I’m in My Never-ending The Sims Era

Video games, as interactive forms, create a space where participants not only consume content, but also create, shaping virtual lives and narratives in real time[1]. At 8 years old, The Sims 2 introduced me to a quirky, engaging world that became my first exposure to life simulation. I didn’t think much about their significance growing up—I was just obsessed with playing. However, in this space, I was an active creator; it became a tool I began to understand, with its codes and mechanisms. The Sims 2 I encountered which had some strange, now in The Sims 4 removed, elements like burglars (who would sneak into your house accompanied by music that could trigger a heart attack), gloomy social workers taking kids to the Orphanage, the Wohoo cutscene (that made you glance over your shoulder, hoping no one would walk in and catch you), a literal mental breakdown (with a Social Bunny falling from the sky and a hypnotizing Therapist), and maids dressed in stereotypical and, let’s face it, sexist outfits. And of course, male Sims being abducted by aliens and mysteriously impregnated (I don’t even know how to comment on that).

Look at how saucy this early The Sims 2 trailer is…
byu/Maulclaw inthesims

Source: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/life_simulation

I am not sure if this is how I would describe deleting the pool ladder and drowning one Sim after another, just to create a massive, impressive cemetery. Or, if you’re feeling more ambitious, trapping them inside walls with only a grill, forcing them to cook until they burn. It’s not just about the act of causing chaos but also about pushing the game’s systems to their limits. The Sims offers a playground where morality takes a backseat to experimentation, allowing players to explore the boundaries of control, agency, and the consequences of their choices.

Can we not drown them anymore?
byu/dark_bloom12 inSims4

 

Source: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Game_guide:Killing_Sims

The Sims is a life simulation video game series created by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts. With nearly 200 million copies sold globally, it ranks among the best-selling video game franchises ever. The Sims series began with the release of its first game on January 31, 2000, followed by The Sims 2 on September 4, 2004, The Sims 3 on June 2, 2009, and The Sims 4 on September 2, 2014. In September 2024, EA announced there would be no The Sims 5 but that The Sims 4 would continue to evolve. 

The time gaps between these releases naturally shaped different generations of players, each attaching unique experiences, memories, and cultural influences to the game. Fans of the original recall its groundbreaking mechanics, The Sims 2 introduced generational gameplay and chaos, The Sims 3 offered open-world exploration and deep customization. The Sims 4, with its focus on user-generated content, expansions, and updates, has become a unifying platform that brings together 8-year-old newcomers, 30-year-old lifelong fans of the series, and the vast online community of modders, builders, and storytellers. These generational shifts not only reflect advancements in technology but also mirror evolving societal norms and player expectations, making The Sims a cultural phenomenon that transcends gaming.

The Sims Logos

As part of The Sims 2 generation, I found myself particularly intrigued by the life of Don Lothario, the notorious heartbreaker. I was fascinated with how his four simultaneous affairs played out and, more importantly, how to keep his secrets from being uncovered. In his company, I discovered the mechanics of The Sims, where the game is equipped with both a build/create mode and a life mode. Our Sim is categorized according to Life Stages, Traits, Aspirations, Careers, Skills, and Lifetime Wishes. In gameplay mode, you can develop your Sim across all these categories, as well as build Social Relationships and manage their needs through Interactions.

Ian Bogost’s assertion that video games act as rhetorical devices—tools for exploring complex systems through interactive simplification[2]—offers a profound lens for understanding The Sims which distills human life into manageable, gamified components. These mechanisms were developed in the creation of the real-life simulation, effectively creating an alternative version of perceiving life by categorizing and creating a visual representation of phenomena that are normally invisible and intangible. Through this process, a new way of perceiving the world was formed, one that transcended the boundaries of the game and became a language of communication. The digital world of life simulators, originally modeled after real life, now loop back to influence it, blurring the boundaries between the two realms.

Source: https://x.com/CaraLisette/status/1822689385051295845

Simification of The Human

The mechanics of The Sims have evolved into a language through which people communicate not only about the game itself but also about their own lives and the world around them. These mechanics have found their way into memes, become the subject of online discussion, and are frequently referenced in everyday conversations. What makes these mechanics so compelling is their ability to distill complex human experiences into simple, visual, and interactive systems. Concepts like fulfilling needs, managing aspirations, or building relationships are compelling because they parallel the invisible frameworks that shape real life.

As Brad Tromel suggests, this merging of virtual and physical realities exemplifies the aspiration to break down the boundaries between art and everyday life[3]. By drawing on its logic, symbols, and dynamics, The Sims can be reinterpreted as a medium to explore profound themes such as identity, societal norms, and the essence of humanity. This integration of gaming mechanics enables a blurring of the lines between the digital and the real, prompting a reconsideration of the systems that shape life and how those systems can be visualized, critiqued, and reimagined. Building on this idea, I have created works that engage directly with the mechanics of The Sims, using its systems not only as a tool for exploring identity and societal structures but also as a way to examine the construction of the self.

Needs

One of the most iconic mechanics in The Sims is the Needs system, which is split into eight core categories—Bladder, Hunger, Energy, Fun, Social, Comfort, Environment, and Hygiene. These must be maintained for well-being and are represented as bars that gamify basic human needs. Green signifies balance, yellow indicates decline, orange signals urgency, and red warns of a critical state that could lead to collapse or even death.

By translating normally invisible human experiences into visible cues, the system allows to show abstract concepts like mood and deterioration in a tangible way. While it may be a simplification of real-life complexity, it has proven to be an effective and relatable tool for communication. The Needs panel resonates so deeply that people often use it as a metaphor to describe their own states, adopting its straightforward framework to express emotions, struggles, and personal challenges in a way that feels universally understood. As Sherry Turkle suggests, we become the simulacrum of our own lives. The boundary between real and virtual is increasingly indistinct, as we model our lives in simulations and then live them out in simulations[4]. This observation highlights how The Sims mechanism allows  to model and perform aspects of life through the game’s mechanics.

Is this why therapy is so expensive?
byu/comedygold24 inthesims

In video loop MOOD (2021), I incorporated both the Needs panel and the Plumbob—the hovering crystal that not only indicates a Sim’s mood but also signals their status under the player’s control. By drawing on the game’s familiar visuals, I reinterpreted its mechanics as a language to express complex internal states. In the raw, spontaneous nature of the work—recorded with a mobile phone in a computer lab—I reflected a profound sense of helplessness and an inability to articulate an emotional state using borrowed symbols to convey feelings that otherwise felt inaccessible.

By weaving The Sims 2 soundtrack into the piece, I drew on another iconic motif that many would recognize instantly. The familiar music not only evokes nostalgia but also grounds the work emotionally, contrasting the playful tones with the underlying themes of exhaustion and vulnerability. The music serves as a shared cultural reference that further connects the piece to the collective experience of those who have spent time in the world of The Sims.

 

This is encapsulated in the title MOOD, a short phrase that can carry multiple meanings yet, in each instance, feels remarkably precise and clear. Whether referring to emotional states, personal energy, or even fleeting moments of being, mood resonates as a succinct and universally understood expression. It’s a term that transcends specific contexts, becoming a representation of individual experiences that are simultaneously shared by many.

In this context, the self-image I present through my work, using The Sims mechanics, becomes a tool for exploration, while also acknowledging the broader social and technological frameworks that influence how we understand ourselves. Rather than focusing on the self as a fixed entity, MOOD highlights its fluidity, shaped by both internal experiences and external systems.

Just saying.
byu/brokenreflections inthesims

Traits and Interactions

In The Sims, interactions are the core actions Sims perform with other Sims, objects, and their environment, forming the foundation of gameplay. These interactions govern communication, relationships, and engagement with the world. Some are simple, like eating or watching TV, while others are more complex, such as building friendships, falling in love, or starting conflicts. Sims can also engage in self-directed actions, like practicing skills, reflecting on emotions, or fulfilling their own needs. The way Sims interact is shaped by their traits—key aspects of their personality that influence their behavior, preferences, and reactions to various situations. Traits determine how Sims respond to others and their environment, ultimately guiding the course of their lives.

https://www.tumblr.com/blooming-naomi/145920437458

INTERACTIONS (2023) is a 12×17 cm publication inspired by the instructional manuals often included in DVD video game packaging. Printed on slightly glossy, newsprint-style paper, it spans 34 pages. It builds upon the titular mechanism and the aesthetics of The Sims 2—its color palette, fonts, and icons— but transforms them into a wholly original system of interactions, designed to echo real-life situations and structures. It introduces definitions of interactions, reflections on the factors that influence their choices, and a taxonomy of custom interaction types, including Existential Interactions, Disgraceful Interactions, Scattered Interactions, Romantic Interactions, Tearful Interactions, Social Interactions, Transactional Interactions, Imaginative Interactions, and Virtual Interactions.

As part of the work, I created my own Sim-like alter ego and cataloged my identity using a system of traits: Emotional Intelligence, Hypercorrectness, Chauvinism, and Narcissism. Each trait was measured on a scale from 0 to 10, with its intensity visualized through a familiar Sims-inspired interface of colored points. This approach annexes the mechanisms through which players engage with The Sims, as noted by Thaddeus Griebel, who observed that players project their personalities and values onto their Sims, using the game as a medium for self-reflection and experimentation[5].

See publication HERE

In The Sims, all actions are predefined by the game’s programming, and similarly, in real life, the “choices” individuals face are often shaped by societal structures, expectations, and technological interfaces. As Jessica Baldanza observes, our interactions in the physical world are no more objective than those made in the virtual world[6]. By adapting The Sims 2’s gamified approach to interactions, the work shows how virtual systems can serve as a metaphor for understanding societal norms, internalized patterns, and contextual constraints. Through the prism of the game, it becomes possible to critically examine the surrounding reality, highlighting the parallels between simulated and real-world relationships while questioning the structures that define them.

Creating an online self, designing an appearance, cataloging an identity, and simulating possible interaction scenarios can extend or replicate life. This portrays the online world as a heterogeneous environment that transcends digital boundaries, necessitating the involuntary creation of an ambiguous online self to explore and manipulate one’s identity. It examines how people use available technology to create cues that are interpreted offline to perceive others’ behavior. Additionally, it highlights how online interactions mimic offline interpersonal relationships, leading to the fluidification of identity, the redefinition of relationships, and the blurring of boundaries between online and offline realities.

Yes xD
byu/GreatestAwesomePeep inthesims

Life in Simulation: Navigating Between Worlds

Me Living My Best Life (2021) is a video exploration of the blurring lines between physical and virtual realities. It integrates my physical form into the simulated world of The Sims 2. The piece features a recording of me dancing against a green screen, transitioning my physical presence into a digital avatar. Set to the iconic The Sims 2 radio track Dance the Dawn (Salsa), the video embodies a life without boundaries, allowing for an infinite reimagining of self within the virtual realm.

