Son[i]a #398. Yaiza Hernández Velázquez

aramos — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 10:24:41 +0000

In this podcast, we sit down with transdisciplinary researcher and curator Yaiza Hernández to get to the heart of her deep-dive research into what she has coined Terminal Tourism. Drawing upon the long tradition of academic scholarship, but also from a situated perspective as a native from the Canary Islands, Yaiza unpacks the constellation of problems orbiting the travel industry, from environmental degradation to rampant gentrification and the subsequent disruption of local infrastructures, and a whole host of other socioeconomic inequalities.

Son[i]a #397. Open-weather

aramos — Fri, 12 Apr 2024 12:52:43 +0000

In this two-voice podcast, researcher-designer Sophie Dyer and creative geographer Sasha Engelmann weave speculative storytelling through glitchy weather satellite transmissions in a dialogue tinged with the feminist meta-practices that run deep beneath their collective operations. Together, they talk about NOAA satellites, about building alliances and about weather literacy, occasionally interviewing each other as friends and guiding us through the generous network of feminist thinkers that informs their practice.

Son[i]a #385. Gabriel Chaile: Escenas eliminadas

aramos — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 11:28:53 +0000

We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with Tucuman artist Gabriel Chaile, which we couldn’t include the first time around. We talk about his education through a mix of public school, recounted memories, and observing family handicrafts. Once again, we defend slowness as a way of being and living in the world, and we join Nestor García Canclini in wondering how to think about the coexistence of elements or groups that consider themselves different, in our turbulent times.

Son[i]a #396. pantea

aramos — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 20:37:11 +0000

In this podcast, we talk to Iranian artist pantea about studying in Edinburgh, about the peat bogs of Scotland and about the misconceptions surrounding wetlands. We discuss agency, more-than-human subjectivities and the (im)possibilities that open up when thinking-with sundew, and about her experience with the Khamoosh listening and archiving community.

Son[i]a #395. Imani Mason Jordan

aramos — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 15:02:29 +0000

In this podcast interdisciplinary writer, artist, editor, curator and plant lover Imani Mason Jordan reflects on the conflicting meanings of community, which they sum up as “ a feeling and a relationship”. Finding guidance in the writings of Audre Lorde (and others)—through collective reading and listening—, Imani makes an urgent call for action, in order to disrupt and overcome the numbing of our emotions. Cadence, resonance, repetition and the bodily urgency of protest speeches operate in their artistic vocabulary as key tools for world-breaking, as well as world-making.

De nou amb Vídeo-Nou. Memòries polifòniques per a un present compartit #1

aramos — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 11:44:08 +0000

In this first episode, we revisit the early days of Video-Nou and its connection with other artists who were also starting to work with video in Catalonia. Hand in hand with Lluïsa Roca, Luisa Ortínez, Xefo Guasch and Carles Ameller, we look at the collective’s relationship with the counterculture, the underground, and libertarian movements. And we consider the particularities of video as a tool for documentary, communication, creation, and protest, with special attention to its uses within the political and social context of the period of the Spanish transition. We explore strategies such as feedback and counterinformation, and we get a behind-the-scenes insight into the making of Video-Nou’s first projects: Gràcia. Espais Verds (February-March 1977) and Campanya política per a la Lliga de Catalunya (April-May 1977), better known as the Video-Bus.

Son[i]a #394. Ona Bros

aramos — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 13:55:19 +0000

In this podcast, images are a device for weaving complex relationships, with agency and a host of constituent agents that modulate their meaning. Visual artist and researcher Ona Bros charts an almost chronological story of her life, in which babbling, impropriety and questioning sustain other imaginaries and other ways of being and relating. Direct action, images that stain, ethical porn, gestating bodies and communities of ice create space for the constant sense of not belonging and the need to sustain life.

Son[i]a #388. Macarena García. Escenas eliminadas

aramos — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 10:57:41 +0000

We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with Chilean writer, editor and academic Macarena García, which we couldn’t include the first time around. Macarena talks about her interest in observing and analysing how processes and consensuses in culture, society, ethics and politics are put to the test in the field of childhood studies. She focuses on artistic expressions such as the case study of children’s literature, and more specifically scrapbooks. We also chart a brief genealogy of picture books and the many narrative strategies that issue from it: from challenging books to non-educational relations between text and image, and the figure of the ellipsis.

Son[i]a #393. Kathrin Böhm

aramos — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 17:29:49 +0000

In this podcast, we open up a glossary of concepts that affect and leave their mark on Kathrin Böhm's many constellations and collective projects. From the notion of compost—which triggered a radical shift in her way of working and interacting with her material archive in recent years—to a reassessment of the very idea of economy, which, as Katherine Gibson writes, helps us discern spaces of value production that are not immediately apparent. We talk about how these other strategies and ways of doing things lead us to qualify and problematise alternative ways of understanding social and/or participatory practices, and even to read the idea of community critically.

