizen, 2020
The Other Citizen tracks the hopes and losses, struggles and utopian desires of what the author t... more The Other Citizen tracks the hopes and losses, struggles and utopian desires of what the author terms “the floating subjects” of contemporary life. Drawing upon traditions of socially engaged poetics, the work takes aim at the heart of contemporary crisis and exclusionary politics by paying homage to the creative solidarities and pirate imaginaries spanning the globe. Through ten acts, we are led into narratives of friendship and survival, threadbare endurance and tender resistance. From lost teenagers struggling in the maze of neoliberalism to secret gatherings of artistic bandits to those caught in between the borders of nation-states, these emerge as frontiers of invention that, when stitched together, outline the force of an anarchic citizenry. The Other Citizen is a challenging and moving call for exiting the new norm of crisis.
Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian, 2012
Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian is marked by an urgency to unsettle divides, both imaginary and ph... more Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian is marked by an urgency to unsettle divides, both imaginary and physical, between west and east, Anglo and Arab, and to put into question dominant modes of political being. Written between February and June of 2011, the Diary functioned as a daily consideration of the intensity of events erupting around the world. Author and artist Brandon LaBelle sought to engage these events by way of a diary of affiliation and reciprocation in which personal memories and cultural reflections search for remote connection, in particular, with the Arab Spring. This five-month period acts as a platform from which questions around US imperialism, art and revolution, the task of writing, and the possibility of new political subjectivity are raised. LaBelle asks for an “agency of the intimate,” outlining a tender map of the transnational.
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Papers by Brandon LaBelle
Books by Brandon LaBelle