As Ludovica Price notes, what enabled The Sims and its sequels to stand out from other games was the way in which it allowed players to create their own worlds and to embellish others[7]. This core concept of constructing personalized, immersive scenarios lies at the heart of The Sims and served as the conceptual foundation for work. Within the game, I meticulously built all the virtual scenographies myself, designing each environment as a visual backdrop for my performance/best life. Complementary costume changes further reflect situational shifts within these simulated spaces.

Me Living My Best Life delves into the fluidity of identity within alternative forms, where the boundaries between reality and its digital representations become increasingly blurred. As Vasa Buraphadeja and Kara Dawson highlight, The Sims offers players the opportunity to immerse themselves in different scenarios of life—they can take on many different roles and assume several personas[8]. In this vein, work creates alternative realities, reflecting the way both identity and the medium itself become more fluid. The boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds dissolve, allowing images to not merely replicate reality but to transform or even distort it, distancing us from its original essence. This fluidity allows for the exploration of multiple versions of self, liberated from the limitations of the physical world.

The performative aspect of the work deeply resonates with Ana Peraica’s observation that we don’t know how to exist anymore without imagining ourselves as a picture[9]. The act of embedding my likeness within The Sims 2 underlines the profound intertwining of digital and physical identities. It showcases the fabricated and performative qualities of selfhood in an age increasingly dominated by visual culture. By incorporating my image, the piece not only interacts with the game’s well-established practice of crafting personal narratives but also delves into the nuances of digital identity and the conception of oneself as a visual construct. This interplay between self-representation and self-creation highlights how virtual spaces redefine our understanding of identity, portraying it as both fluid, multifaceted, and inherently linked to its visual manifestation.

bb.moveobjects on
byu/Vharlkie inthesims

Life Beyond Simulation

As McKenzie Wark aptly observes, more and more relentlessly, the everyday life of gamers is coming to wear the expression of game-space[10]. This notion resonates deeply with the way mechanics from games like The Sims transcend their digital origins to influence how we perceive and navigate the real world. The Sims series is more than a life simulation game—it is a lens through which to explore the structures that shape human experience. It has become an integral part of contemporary perceptions of identity, where we categorize, visualize, and create algorithms that define and shape how we understand ourselves and others. Ultimately, The Sims serves as both a mirror and a critique—a tool to reimagine the systems we navigate daily and a platform to envision new ways of understanding and expressing the human experience. Through its playful simplicity, it opens the door to profound insights about the complex and interconnected realities we inhabit.

When your whole life flashes before your eyes
by inthesims

References

[1] Jesper Juul, Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, 2005

[2] Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, 2007

[3] Brad Tromel, Peer Pressure: Essay on the Internet by an Artist on the Internet, 2011

[4] Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, 1995

[5] Thaddeus Griebel, Self-Portrayal in a Simulated Life: Projecting Personality and Values in The Sims 2, 2006

[6] Jessica Baldanza, The SIMS effect: Virtual Identities in Accelerated Reality, 2016

[7] Ludovica Price, The Sims: A Retrospective A Participatory Culture 14 Years On,2014

[8] Vasa Buraphadeja, Kara Dawson, Exploring Personal Myths from The Sims, 2009

[9] Ana Peraica, Culture of the Selfie: Self-Representation in Contemporary Visual Culture​, 2017

[10] McKenzie Wark, Gamer Theory; Allegory (on The Sims), 2007

Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2024!

What. A. Year. Thank you to all of the amazing thinkers who generously shared their writing with us during rough waters worldwide. During those times when our work feels like we’re screaming underwater, it’s especially important that we’re still out here making waves. A special shout out in gratitude to our readers, who are listening even harder during our 15th year, and rocking the boat along with us into 2025. –JS, Ed-in-Chief

Here, beginning with number 10, are our Top 10 posts released in 2024 (as of 12/19/24)!

(10). The Braids, The Bars, and the Blackness: Ruminations on Hip Hop’s World War III – Drake versus Kendrick (Part Two) 

A Conversation by Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

What is it? The braids?–Kendrick Lamar, “Euphoria”

After a much-anticipated wait, Kendrick dropped “Euphoria.” It not only stopped Hip Hop culture in its tracks, but it allowed all spectators to realize this was gearing up to be an epic battle. The song starts with the backwards Richard Pryor sample from the iconic film The Wiz. For those unfamiliar, The Wiz is a film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz featuring an all-Black star-studded cast, including Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. Richard Pryor played the role of the Wizard. When the characters realize the Wizard is a fraud, he says, “Everything they say about me is true”; this is the sample Kendrick uses, grounding himself in 1970s Black culture and situating where he plans to go in his writing.

[Click here to read more]

(9). The Braids, The Bars, and the Blackness: Ruminations on Hip Hop’s World War III – Drake versus Kendrick (Part One) 

A Conversation by Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

“By now, it’s safe to say very few people have not caught wind of the biggest Hip-Hop battle of the 21st century: the clash between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Whether you’ve seen the videos, the memes or even smacked a bunch of owls around playing the video game, this battle grew beyond Hip Hop, with various facets of global popular culture tapped in, counting down minutes for responses and getting whiplash with the speed of song drops. There are multiple ways to approach this event. We’ve seen inciteful arguments about how these two young Black males at the pinnacle of success are tearing one another down. We also acknowledge Hip Hop’s long legacy of battling; the culture has always been a ‘competitive sport’ that includes ‘lyrical sparring.'”

[Click here to read more]

(8).Technologies of Communal Listening: Resonance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

By Harry Burson

“In both sound studies and the sonic arts, the concept of ‘resonance‘ has increasingly played a central role in attuning listeners to the politics of sound. The term itself is borrowed from acoustics, where resonance simply refers to the transfer of energy between two neighboring objects. For example, plucking a note on one guitar string will cause the other strings to vibrate at a similar frequency. When someone or something makes a sound, everything in the immediate environs—objects, people, the room itself—will respond with sympathetic vibrations. Simply put, in acoustics, resonance describes a sonic connection between sounding objects and their environment. In the arts, the concept of resonance emphasizes the situated existence of sound as a transformative encounter between bodies in a particular time and place. Resonance has become a key term to think through how sound creates a listening community, a transitory assemblage whose reverberations may be felt beyond a single moment of encounter. 

For its recent performance series, simply called Resonance, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago drew on this generative concept by bringing together four artists who explore sound as an “introspective force for greater understanding, compassion, and change.” Curated by Tara Aisha Willis and Laura Paige Kyber, the series builds on theories of resonance as an affective relationship between sounding bodies developed by writers and artists like Sonia Louis DavisKaren Christopher, and Birgit Abels. . .”

[Click here to read more]

(7). Sonic Homes: The Sonic/Racial Intimacy of Black and Brown Banda Music in Southern California

by Sara Veronica Hinojos  and Alex Mireles

“Sarah La Morena (Sarah the Black woman), or Sarah Palafox, was adopted and raised by a Mexican family in Mexico. At the age of five, she moved to Riverside, California, a predominantly Mexican city an hour east of Compton. Palafox started singing as a way to express the racism she faced as a child in Southern California, feeling caught between her Black appearance and her Mexican sound. She found her voice in church, a nurturing environment where she could be herself, surrounded by her family’s love. She gained attention with a viral video of her rendition of Jenni Rivera’s “Que Me Vas a Dar.” Palafox delivers each note with profound emotion and precision, leaving even the accompanying mariachi violinist in awe. . .” 

[Click here to read more]

(6). Echoes of the Latent Present: Listening to Lags, Delays, and Other Temporal Disjunctions

by Matthew Tomkinson

“Sometime last year, during a recent deep clean of the apartment, I pulled out a wooden chest that my father built for me when I was ten, a pine-scented time capsule of that period of my life, full of assorted construction-paper projects and faded movie tickets. Buried underneath all this loose paper, set apart by a shiny laminated cover, is the first “novel” I ever wrote, our final project in fourth grade, which was really just a few typed pages folded and stapled together, held between a cardstock cover. In this book, I write about a mall janitor with magic powers, who uses his mop handle to transform villains into piles of fabric, and who time travels throughout history by way of a magic corvette (clearly, I had just seen a certain Robert Zemeckis film).

Having rediscovered this story, I am struck by the realization that my writerly voice has hardly changed. I am still drawn to the same hokey surrealism, the same comic book sensibilities, the same spirit of hand-stapled publishing projects. This is to say: I could not help but to identify in this proto-novel traces of my work to come, early impulses that echo throughout my present practice. As Lisa Robertson puts it in an interview: “Defunct forms resurface after years of latency. New work speaks with old work, as well as with the future.”.”

[Click here to read more]

(5). Listening Together/Apart: Intimacy and Affective World-Building in Pandemic Digital Archival Sound Projects

by Emily Collins

“When the COVID-19 global pandemic began, news reports and studies throughout the world began citing a lot of sound-based statistics: drastic reductions in noise pollution in urban centresAI recordings of cellphone coughsshifting soundscapes at home with new routines and work settings, and sonic sensitivities cultivated in quarantine and isolation. At the same time, in conjunction with these new research studies and areas of interest, there was an outpouring of calls for sound recordings and contributions to digital archival sound projects, such as Sounds of Pandemia, the Pandemic Diaries projectSound of the Earth: The Pandemic ChapterSounds like a Pandemic? (SLAP?), and Stories from a Pandemic, just to name a few. A perceptive post by Sarah Mayberry Scott (2021)outlines the stakes for these types of initiatives grounded in a particular yet ever-changing historical moment, and the stakes of listening (in its attentiveness) and sound (in its persuasive power) more broadly, though undoubtably mediated and defined by power relations in their various social and the cultural contexts. . .”

[Click here to read more]

(4). Wingsong: Restricting Sound Access to Spotted Owl Recordings

by Julianne Graper 

“I am not a board games person, yet I always seem to find myself surrounded by them. Such was the case one August evening in 2023, during a round of the bird-watching-inspired game, Wingspan. Released in 2019 by Stonemaier Games, designer Elizabeth Hargrave’s creation is credited with a dramatic shift in the board game industry. The game received an unparalleled number of awards, including the prestigious 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres (Connoisseur Game of the Year), and an unheard of seven categories of the Golden Geek Awards, including Best Board Game of the Year and Best Family Board Game of the Year. In addition to causing shifts in typical board game topic, artistry, and demographic, Wingspan has led many board game fans to engage with the natural world in new ways, even inspiring many to become avid birders.