Son[i]a #392. David Yubraham Sánchez

aramos — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 11:38:13 +0000

In this podcast, cultural manger and mediator David Yubraham Sánchez expands on critical thoughts formulated in educational spaces, in constant conversation with others—an exercise in examining racist and colonial patterns in order to dismantle fictitious equivalences in the name of diversity. Thinking-by-doing—with collective work as his main methodology—gives rise to a profusion of tips, strategies and objectives to guide the work of anti-racist mediation, education, and cultural programming. This involves problematising the hollowing out of rights and cultural policies, identifying absences and erasures in democratic memory and national heritage, and implementing the political practice of listening.

Son[i]a #382. Itxaso Corral. Escenas eliminadas

aramos — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 10:49:42 +0000

We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with choreographer, performer and artist Itxaso Corral, which we couldn’t include the first time around. With Itxaso, we embrace the complexity of being-and-doing-with-others, and we look inside some of the notions that underlie her thinking-by-doing: hijacked words that can be set free, such as tenderness, naivety, empathy, modesty and cringe. We also open up a host of questions—poetic, political, and convivial—in order to spend some time with them, leaving them unanswered. How far do things go? Is reading a text just reading a text? Does a written text remain only on the page? Is there no vibration? Who is legitimized, and to say what? Which things are accepted as legitimized and which are left out? Do I seem to be alone? Where can we come together?

Son[i]a #391. Carlos Motta

aramos — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 11:38:37 +0000

Carlos Motta sees his research as a potential space of enunciation from which to act as a counterweight to the prevailing narratives—a positive gesture of recognition of social groups, identities and communities whose voices have been suppressed by the dominant colonial power. His radical multidisciplinary practice and his use of a range of media—from video to installation, sculpture, performance and drawing on paper—make him hard to pin down. He also focuses on interaction with others, in ensemble works involving orality, documentary, curating, and even organizing public programs and symposia. In this podcast, we talk to Carlos Motta about art, politics, the market, and working conditions.

Son[i]a #390. Hamja Ahsan

aramos — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 10:11:45 +0000

Hamja Ahsan is a British artist, writer, curator and fanzine enthusiast. He is known for his raw critique of dominant culture and power structures, particularly in the context of cultural representation and identity. In this podcast, we talk Hamja Ahsan about the language of Shy Radicals, about neurodiversity and Islamophobia, and about the fictional utopian shy people’s Republic of Aspergistan. But also about fried chicken. Yes, mostly about fried chicken, really.

Son[i]a #389. Françoise Vergès

aramos — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 14:57:05 +0000

In this podcast, Françoise Vergès unpacks the social and environmental politics of cleaning and waste, charting and questioning temporal and spatial interactions that create a neutral site of deprivation, exhaustion and exploitation. She sheds light on the economy and politics of exhaustion, pointing out the role of racial capitalism in the climate crisis. Vergès suggests a political re-reading and understanding of vital needs and natural elements through notions of cleaning, hygiene and medicine, and raises revolutionary questions about the prefabricated assumptions of justice and social transformation through re-thinking the museum.

PROBES #37.2 Auxiliaries

aramos — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 11:09:42 +0000

In PROBES #37.2, crooners, experimental artists, and rock legends exchange notes at their EA (electricionists anonymous) meeting on their mutual dependency on microphones and loudspeakers (feedback welcome).

Son[i]a #388. Macarena García

aramos — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 12:42:32 +0000

In this podcast, we talk to Chilean writer, editor and academic Macarena García about her working methods with children in schools and other shared educational spaces. We talk about challenging picture-books, about fascination and overflow as tools for collective transformation, and about what happens to bodies when they are together. We also explore the workings of censorship and how children’s literature approaches subjects such as death, sex, racism, dictatorship, feminism, gender identity and the climate crisis.

Son[i]a #387. Haig Aivazian

aramos — Tue, 12 Dec 2023 17:15:31 +0000

Through media such as lectures, performance, video, drawing, installation, and sculpture, Haig Aivazian’s multifaceted works intricately blend the personal and the geopolitical as well as micro and macro narratives. They uncover or perhaps even fabricate complex threads, timelines and visual networks with multiple layers of meaning and ambiguity. His stories are intended to puzzle, reveal intangible connections, and evoke a sense of ghostly friction among conflicting ideas. In this podcast, we talk to Haig Aivazian about counter-propaganda, sports, blackouts, Palestine, fugitivity and what he calls “the dumping grounds of democracy”.

Son[i]a #383. Troy Vettese. Deleted scenes

aramos — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 15:01:37 +0000

We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with environmental historian, researcher and writer Troy Vettese. We talk about Animal Rights activism, pet ownership, golf and the urgent need to go from critique to action.

PROBES #37

aramos — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 08:25:25 +0000

In PROBES #37, we consider the revolution ushered in by the thermionic valve and, in particular, the disorienting but transformative changes electrical amplification brought into a world until then predicated solely on acoustical laws. We then examine the cybernetic entanglement of its mirrored portals (the microphone and the loudspeaker) through the generative instability of feedback which, it turns out, has accessible expressive powers...

Son[i]a #366. Antye Greie (AGF). Deleted scenes

aramos — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 09:57:02 +0000

We dig up some unreleased fragments of our conversation with poet, activist, sound artist, sound sculptor and curator Antye Greie. We unpack some of her strategies to deploy what she calls "feminist sonic technologies". And we do so, starting with her own understanding of unlearning.