Following the game’s rise to popularity, developer Marcus Nerger released an app, Wingsong which allows players to scan each of the beautifully illustrated cards and play a recording of the associated bird’s song. On the evening in question, the unexpected occurred when I scanned the Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis) card and received a message that read:

Playback of this birds[sic] song is restricted. . .”

[Click here to read more]

(3). Rhetoric After Sound: Stories of Encountering “The Hum” Phenomenon

by Trent Wintermeier

“‘So I have heard The Hum… The rest of what I’m about to tell you is beyond reasoning, and understanding.” Here, in a Reddit post, Michael A. Sweeney prefaces their story of their first encounter with “the hum,” an unexplained phenomenon heard by only a small percentage of listeners around the world. The hum is an ominous sonic event that impacts communities from Australia to India, Scotland to the United States. And as Geoff Leventhall writes in “Low Frequency Noise: What We Know, What We Do Not Know, and What We Would Like to Know,” the hum causes “considerable problems” for people across the globe—such as nausea, headaches, fatigue, and muscle pain—as it continues to be an unsolved “acoustic mystery” (94). . .”

[Click here to read more]

(2). Listening to MAGA Politics within US/Mexico’s Lucha Libre 

by Esther Díaz Martín and Rebeca Rivas 

“The announcer’s piercing “lucharaaaaaán” cries from the middle of the ring  proclaims the constitutional two-out-of-three-falls rule of lucha libre.  But before the famous cry rings out to set the stage for the spectacularized acrobatic combat between costumed warriors, their theatrical entrances set the all-important emotional stakes of the battle. The entrances are loud, campy, interactive exchanges between luchadores and spectators. An entrance song itself cues the luchador’s persona: a cumbia could signal a técnico (a good guy); a heavy metal song more than likely indicates a rudo (a bad guy) typically donning black, death-themed getups. Luchadores saunter into the arena, stopping to pose, high five their fans, and verbally heckle their opponents. The storylines of good versus evil, betrayal and revenge, or humility versus arrogance are some of the more standard plots that motivate spectators to adamantly cheer for the favorite and jeer for the foe.

The sonic exchanges between luchadores’ and spectators before, during, and after the fight positions lucha libre as much more than a sport. And while the term spectators,  suggests the privileged act of watching or viewing; here, we expand spectators within lucha libre arena to mean “a call to witness” (á la Chela Sandoval). Put simply, lucha libre is a cultural phenomenon where contemporary cultural, social, and political anxieties are often tapped as fodder for theatrical plots. In the U.S./Mexico’s sister cities of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, the political realities of border enforcement, immigration politics, and racial tensions are loudly heard and placed on display.  . .”

[Click here to read more]

(1). to follow an invisible creek: in search of a decolonial soundwalk praxis

by ameia camielle smith 

“in the context of the rapid rise of big tech in san francisco, california, the perspective of land as perpetually exploitable is ever-present. tech-sponsored development projects are always framed by the city as being motivated by care and consideration for residents, and sometimes as being motivated by environmentalism.  in reality, the displacement and destruction that results from projects like these falls primarily on poor people of color, and their homes, gardens, businesses, community spaces, and schools. similarly, large-scale development projects more often than not have devastating impacts on the land – whether it’s the land that’s being built over or the sacrifice zone elsewhere. perhaps the electric cars of san francisco are thought to represent clean energy and a healthy modern city, but the manufacturing of these cars is predicated upon extensive mining and exploitative and extractive labor outside far outside the city’s borders. and these cars drive over flattened creeks and sand dunes turned to asphalt—through gentrified neighborhoods on stolen land of the Ramaytush Ohlone, people who are still alive and fighting for sovereignty on their traditional territory, and who remain stewards of the land.

these disparities are present in the sounds of the bay area. sound, quite literally, does not exist in a vacuum. the presence of sound thus implies the presence of something outside of that sound; in every sound we hear, there is also information about the context that surrounds it. and the sounds that we do hear say something about the value of the sounds that we don’t. however, i want to argue for a soundwalking praxis that does not settle for the sounds that most easily reach the ear, as in the freeway noise or the planes passing above or the white people on the street, but that reaches beyond to listen for the negative sonic space that is always present and creating itself in the spaces between what we perceive as audible. in my understanding, this is a practice of giving life to that which capitalism/white supremacy/colonialism renders dead, a practice of centering the life that is otherwise stepped on, forgotten, discarded, silenced. listening for the ecologies of the dispossessed. for proof of life, insisting. this is a decolonial soundwalk praxis. . .”

[Click here to read more]

Featured Image “underwater scream” by Flickr User Smellslikeupdog CC BY-ND 2.0

tape reel

REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2023!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2020-2022!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2019!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2018!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2017!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2016!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2015!

Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2024!

What. A. Year. Thank you to all of the amazing thinkers who generously shared their writing with us during rough waters worldwide. During those times when our work feels like we’re screaming underwater, it’s especially important that we’re still out here making waves. A special shout out in gratitude to our readers, who are listening even harder during our 15th year, and rocking the boat along with us into 2025. –JS, Ed-in-Chief

Here, beginning with number 10, are our Top 10 posts released in 2024 (as of 12/19/24)!

(10). The Braids, The Bars, and the Blackness: Ruminations on Hip Hop’s World War III – Drake versus Kendrick (Part Two) 

A Conversation by Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

What is it? The braids?–Kendrick Lamar, “Euphoria”

After a much-anticipated wait, Kendrick dropped “Euphoria.” It not only stopped Hip Hop culture in its tracks, but it allowed all spectators to realize this was gearing up to be an epic battle. The song starts with the backwards Richard Pryor sample from the iconic film The Wiz. For those unfamiliar, The Wiz is a film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz featuring an all-Black star-studded cast, including Diana Ross and Michael Jackson. Richard Pryor played the role of the Wizard. When the characters realize the Wizard is a fraud, he says, “Everything they say about me is true”; this is the sample Kendrick uses, grounding himself in 1970s Black culture and situating where he plans to go in his writing.

[Click here to read more]

(9). The Braids, The Bars, and the Blackness: Ruminations on Hip Hop’s World War III – Drake versus Kendrick (Part One) 

A Conversation by Todd Craig and LeBrandon Smith

“By now, it’s safe to say very few people have not caught wind of the biggest Hip-Hop battle of the 21st century: the clash between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. Whether you’ve seen the videos, the memes or even smacked a bunch of owls around playing the video game, this battle grew beyond Hip Hop, with various facets of global popular culture tapped in, counting down minutes for responses and getting whiplash with the speed of song drops. There are multiple ways to approach this event. We’ve seen inciteful arguments about how these two young Black males at the pinnacle of success are tearing one another down. We also acknowledge Hip Hop’s long legacy of battling; the culture has always been a ‘competitive sport’ that includes ‘lyrical sparring.'”

[Click here to read more]

(8).Technologies of Communal Listening: Resonance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

By Harry Burson

“In both sound studies and the sonic arts, the concept of ‘resonance‘ has increasingly played a central role in attuning listeners to the politics of sound. The term itself is borrowed from acoustics, where resonance simply refers to the transfer of energy between two neighboring objects. For example, plucking a note on one guitar string will cause the other strings to vibrate at a similar frequency. When someone or something makes a sound, everything in the immediate environs—objects, people, the room itself—will respond with sympathetic vibrations. Simply put, in acoustics, resonance describes a sonic connection between sounding objects and their environment. In the arts, the concept of resonance emphasizes the situated existence of sound as a transformative encounter between bodies in a particular time and place. Resonance has become a key term to think through how sound creates a listening community, a transitory assemblage whose reverberations may be felt beyond a single moment of encounter. 

For its recent performance series, simply called Resonance, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago drew on this generative concept by bringing together four artists who explore sound as an “introspective force for greater understanding, compassion, and change.” Curated by Tara Aisha Willis and Laura Paige Kyber, the series builds on theories of resonance as an affective relationship between sounding bodies developed by writers and artists like Sonia Louis DavisKaren Christopher, and Birgit Abels. . .”

[Click here to read more]

(7). Sonic Homes: The Sonic/Racial Intimacy of Black and Brown Banda Music in Southern California

by Sara Veronica Hinojos  and Alex Mireles

“Sarah La Morena (Sarah the Black woman), or Sarah Palafox, was adopted and raised by a Mexican family in Mexico. At the age of five, she moved to Riverside, California, a predominantly Mexican city an hour east of Compton. Palafox started singing as a way to express the racism she faced as a child in Southern California, feeling caught between her Black appearance and her Mexican sound. She found her voice in church, a nurturing environment where she could be herself, surrounded by her family’s love. She gained attention with a viral video of her rendition of Jenni Rivera’s “Que Me Vas a Dar.” Palafox delivers each note with profound emotion and precision, leaving even the accompanying mariachi violinist in awe. . .” 

[Click here to read more]

(6). Echoes of the Latent Present: Listening to Lags, Delays, and Other Temporal Disjunctions

by Matthew Tomkinson

“Sometime last year, during a recent deep clean of the apartment, I pulled out a wooden chest that my father built for me when I was ten, a pine-scented time capsule of that period of my life, full of assorted construction-paper projects and faded movie tickets. Buried underneath all this loose paper, set apart by a shiny laminated cover, is the first “novel” I ever wrote, our final project in fourth grade, which was really just a few typed pages folded and stapled together, held between a cardstock cover. In this book, I write about a mall janitor with magic powers, who uses his mop handle to transform villains into piles of fabric, and who time travels throughout history by way of a magic corvette (clearly, I had just seen a certain Robert Zemeckis film).

Having rediscovered this story, I am struck by the realization that my writerly voice has hardly changed. I am still drawn to the same hokey surrealism, the same comic book sensibilities, the same spirit of hand-stapled publishing projects. This is to say: I could not help but to identify in this proto-novel traces of my work to come, early impulses that echo throughout my present practice. As Lisa Robertson puts it in an interview: “Defunct forms resurface after years of latency. New work speaks with old work, as well as with the future.”.”

[Click here to read more]

(5). Listening Together/Apart: Intimacy and Affective World-Building in Pandemic Digital Archival Sound Projects

by Emily Collins

“When the COVID-19 global pandemic began, news reports and studies throughout the world began citing a lot of sound-based statistics: drastic reductions in noise pollution in urban centresAI recordings of cellphone coughsshifting soundscapes at home with new routines and work settings, and sonic sensitivities cultivated in quarantine and isolation. At the same time, in conjunction with these new research studies and areas of interest, there was an outpouring of calls for sound recordings and contributions to digital archival sound projects, such as Sounds of Pandemia, the Pandemic Diaries projectSound of the Earth: The Pandemic ChapterSounds like a Pandemic? (SLAP?), and Stories from a Pandemic, just to name a few. A perceptive post by Sarah Mayberry Scott (2021)outlines the stakes for these types of initiatives grounded in a particular yet ever-changing historical moment, and the stakes of listening (in its attentiveness) and sound (in its persuasive power) more broadly, though undoubtably mediated and defined by power relations in their various social and the cultural contexts. . .”

[Click here to read more]

(4). Wingsong: Restricting Sound Access to Spotted Owl Recordings

by Julianne Graper 

“I am not a board games person, yet I always seem to find myself surrounded by them. Such was the case one August evening in 2023, during a round of the bird-watching-inspired game, Wingspan. Released in 2019 by Stonemaier Games, designer Elizabeth Hargrave’s creation is credited with a dramatic shift in the board game industry. The game received an unparalleled number of awards, including the prestigious 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres (Connoisseur Game of the Year), and an unheard of seven categories of the Golden Geek Awards, including Best Board Game of the Year and Best Family Board Game of the Year. In addition to causing shifts in typical board game topic, artistry, and demographic, Wingspan has led many board game fans to engage with the natural world in new ways, even inspiring many to become avid birders.

Following the game’s rise to popularity, developer Marcus Nerger released an app, Wingsong which allows players to scan each of the beautifully illustrated cards and play a recording of the associated bird’s song. On the evening in question, the unexpected occurred when I scanned the Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis) card and received a message that read:

Playback of this birds[sic] song is restricted. . .”

[Click here to read more]

(3). Rhetoric After Sound: Stories of Encountering “The Hum” Phenomenon

by Trent Wintermeier

“‘So I have heard The Hum… The rest of what I’m about to tell you is beyond reasoning, and understanding.” Here, in a Reddit post, Michael A. Sweeney prefaces their story of their first encounter with “the hum,” an unexplained phenomenon heard by only a small percentage of listeners around the world. The hum is an ominous sonic event that impacts communities from Australia to India, Scotland to the United States. And as Geoff Leventhall writes in “Low Frequency Noise: What We Know, What We Do Not Know, and What We Would Like to Know,” the hum causes “considerable problems” for people across the globe—such as nausea, headaches, fatigue, and muscle pain—as it continues to be an unsolved “acoustic mystery” (94). . .”

[Click here to read more]

(2). Listening to MAGA Politics within US/Mexico’s Lucha Libre 

by Esther Díaz Martín and Rebeca Rivas 

“The announcer’s piercing “lucharaaaaaán” cries from the middle of the ring  proclaims the constitutional two-out-of-three-falls rule of lucha libre.  But before the famous cry rings out to set the stage for the spectacularized acrobatic combat between costumed warriors, their theatrical entrances set the all-important emotional stakes of the battle. The entrances are loud, campy, interactive exchanges between luchadores and spectators. An entrance song itself cues the luchador’s persona: a cumbia could signal a técnico (a good guy); a heavy metal song more than likely indicates a rudo (a bad guy) typically donning black, death-themed getups. Luchadores saunter into the arena, stopping to pose, high five their fans, and verbally heckle their opponents. The storylines of good versus evil, betrayal and revenge, or humility versus arrogance are some of the more standard plots that motivate spectators to adamantly cheer for the favorite and jeer for the foe.

The sonic exchanges between luchadores’ and spectators before, during, and after the fight positions lucha libre as much more than a sport. And while the term spectators,  suggests the privileged act of watching or viewing; here, we expand spectators within lucha libre arena to mean “a call to witness” (á la Chela Sandoval). Put simply, lucha libre is a cultural phenomenon where contemporary cultural, social, and political anxieties are often tapped as fodder for theatrical plots. In the U.S./Mexico’s sister cities of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, the political realities of border enforcement, immigration politics, and racial tensions are loudly heard and placed on display.  . .”

[Click here to read more]

(1). to follow an invisible creek: in search of a decolonial soundwalk praxis

by ameia camielle smith 

“in the context of the rapid rise of big tech in san francisco, california, the perspective of land as perpetually exploitable is ever-present. tech-sponsored development projects are always framed by the city as being motivated by care and consideration for residents, and sometimes as being motivated by environmentalism.  in reality, the displacement and destruction that results from projects like these falls primarily on poor people of color, and their homes, gardens, businesses, community spaces, and schools. similarly, large-scale development projects more often than not have devastating impacts on the land – whether it’s the land that’s being built over or the sacrifice zone elsewhere. perhaps the electric cars of san francisco are thought to represent clean energy and a healthy modern city, but the manufacturing of these cars is predicated upon extensive mining and exploitative and extractive labor outside far outside the city’s borders. and these cars drive over flattened creeks and sand dunes turned to asphalt—through gentrified neighborhoods on stolen land of the Ramaytush Ohlone, people who are still alive and fighting for sovereignty on their traditional territory, and who remain stewards of the land.

these disparities are present in the sounds of the bay area. sound, quite literally, does not exist in a vacuum. the presence of sound thus implies the presence of something outside of that sound; in every sound we hear, there is also information about the context that surrounds it. and the sounds that we do hear say something about the value of the sounds that we don’t. however, i want to argue for a soundwalking praxis that does not settle for the sounds that most easily reach the ear, as in the freeway noise or the planes passing above or the white people on the street, but that reaches beyond to listen for the negative sonic space that is always present and creating itself in the spaces between what we perceive as audible. in my understanding, this is a practice of giving life to that which capitalism/white supremacy/colonialism renders dead, a practice of centering the life that is otherwise stepped on, forgotten, discarded, silenced. listening for the ecologies of the dispossessed. for proof of life, insisting. this is a decolonial soundwalk praxis. . .”

[Click here to read more]

Featured Image “underwater scream” by Flickr User Smellslikeupdog CC BY-ND 2.0

tape reel

REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2023!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2020-2022!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2019!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2018!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2017!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2016!

The Top Ten Sounding Out! Posts of 2015!

Open Book Publishers – Annual Report 2024

Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Welcome to our 2024 Annual Report!


As the year comes to a close, we're proud to reflect on an exciting period at OBP—filled with new open access titles, awards, and new exciting projects. It’s been a remarkable year, and we invite you to explore the highlights with us!


Announcements

  • Proud to be in SE's Top 100
  • Book Prizes
  • We reevaluated and shifted our social media presence
  • Exciting Website Updates!
  • Open Book Publishers and the Open Book Collective
  • Global Geographical Statistics


Books, libraries and content

  • Introducing the First Publication from the St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture Series
  • Our Most Accessed Titles in 2024
  • New OA Publications by New & Returning Authors
  • Our 2024 OA Series: Calls for Proposal
  • New Library Members

People

  • Our Volunteers
  • New Team Members
  • Support Us!

Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Proud to be in SE's Top 100!

We’re thrilled to be included in the 2024 NatWest SE100 Index – marking our sixth consecutive year on the list! This annual index recognises the UK’s top 100 social enterprises for their growth, impact, and resilience, and we’re honoured to be among them once again.

Further details about this achievement can be found here.


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Book Prizes

Three OBP publications have received major accolades in 2024, recognizing their scholarly impact and innovation:

Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures, edited by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin, was awarded both the 2024 Globalization & Education SIG (CIES) Best Edited Book Award and the 2024 Open Education Awards for Excellence – Open Collaboration, celebrating its forward-thinking approach to transforming higher education.

Aaron D. Hornkohl’s The Historical Depth of the Tiberian Reading Tradition of Biblical Hebrew won the 2024 British and Irish Association of Jewish Studies (BIAJS) Annual Book Prize, praised as “an impressive piece of research” for tracing the Tiberian reading tradition back to the Second Temple period.

Play in a Covid Frame: Everyday Pandemic Creativity in a Time of Isolation, edited by Anna Beresin and Julia Bishop, received the 2024 Iona and Peter Opie Prize, honoring its compelling examination of creativity and play during the global pandemic.


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

We reevaluated and shifted our social media presence

We decided to leave Twitter/X at the end of October. Though we will continue to check our account periodically through the end of the year, we will no longer be contributing content to X. We invite you to connect with us on our other socials:

Bluesky: @openbookpublish.bsky.social  
Mastodon: @OpenBookPublish@hcommons.social
LinkedIn: open-book-publishers

Speaking of social media, the Open Access Books Network (OABN) has also joined Bluesky. Follow them here: https://bsky.app/profile/oabooksnetwork.bsky.social


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Exciting Website Updates!

We have recently completed a comprehensive update to our website! This update has made it more informative and visually engaging for our readership.

Here are some of the key updates our team has implemented:

  • Content Refresh: Our team has meticulously updated numerous pages that were previously outdated.
  • Enhanced Visuals: To improve user experience, our team has incorporated a variety of visuals, including diagrams, graphs, and logos, across various pages (see, for example, Our Vision). These additions not only make the content more visually appealing but also aid in conveying complex information effectively.
  • New Page - 'Our Reach': Our team has introduced a new page titled 'Our Reach' (accessible here) which meticulously showcases our readership statistics. This page serves as a testament to our impact and is prominently linked from our home page for easy access.
  • Improved Organization: To streamline content presentation, our team has relocated information regarding our readership statistics from the open software section to the newly created 'Our Reach' page. This change not only enhances the coherence of our website but also addresses previous concerns about content alignment.

We invite you all to explore the revamped website and discover the wealth of new information our team has meticulously curated. Take a moment to visit the updated site and delve into the latest content


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Open Book Publishers and the Open Book Collective


It has now been almost two years since we announced that Open Book Publishers had joined the Open Book Collective (OBC). In that time, many of our long-standing library members have chosen to renew their Open Book Publishers membership through the collective, showing their commitment to building a fairer and more sustainable open access book publishing ecosystem. We are also delighted to have welcomed new library members who have kindly decided to support us via the OBC. To both our renewing and new members, we want to extend a heartfelt thank you. Your support makes an enormous difference.

If you are a library member and would like to explore what the OBC offers please get in touch with our Head of Libraries Laura Rodriguez, at laura@openbookpublishers.com.

We also invite you to revisit our original announcement, where we outlined our reasons for joining the OBC and explained what this collaboration means for libraries, authors, and readers. By working together, we can continue to build a stronger, more sustainable ecosystem for open access books.


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Global Geographical Statistics & Annual Readership by Measure Report

Global Geographical Statistics


We collect and display detailed readership statistics (also known as usage data, or metrics) for our books on each book's home page. There you can see how often the book has been downloaded or read online via a number of different platforms, including our own website and external platforms such as the OAPEN Library and Google Books. There are also some geographical data about where the book has been accessed. See further down this page for more information about how we collect this data, and how we aggregate it for each book.

Below are our global readership statistics for 2024, highlighting engagement with our titles from every country, state, and territory worldwide, a clear reflection of the truly global reach of our publications.

Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

In the landscape of our readership, North America, Europe, and Asia emerge as the primary contributors in 2024, solidifying their positions at the top tier. Following closely are Africa, Oceania, and South America, each playing a crucial role in our  community. Looking forward, we are committed to increasing our global influence, fostering a deeper connection with readers worldwide in the coming years.

Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

In the global landscape of our readership, discernible patterns emerge across countries. The United States of America leads with a substantial readership, followed by the United Kingdom, India, Germany, and Canada. Noteworthy engagement can also be seen in Russia, France, the Philippines, and China. Further contributing to the readership spectrum are the Netherlands, Australia, Italy, Ireland, and Spain as well as Singapore, Finland, Nigeria, Indonesia, and South Africa.

This year's readership shows the diverse and widespread impact of our books on a global scale!

Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Annual Readership Report Information

Please note that access to our books in HTML format was tracked until July 2023, but the platform we used for this is no longer available. Our developers at OBP are working on new solutions.

We can still record usage across some platforms, showing how much a book is accessed there (based on the platform’s own measurements), in which formats, over time, from which parts of the world (in some cases), and from specific domains (useful for Library Members who want to see how their students and staff are using the Membership).

This information is only partial. Many sites that host our books do not provide usage data, and geographical data may be limited by platform restrictions or users who block collection. Once a file is downloaded, we cannot track how it is used or shared, much like sales figures for print or ebook editions.

For more on how we collect and process readership statistics, please visit https://www.openbookpublishers.com/about/our-reach.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and supporting our titles. With the help of our readers, member libraries, and authors, we can continue working towards a fairer publishing landscape!


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Introducing the First Publication from the St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture Series


This year we published first book of the St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture series, a distinguished collaboration between the Centre for French History and Culture at the University of St Andrews and Open Book Publishers.


Titled Nouvelles études sur les lieux de spectacle de la première modernité and edited by Pauline Beaucé and Jeffrey M. Leichman, this groundbreaking work delves into the intricacies of performance venues during the early modern period.

The St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture series endeavors to enrich scholarly discourse surrounding the historical culture of the French-speaking world. Covering a diverse array of themes—from political and military history to literary culture—the series is committed to publishing concise yet illuminating monographs and studies.


Each title in the series undergoes rigorous peer review by our editorial board and external assessors, ensuring academic integrity and excellence. Available in both digital and hard copy formats, these publications will contribute significantly to our understanding of French history and culture.


Stay tuned for more groundbreaking publications from the St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture series!


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Our Most Accessed Titles in 2024


Advanced Problems in Mathematics: Preparing for University by Stephen Siklos

The Poetic Edda: A Dual-Language Edition by Edward Pettit

Ethics for A-Level by Mark Dimmock and Andrew Fisher  

No Prices No Games! Four Economic Models by Michael Richter and Ariel Rubinstein

Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin (eds)

Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers: A Primer for the Non-English Speaker by Gábor Lövei

Financing Investment in Times of High Public Debt: 2023 European Public Investment Outlook by Floriana Cerniglia, Francesco Saraceno and Andrew Watt

Transforming Conservation: A Practical Guide to Evidence and Decision Making by William J. Sutherland (ed.)

Migrant Academics’ Narratives of Precarity and Resilience in Europe by Olga Burlyuk and Ladan Rahbari (eds)

Conservation Biology in Sub-Saharan Africa by John W. Wilson and Richard B. Primack


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

New OA Publications by New & Returning Authors


This year we proudly celebrated the publication of 57 books, an outstanding milestone that reflects the dedication, and passion of our community of authors! We are thrilled to have welcomed both first-time authors as well as those returning to publish with us again.

To all our authors, we extend our heartfelt thanks. By choosing to publish with us, you not only enrich our catalogue but also strengthen our mission to make knowledge open and accessible to all.

Looking ahead, we are excited to continue supporting authors who are shaping the future of open access publishing. Each book we publish has the power to reach readers around the world, and together we are building a global community of scholarship and creativity. Here’s to the achievements of this year and to the many new works and opportunities the coming year will bring!


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Our 2024 OA Series: Call for Proposals


As you may know, we have various Open Access series all of which are open for proposals, so feel free to get in touch if you or someone you know is interested in submitting a proposal!

Global Communications
Global Communications is a new book series that looks beyond national borders to examine current transformations in public communication, journalism and media. Special focus is given on regions other than Western Europe and North America, which have received the bulk of scholarly attention until now.

St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture
St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture, a successful series published by the Centre for French History and Culture at the University of St Andrews since 2010 and now in collaboration with Open Book Publishers, aims to enhance scholarly understanding of the historical culture of the French-speaking world. This series covers the full span of historical themes relating to France: from political history, through military/naval, diplomatic, religious, social, financial, cultural and intellectual history, art and architectural history, to literary culture.

Studies on Mathematics Education and Society
This book series publishes high-quality monographs, edited volumes, handbooks and formally innovative books which explore the relationships between mathematics education and society. The series advances scholarship in mathematics education by bringing multiple disciplinary perspectives to the study of contemporary predicaments of the cultural, social, political, economic and ethical contexts of mathematics education in a range of different contexts around the globe.

The Global Qur'an
The Global Qur’an is a new book series that looks at Muslim engagement with the Qur’an in a global perspective. Scholars interested in publishing work in this series and submitting their monographs and/or edited collections should contact the General Editor, Johanna Pink. If you wish to submit a contribution, please read and download the submission guidelines here.

The Medieval Text Consortium Series
The Series is created by an association of leading scholars aimed at making works of medieval philosophy available to a wider audience. The Series' goal is to publish peer-reviewed texts across all of Western thought between antiquity and modernity, both in their original languages and in English translation. Find out more here.

Applied Theatre Praxis
This series publishes works of practitioner-researchers who use their rehearsal rooms as "labs”; spaces in which theories are generated and experimented with before being implemented in vulnerable contexts. Find out more here.

Digital Humanities
Overseen by an international board of experts, our Digital Humanities Series: Knowledge, Thought and Practice is dedicated to the exploration of these changes by scholars across disciplines. Books in this Series present cutting-edge research that investigate the links between the digital and other disciplines paving the ways for further investigations and applications that take advantage of new digital media to present knowledge in new ways. Proposals in any area of the Digital Humanities are invited. We welcome proposals for new books in this series. Please do not hesitate to contact us (a.tosi@openbookpublishers.com) if you would like to discuss a publishing proposal and ways we might work together to best realise it.


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

New Library Members

Since January 2024, 17 new libraries have joined as members, supporting our Open Access mission to make academic research freely available to everyone worldwide.

You can view the full list of current members here and membership benefits here. Membership is free for libraries in Economically Developing Countries. If you are a librarian at an eligible institution and would like more information, please contact us at libraries@openbookpublishers.com.

We are deeply grateful for the support of our member libraries, both new and renewing. Your contributions are vital to sustaining our work. We also welcome suggestions on how we can better support you—please do get in touch at libraries@openbookpublishers.com.


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Our Volunteers


We offer training placements in all aspects of Open Access publishing, free of charge. In the past we have provided placements as part of university courses (such as the MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford, the Master in Publishing at City University of London), work placements (School of Arts, Birbeck, University of London) and to other Open Access publishers, such as UGA Editions and Firenze University Press. Placements usually cover editorial skills, marketing, or technical aspects. For more information or to discuss a possible placement, please contact Alessandra Tosi.

We also welcome volunteers of all experience levels. In 2024 we’ve been fortunate to work with some fantastic volunteers, and we warmly thank them for their dedication and support.

Anja Pritchard

Rose Cook

Sasha PG-Kirkham

Hannah Shakespeare

Cecilia M. Thon


If you or someone you know would like to have the opportunity to try a range of key publishing aspects, including marketing, editorial and text-formatting tasks in a non-corporate environment, please contact Alessandra Tosi.


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

New Team Members
This year we welcomed one new team member:

Marketing Lead

Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Raegan Allen is a poet from Missouri. She holds a Master of Publishing from City, University of London, where she researched the use of brand in small, independent presses. Before moving to the UK, Raegan studied English and Creative Writing at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Her poems have appeared in Zenaida and Alloy literary magazines. She directs marketing and publicity for OBP. Email: raegan@openbookpublishers.com.


We are delighted to have Raegan onboard - welcome!


Open Book Publishers - Annual Report 2024

Support Us!


If you believe that knowledge should be freely available to everyone, you can support Open Book Publishers with a donation! Any level of support will go towards the publication of Open Access books with no charges for authors or readers.  

Donate here: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/support-us

November 2024 Newsletter

Report from IMPAKT FEST 2024, Deal With It

Wed, Oct 30th 2024

THE CAKE IS A LIE

I have a plan. On my back, I carry a heavy load: a camera, microphone, Zoom recorder, and tripod. I decided to leave my bike at Amsterdam Sloterdijk train station—a huge mistake. Utrecht’s main station is a maze, and I wander up and down various routes before finally finding a bus that will take me to the first venue: IMPAKT’s Centre for Media Culture. This is where the main exhibit, THE CAKE IS A LIE, is showcased. A small group of people stands outside, smoking a cigarette, but the real fuss is on the second floor of the building. I’m searching for someone in a red suit; this is part of my mission and the reason for the heavy load I’m carrying. I find Mike Bonanno from The Yes Men deep in conversation with one of the curators and the program coordinator of this year’s festival, Daniela Tenenbaum. I grab a glass of white wine and head downstairs to the exhibit. An opening speech is about to begin. Two large velvet theatre-like curtains mark access to the room.

Credits: Pieter Kers – beeld.nu.

Inside, visitors can have a look at the works of this year’s exhibit featured artists: Joshua Citarella, Julie Goslinga, Himmelsbach, Kubra Khademi, Jeroen Jongeleen, Susanne Khalil Yusef, and a collective artwork by Marcos Kueh, Funda Baysal, Ritvik Khushu. Other contributors include Mary Maggic, Joyce Overheul, Roee Rosen, and Roy Villevoye. I circle the entire space a couple of times, making use of the equipment I brought with me by taking some pictures. At one point, the lighting seems to grow softer, and a large group gathers in front of Fraternal Fuck by Kubra Khademi. Ine Gevers and Arjon Dunnewind, the curators of The Cake is a Lie, begin the round of introductions.

The atmosphere is crowded, and everyone’s curiosity is palpable. The exhibition’s title – The Cake is a Lie – echoes the viral internet phenomenon from the 2007 videogame, Portal. It’s a humorous choice, yet the contrast with the diverse selection of artworks elicits a bittersweet smile from the audience. The persistence of gaming themes in recent cultural events and contemporary investigations intrigues me—especially in times when there seems to be little left to laugh about. This feeling surfaces again when Himmelsbach (Dominique Himmelsbach de Vries), a social designer and the mind behind WILDERSWEBWINKEL.NL, begins to speak. His work takes the form of an ironic shop selling Geert Wilders-themed gadgets—perfect for the holiday season, visiting friends, far-right party supporters, or even that irritating neighbor of yours.

Credits: Pieter Kers – beeld.nu.

From WildersWebWinkel:

“By challenging and disrupting societal polarization, we strive for deeper understanding and connection between divided groups and celebrate the richness of human visions and experiences.”

After Himmelsbach, Roy Villevoye takes the stage, presenting Reset – Vienna 1909, 20-year-old Adolf Hitler Is Homeless (2024), and Amún Mbes’ Reenactment (2017). Following him is Roee Rosen, showcasing The Gaza War Tattoos. Continuing my tour of the room, I stop in front of a three-screen installation displaying a 3D animated video. The alien-like figure on the screen speaks from a bathtub drenched in blood. As they talk, I move closer, peering through the gaps between people’s shoulders to get a better view. The work is titled UNDERSTANDING OTHER(S). The artist is Julie Goslinga, and later on that night, I had a chance to speak with her and record an interview about her process.

DEAL WITH IT

Opening night keynote speech – Het Huis

We all move to Het Huis for the keynote speech that marks the official opening of IMPAKT’s Festival night. The session features Dries Verhoeven, Mary Maggic, and Mike Bonnano (The Yes Men), moderated by Cecile van Bruggen. Alongside curators Ine Gevers and Arjon Dunnewind, van Bruggen introduces new festival participants who had not yet spoken at IMPAKT’s Centre for Media Culture. Dries Verhoeven, a theatre-maker and visual artist based in the Netherlands, presents his performative installation Alles Moet Weg, 2024 (Everything Must Go), which is on display at De Paardenkathedraal from Thursday, October 31st. The work examines the moral landscape of late capitalism from shoplifters’s perspective.

Credits: Pieter Kers – beeld.nu.

Following him, Mary Maggic takes the stage. A nonbinary Chinese-American artist and researcher, Maggic frequently employs biohacking as a xeno-feminist practice of care, aiming to demystify the invisible lines of molecular bio-power. Maggic is also a contributor to the Cyberfeminism Index, exhibiting their work Estroworld-now: The Quarantine Edition (2021) at The Cake is a Lie. In addition, they are also participating in various panels throughout the festival.

Credits: Pieter Kers – beeld.nu.

Then, the stage clears—just in time for a grand entrance. A green sponge, oozing a slimy green substance, walks in. Holding a microphone, the sponge addresses the audience in a familiar voice. It’s Mike Bonanno, disguised as Scrubby, the greenwashing sponge.

Credits: Pieter Kers – beeld.nu.

When Scrubby approaches the laptop to begin the slide presentation, he finds out that the fabric of his green fingers makes clicking impossible. In one swift motion, Mike Bonanno emerges from beneath the disguise. He begins by introducing The Yes Men’s body of work over the years, recounting its origins and its very first hijacks. After the presentation, he hands out a very-secret-book, which he invites the audience to pass around. While he doesn’t reveal much about the book’s mission, he promises that all will be revealed in early December.

Credits: Pieter Kers – beeld.nu.

The next segment features the first European screening of The Yes Men’s latest documentary, Adidas Owns the Reality (2024). The activist group, Clean Clothes Campaign and Berlin designers Threads and Tits fooled the fashion world into believing Adidas had launched a revolutionary ethical campaign. The movie featured a fake co-CEO, Cambodian garment worker Vay Ya Nak Phoan, who exposed labor abuses and signed a “Pay Your Workers” agreement. The unveiling of “Adidas REALITYWEAR,” a provocative streetwear line reflecting worker exploitation, shocked audiences with its graphic presentation of factory workers’ conditions. After a while, Adidas denied any involvement, but the elaborate spectacle, complete with staged press releases and a campaign official website, highlighted their human rights violations. Activists used the hoax to push the company to take accountability for improving workers’ treatment and sign the binding agreement. Christie Miedema and other members of the CCC are also present in the audience, along with labor organizations and union representatives. During the Q&A session, they take the floor to elaborate on their legal work and their collaboration with The Yes Men on this project. The movie also includes clips from the fashion show staged during the Berlin Fashion Week 2023, showcasing reactions from the largely unsuspecting audience. From The Yes Men strike again: Adidas failure to meet workers’ compensation demands highlighted in adiVerse hoax:

During Berlin Fashion Week in 2023, these same activists released a false statement from Adidas announcing that its new CEO would appoint a former garment worker as co-CEO. This statement included the suggestion that Adidas would move to sign the Pay Your Workers – Respect Labour Rights agreement, legally binding the company to compensate and safeguard workers and their rights.

Later on, I have a chance to speak more with Mike Bonanno and record an interview, including some stolen shots of Scrubby.

 

Fri, Nov 1st 2024

Reinventing Manhood

I return to Utrecht, feeling a bit more accustomed to commuting. The plan for the day is to attend the first panel, Reinventing Manhood, and later check out Dries Verhoeven’s performance, Alles Moet Weg. At noon, we enter the main stage of Het Huis, where Linda Duits moderates the panel discussion featuring Mounir Samuel, Babah Tarawally, and Mary Maggic.

The session begins with an introduction of the speakers, after which Duits hands the floor to multidisciplinary artist and journalist Mounir Samuel. Samuel provides an analysis of gender identities in the Netherlands through the lens of language and biblical translation. He reflects on how northwestern Europe has historically set global standards for gender diversity.

Next is Babah Tarawally, a writer, columnist, and journalist originally from Sierra Leone who came to the Netherlands in the 1990s as an asylum seeker. He discussed his latest book, De Getemde Man (2023), and speaks about how his childhood shaped his understanding of gender. For Tarawally, naming things brings attention to them.

The last speaker, Mary Maggic shares also a personal story, touching on the expectations placed on Chinese women and exploring definitions of gender that aim to liberate rather than confine. Maggic emphasized the violence inherent in rigid gender categories and discussed the importance of limits, permeability, and our connections with environmental change. They also mention the project Open Source Estrogen, which positions biohacking as a form of existential knowledge, exploring the intersection of gender and climate change and highlighting their interconnections. A thought-provoking question was raised about whether queer bodies have a place in the future, given their non-reproductive nature. Additionally, the discussion emphasizes love as a radical strategy to counteract an industry fundamentally built on lovelessness. Finally, the panel addresses the societal framing of menopausal women as obsolete, challenging these perceptions. Maggic speaks about gender manipulation discourses, encouraging us to “love the alien in you“.

CONSENSUS ARCHITECTS INC.
Jonas Lund

After the panel, I grab some lunch. On the second floor, in Studio 2, there’s a performative installation going on: Consensus Architects Inc. by Jonas Lund. I enter the room, and it resembles an office space populated by a few people drinking coffee, working on laptops, and wearing name tags. The person at the desk gives me one, too: I am Aisha. Along with the name tag, I receive a printed page detailing Aisha’s background, mission, conspiracies, and her behavior towards other company members, especially Maxwell, the Head of Misinformation.

I’m invited to get a drink and begin socializing with the others in the room. Consensus Architects Inc. turns out to be an engaging roleplay experience. Participants take on roles such as political strategists, content creators, or investors in disinformation. The installation critiques misinformation campaigns, highlighting ethical dilemmas, and encourages to reflect on the impact of propaganda and susceptibility manipulation.

Credits: Pieter Kers – beeld.nu.

The office setting feels like a social experiment, with no client interactions (no showings) and no CEO speeches for this session. It’s all about roleplay, suspension of disbelief, absurdity, playfulness, boundaries, and masks. I find myself amazed by the easiness of getting involved with each character, bonding on the simple fact that all the strangers around me have a clear mission printed out in front of them. Which makes us a little bit less strangers for a couple of hours.

EVERYTHING MUST GO
Dries Verhoeven

After saying goodbye to my newfound colleagues with a clear excuse (I have to take my son from his school’s theatre play), I take a bus to De Paardenkathedraal, to view Dries Verhoeven‘s Alles Moet Weg (Everything Must Go, 2024)

I leave my coat at the entrance, and I step into the exhibit space. The setting is the perfect reproduction of an Albert Heijn’s aisle. A performer with a Snowhite dress and a piggy mask is sucking from a tomato paste. Their voice resonates in the room, dark and quiet, while screens show different angles from CCTVs planted inside the glass-bordered lane.

Credits: Pieter Kers – beeld.nu.

For this piece, Verhoeven interviewed 24 supermarket pickpocketers who consider their action a form of resistance to an unjust system. The dialogues that the performer is presenting are crafted from interviews with the late capitalism’s Robin Hoods, combined with excerpts from Jean Genet, Karl Marx, Ruben Östlund, Rachel Shteir, Mathild Clerc-Verhoeven, and Slavoj Žižek’s words.

6.

We have to do this together, people. if we don’t do it, who will do it?

We have to destroy the supermarket from within.

Our shopping cart is
a Trojan horse, you get it?

I started sharing online what I take from the store…

and my followers really appreciate it. We become this army of shoplifters… the product liberation front.
And it’s also just a good

joke of course, stealing. #borrowing

In other words: How to steal?

Lesson one: presentation.

Don’t dress too shabby, no hoodies, no leggings.

And the outfit has to match…

you cannot wear a fancy jacket
from Bijenkorf with worn-out sneakers.

Not too much makeup. Lesson two: methodology.

Roughly speaking, there are two methods: be messy or be impeccable.

First, the messy method.

Forget a basket, make sure you have too many groceries in your hands.

Make a call while walking, put your phone back in your pocket, take it out…

put a protein bar in your pocket, take out your phone again, drop something.

In other words: juggle.

The atmosphere is captivating, with a strong mise en scène. There’s an uncomfortable feeling that perfectly represents a common sensation, making it easy to immerse in it. It’s creepy, yet also poetic, as the performer describes it. As the lights shift to a warmer pink, the eyes beneath Piggy’s mask glow, and the camera is suddenly pushed away. You can feel the two dark holes looking into you, even though they aren’t. What are they focused on? An expert shoplifter? An amateur? Are you a messy or an impeccable thief? I find myself wondering: which type am I?

“This AI will heat up any club”: Reggaetón and the Rise of the Cyborg Genre

This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@.  Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Sound Studies. We are delighted to publish our initial musings with Sounding Out!, a forum that has long prioritized sound from a queered, racial, working-class and  “always-from-below” epistemological standpoint. —Ed. Dolores Inés Casillas

Busco la colaboración universal donde todos los Benitos puedan llegar a ser Bad Bunny. –FlowGPT, TikTok

In November of 2023, the reggaetón song “DEMO #5: NostalgIA” went viral on various digital platforms, particularly TikTok. The track, posted by user FlowGPT, makes use of artificial intelligence (Inteligencia Artificial) to imitate the voices of Justin Bieber, Bad Bunny, and Daddy Yankee. The song begins with a melody reminiscent of Justin Bieber’s 2015 pop hit “Sorry.” Soon, reggaetón’s characteristic boom-ch-boom-chick drumbeat drops, and the voices of the three artists come together to form a carefully crafted, unprecedented crossover.

Bad Bunny’s catchy verse “sal que te paso a buscar” quickly inundated TikTok feeds as users began to post videos of themselves dancing or lip-syncing to the song.  The song was not only very good but it also successfully replicated these artists– their voices, their style, their vibe. Soon, the song exited the bounds of the digital and began to be played in clubs across Latin America, marking a thought-provoking novelty in the usual repertoire of reggaetón hits.  In line with the current anxieties around generative AI, the song quickly generated public controversy. Only a few weeks after its release, ‘nostalgIA’ was taken down from most digital platforms.

Screencaps of two TikTok videos posted by DJs in Argentina and Peru. On the left, it reads “This AI will heat up any club.” On the right, “Sorry, Benito.”

The mind behind FlowGPT is Chilean producer Maury Senpai, who in a series of TikTok responses explained his mission of creative democratization in a genre that has been historically exclusive of certain creators. In one video, FlowGPT encourages listeners to contemplate the potential of this “algorithm” to allow songs by lesser-known artists and producers to reach the ears of many listeners, by replicating the voices of well-known singers. Maury Senpai’s production process involved lyric writing, extensive study of the singers’ vocals, and the Kits.ai tool.

Therefore, contrary to FlowGPT’s robotic brand, ‘nostalgIA’ was the product of careful collaboration between human and machine– or, what Ross Cole calls “cyborg creativity.”  This hybridization enmeshes the artist and the listener, allowing diverse creators their creative desires. Cyborg creativity, of course, is not an inherent result of GenAI’s advent. Instead, I argue that reggaetón has long been embedded in a tradition of musical imitation and a deep reliance on technological tools, which in turn challenges popular concerns about machine-human artistic collaboration.

Many creators worry that GenAI will co-opt a practice that for a long time has been regarded as strictly human. GenAI’s reliance on pre-existing data threatens to hide the labor of artists who contributed to the model’s output. We may also add the inherent biases present in training data. Pasquinelli and Joler propose that the question “Can AI be creative?” be reformulated as “Is machine learning able to create works that are not imitations of the past?” Machine learning models detect patterns and styles in training data and then generate “random improvisation” within this data. Therefore, GenAI tools are not autonomous creative actors but often operate with generous human intervention that trains, monitors, and disseminates the products of these models.

The inability to define GenAI tools as inherently creative on their own does not mean they can’t be valuable for artists seeking to experiment in their work. Hearkening back to Donna Haraway’s concept of the cyborg, Ross Cole argues that

Such [AI] music is in fact a species of hybrid creativity predicated on the enmeshing of people and computers (…) We might, then, begin to see AI not as a threat to subjective expression, but another facet of music’s inherent sociality.

Many authors agree that unoriginal content—works that are essentially reshufflings of existing material—cannot be considered legitimate art. However, an examination of the history of the reggaetón genre invites us to question this idea. In “From Música Negra to Reggaetón Latino,” Wayne Marshall explains how the genre emerged from simultaneous and mutually-reinforcing processes in Panamá, Puerto Rico, and New York, where artists brought together elements of dancehall, reggae, and American hip hop. Towards the turn of the millennium, the genre’s incorporation of diverse musical elements and the availability of digital tools for production favored its commercialization across Latin America and the United States. 

The imitation of previous artists has been embedded in the fabric of reggaetón from a very early stage. Some of the earliest examples of reggaetón were in fact Spanish lyrics placed over Jamaican dancehall riddims— instrumental tracks with characteristic melodies. When Spanish-speaking artists began to draw from dancehall, they used these same riddims in their songs, and continue to do so today. A notable example of this pattern is the Bam Bam riddim, which is famously used in the song “Murder She Wrote” by Chaka Demus & Pliers (1992).

This riddim made its way into several reggaetón hits, such as “El Taxi” by Osmani García, Pitbull, and Sensato (2015).

We may also observe reggaetón’s tradition of imitation in frequent references to “old school” artists by the “new school,” through beat sampling, remixes, and features. We see this in Karol G’s recent hit “GATÚBELA,” where she collaborates with Maldy, former member of the iconic Plan B duo.

Reggaetón’s deeply rooted tradition of “tribute-paying” also ties into its differentiation from other genres. As the genre grew in commercial value, perhaps to avoid copyright issues, producers cut down on their direct references to dancehall and instead favored synthesized backings. Marshall quotes DJ El Niño in saying that around the mid-90s, people began to use the term reggaetón to refer to “original beats” that did not solely rely on riddims but also employed synthesizer and sequencer software. In particular, the program Fruity Loops, initially launched in 1997, with “preset” sounds and effects provided producers with a wider set of possibilities for sonic innovation in the genre.

The influence of technology on music does not stop at its production but also seeps into its socialization. Today, listeners increasingly engage with music through AI-generated content. Ironically, following the release of Bad Bunny’s latest album, listeners expressed their discontent through AI-generated memes of his voice. One of the most viral ones consisted of Bad Bunny’s voice singing “en el McDonald’s no venden donas.”

The clip, originally sung by user Don Pollo, was modified using AI to sound like Bad Bunny, and then combined with reggaetón beats and the Bam Bam riddim. Many users referred to this sound as a representation of the light-heartedness they saw lacking in the artist’s new album. While Un Verano Sin Ti (2022) stood out as an upbeat summer album that addressed social issues such as U.S. imperialism and machismo, Nadie Sabe lo que va a Pasar Mañana (2023) consisted mostly of tiraderas or disses against other artists and left some listeners disappointed. In a 2018 post for SO!, Michael S. O’Brien speaks of this sonic meme phenomenon, where a sound and its repetition come to encapsulate collective discontent.

Another notorious case of AI-generated covers targets recent phenomenon Young Miko. As one of the first openly queer artists to break into the urban Latin mainstream, Young Miko filled a long-standing gap in the genre—the need for lyrics sung by a woman to another woman. Her distinctive voice has also been used in viral AI covers of songs such as “La Jeepeta,” and “LALA,” originally sung by male artists. To map Young Miko’s voice over reggaetón songs that advance hypermasculinity– through either a love for Jeeps or not-so-subtle oral sex– represents a creative reclamation of desire where the agent is no longer a man, but a woman. Jay Jolles writes of TikTok’s modifications to music production, namely the prioritization of viral success. The case of AI-generated reggaetón covers demonstrates how catchy reinterpretations of an artist’s work can offer listeners a chance to influence the music they enjoy, allowing them to shape it to their own tastes.

Examining the history of musical imitation and digital innovation in reggaetón expands the bounds of artistry as defined by GenAI theorists. In the conventions of the TikTok platform, listeners have found a way to participate in the artistry of imitation that has long defined the genre. The case of FlowGPT, along with the overwhelmingly positive reception of “nostalgIA,” point towards a future where the boundaries between the listener and the artist are blurred, and where technology and digital spaces are the platforms that allow for an enhanced cyborg creativity to take place.

Featured Image: Screenshot from ““en el McDonald’s no venden donas.” Taken by SO!

Laurisa Sastoque is a Colombian scholar of digital humanities, history, and storytelling. She works as a Digital Preservation Training Officer at the University of Southampton, where she collaborates with the Digital Humanities Team to promote best practices in digital preservation across Galleries/Gardens, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM), and other sectors. She completed an MPhil in Digital Humanities from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge scholar. She holds a B.A. in History, Creative Writing, and Data Science (Minor) from Northwestern University.

REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig: 

Boom! Boom! Boom!: Banda, Dissident Vibrations, and Sonic Gentrification in MazatlánKristie Valdez-Guillen

Listening to MAGA Politics within US/Mexico’s Lucha Libre –Esther Díaz Martín and Rebeca Rivas

Ronca Realness: Voices that Sound the Sucia BodyCloe Gentile Reyes 

Echoes in Transit: Loudly Waiting at the Paso del Norte Border RegionJosé Manuel Flores & Dolores Inés Casillas

Experiments in Agent-based Sonic Composition—Andreas Pape

“This AI will heat up any club”: Reggaetón and the Rise of the Cyborg Genre

This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@.  Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Sound Studies. We are delighted to publish our initial musings with Sounding Out!, a forum that has long prioritized sound from a queered, racial, working-class and  “always-from-below” epistemological standpoint. —Ed. Dolores Inés Casillas

Busco la colaboración universal donde todos los Benitos puedan llegar a ser Bad Bunny. –FlowGPT, TikTok

In November of 2023, the reggaetón song “DEMO #5: NostalgIA” went viral on various digital platforms, particularly TikTok. The track, posted by user FlowGPT, makes use of artificial intelligence (Inteligencia Artificial) to imitate the voices of Justin Bieber, Bad Bunny, and Daddy Yankee. The song begins with a melody reminiscent of Justin Bieber’s 2015 pop hit “Sorry.” Soon, reggaetón’s characteristic boom-ch-boom-chick drumbeat drops, and the voices of the three artists come together to form a carefully crafted, unprecedented crossover.

Bad Bunny’s catchy verse “sal que te paso a buscar” quickly inundated TikTok feeds as users began to post videos of themselves dancing or lip-syncing to the song.  The song was not only very good but it also successfully replicated these artists– their voices, their style, their vibe. Soon, the song exited the bounds of the digital and began to be played in clubs across Latin America, marking a thought-provoking novelty in the usual repertoire of reggaetón hits.  In line with the current anxieties around generative AI, the song quickly generated public controversy. Only a few weeks after its release, ‘nostalgIA’ was taken down from most digital platforms.

Screencaps of two TikTok videos posted by DJs in Argentina and Peru. On the left, it reads “This AI will heat up any club.” On the right, “Sorry, Benito.”

The mind behind FlowGPT is Chilean producer Maury Senpai, who in a series of TikTok responses explained his mission of creative democratization in a genre that has been historically exclusive of certain creators. In one video, FlowGPT encourages listeners to contemplate the potential of this “algorithm” to allow songs by lesser-known artists and producers to reach the ears of many listeners, by replicating the voices of well-known singers. Maury Senpai’s production process involved lyric writing, extensive study of the singers’ vocals, and the Kits.ai tool.

Therefore, contrary to FlowGPT’s robotic brand, ‘nostalgIA’ was the product of careful collaboration between human and machine– or, what Ross Cole calls “cyborg creativity.”  This hybridization enmeshes the artist and the listener, allowing diverse creators their creative desires. Cyborg creativity, of course, is not an inherent result of GenAI’s advent. Instead, I argue that reggaetón has long been embedded in a tradition of musical imitation and a deep reliance on technological tools, which in turn challenges popular concerns about machine-human artistic collaboration.

Many creators worry that GenAI will co-opt a practice that for a long time has been regarded as strictly human. GenAI’s reliance on pre-existing data threatens to hide the labor of artists who contributed to the model’s output. We may also add the inherent biases present in training data. Pasquinelli and Joler propose that the question “Can AI be creative?” be reformulated as “Is machine learning able to create works that are not imitations of the past?” Machine learning models detect patterns and styles in training data and then generate “random improvisation” within this data. Therefore, GenAI tools are not autonomous creative actors but often operate with generous human intervention that trains, monitors, and disseminates the products of these models.

The inability to define GenAI tools as inherently creative on their own does not mean they can’t be valuable for artists seeking to experiment in their work. Hearkening back to Donna Haraway’s concept of the cyborg, Ross Cole argues that

Such [AI] music is in fact a species of hybrid creativity predicated on the enmeshing of people and computers (…) We might, then, begin to see AI not as a threat to subjective expression, but another facet of music’s inherent sociality.

Many authors agree that unoriginal content—works that are essentially reshufflings of existing material—cannot be considered legitimate art. However, an examination of the history of the reggaetón genre invites us to question this idea. In “From Música Negra to Reggaetón Latino,” Wayne Marshall explains how the genre emerged from simultaneous and mutually-reinforcing processes in Panamá, Puerto Rico, and New York, where artists brought together elements of dancehall, reggae, and American hip hop. Towards the turn of the millennium, the genre’s incorporation of diverse musical elements and the availability of digital tools for production favored its commercialization across Latin America and the United States. 

The imitation of previous artists has been embedded in the fabric of reggaetón from a very early stage. Some of the earliest examples of reggaetón were in fact Spanish lyrics placed over Jamaican dancehall riddims— instrumental tracks with characteristic melodies. When Spanish-speaking artists began to draw from dancehall, they used these same riddims in their songs, and continue to do so today. A notable example of this pattern is the Bam Bam riddim, which is famously used in the song “Murder She Wrote” by Chaka Demus & Pliers (1992).

This riddim made its way into several reggaetón hits, such as “El Taxi” by Osmani García, Pitbull, and Sensato (2015).

We may also observe reggaetón’s tradition of imitation in frequent references to “old school” artists by the “new school,” through beat sampling, remixes, and features. We see this in Karol G’s recent hit “GATÚBELA,” where she collaborates with Maldy, former member of the iconic Plan B duo.

Reggaetón’s deeply rooted tradition of “tribute-paying” also ties into its differentiation from other genres. As the genre grew in commercial value, perhaps to avoid copyright issues, producers cut down on their direct references to dancehall and instead favored synthesized backings. Marshall quotes DJ El Niño in saying that around the mid-90s, people began to use the term reggaetón to refer to “original beats” that did not solely rely on riddims but also employed synthesizer and sequencer software. In particular, the program Fruity Loops, initially launched in 1997, with “preset” sounds and effects provided producers with a wider set of possibilities for sonic innovation in the genre.

The influence of technology on music does not stop at its production but also seeps into its socialization. Today, listeners increasingly engage with music through AI-generated content. Ironically, following the release of Bad Bunny’s latest album, listeners expressed their discontent through AI-generated memes of his voice. One of the most viral ones consisted of Bad Bunny’s voice singing “en el McDonald’s no venden donas.”

The clip, originally sung by user Don Pollo, was modified using AI to sound like Bad Bunny, and then combined with reggaetón beats and the Bam Bam riddim. Many users referred to this sound as a representation of the light-heartedness they saw lacking in the artist’s new album. While Un Verano Sin Ti (2022) stood out as an upbeat summer album that addressed social issues such as U.S. imperialism and machismo, Nadie Sabe lo que va a Pasar Mañana (2023) consisted mostly of tiraderas or disses against other artists and left some listeners disappointed. In a 2018 post for SO!, Michael S. O’Brien speaks of this sonic meme phenomenon, where a sound and its repetition come to encapsulate collective discontent.

Another notorious case of AI-generated covers targets recent phenomenon Young Miko. As one of the first openly queer artists to break into the urban Latin mainstream, Young Miko filled a long-standing gap in the genre—the need for lyrics sung by a woman to another woman. Her distinctive voice has also been used in viral AI covers of songs such as “La Jeepeta,” and “LALA,” originally sung by male artists. To map Young Miko’s voice over reggaetón songs that advance hypermasculinity– through either a love for Jeeps or not-so-subtle oral sex– represents a creative reclamation of desire where the agent is no longer a man, but a woman. Jay Jolles writes of TikTok’s modifications to music production, namely the prioritization of viral success. The case of AI-generated reggaetón covers demonstrates how catchy reinterpretations of an artist’s work can offer listeners a chance to influence the music they enjoy, allowing them to shape it to their own tastes.

Examining the history of musical imitation and digital innovation in reggaetón expands the bounds of artistry as defined by GenAI theorists. In the conventions of the TikTok platform, listeners have found a way to participate in the artistry of imitation that has long defined the genre. The case of FlowGPT, along with the overwhelmingly positive reception of “nostalgIA,” point towards a future where the boundaries between the listener and the artist are blurred, and where technology and digital spaces are the platforms that allow for an enhanced cyborg creativity to take place.

Featured Image: Screenshot from ““en el McDonald’s no venden donas.” Taken by SO!

Laurisa Sastoque is a Colombian scholar of digital humanities, history, and storytelling. She works as a Digital Preservation Training Officer at the University of Southampton, where she collaborates with the Digital Humanities Team to promote best practices in digital preservation across Galleries/Gardens, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM), and other sectors. She completed an MPhil in Digital Humanities from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Cambridge scholar. She holds a B.A. in History, Creative Writing, and Data Science (Minor) from Northwestern University.

REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig: 

Boom! Boom! Boom!: Banda, Dissident Vibrations, and Sonic Gentrification in MazatlánKristie Valdez-Guillen

Listening to MAGA Politics within US/Mexico’s Lucha Libre –Esther Díaz Martín and Rebeca Rivas

Ronca Realness: Voices that Sound the Sucia BodyCloe Gentile Reyes 

Echoes in Transit: Loudly Waiting at the Paso del Norte Border RegionJosé Manuel Flores & Dolores Inés Casillas

Experiments in Agent-based Sonic Composition—Andreas Pape

ISSA: Building the Archipelagos of the Future

From the 4th to the 9th of October, 2024, ISSA (Island School of Social Autonomy) facilitated a collective building action and series of lectures, workshops, and discussions in Vis, guided by the central theme of To Live Together. The aim was to build new ways of “being, living, and learning together beyond the ruins of capitalism” and provide an embodied “platform for contemplating a different world.”

The essay was originally published in Makery.info on November 13, 2024, as part of the Rewilding Cultures series – a cooperation program co-funded by the European Union.

A community has been brewing on the island of Vis, one of the most distant islands in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of southern Croatia. The Island School of Social Autonomy or ISSA, located above the village of Komiža on the western part of the island, is a recently formed organism. Spearheaded by the Croatian philosopher Srećko Horvat, it is a sprawling community of mostly Balkan artists and activists who collectively bought and are working on restoring three hectares of desolate land and previously uninhabited mountainous green terrain. ISSA is an old stone house, a small construction site, a group of friends, an extended community, and a network.

Before I attended the ISSA To Live Together conference, I was talking with a few friends about going. Some of them knew about it because of the involvement of the Italian philosopher, Franco Bifo Berardi. Some knew about it through the grapevine, and some knew about it because Pamela Anderson is listed as a donor on the website. One acquaintance laughed and said; “The School of Social Autonomy? Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron?” Later on the ferry ride, as I watched the sun dip into the sea and felt the mainland retreating behind my back, his question stuck in my head.

Credit: Matteo Principi

The school in the name of Island School of Social Autotnomy is not glided over, nor is it a stand-in word to represent the conference-type structure of the program. It is an integral part of ISSA’s ideological positioning inspired by Ivan Illich’s book Deschooling Society (1971) and his claim that the contemporary educational system has turned into an “advertising agency that makes you believe that you need the society as it is”. The notion of social autonomy is not divorced from the notion of pedagogy, and learning with and from each other. According to Paulo Freires Pedagogy of the Oppressed, one of the inspirations of ISSA, the learner is to be treated as a co-creator of knowledge. Many of the lecturers at the ‘conference’ are members of the ISSA organism, or have started their own similar, perhaps more private initiatives such as James Bridle, a British artist and writer who is based on an island in the Aegean Sea. The search for autonomy as a political strategy and a model for social organization is a recurring idea at ISSA. It is closely linked with the nature of islands as isolated and hermetic spaces, spaces where people inscribe their desires and grow them patiently, in the process integrating with the existing topology. ISSA’s location is thus both a geographic and metaphorical stance: “We believe that the future lies in archipelagos of autonomy.”

The idea of self-management as a framework has been consistently present in the history of island schools nurturing subversive discourse and activity. ISSA in its current form gives a nod of respect to the summer school of Korčula, founded in the 1960s on a nearby island in the former federal state of Yugoslavia. The historic summer school and the journal it birthed, Praxis, a Marxist-humanist journal, was commemorated in the panel talk entitled The 60th Anniversary of Praxis, and included Nadežda Čačinovič, Boris Buden, Ankica Čakardić, and Mira Oklobdžija all of whom were directly involved in the Korčula summer school. The Korčula summer school encounters that took place during the 1960s were crucial meeting

The 60th Anniversary of Praxis. CC 4.0 by ISSA School / BONK productions

As Boris Buden put it: “Dealing with the past makes sense only in the ability of us to take the past in our hands and affect the present.” The cultural heritage of Praxis proposed that these particular isolated spaces dedicated to critical thought towards existing infrastructures of property and social relations as well as simple collective leisure, took shape in ‘Dyonisian Socialism.’ Praxis and the Korčula summer school were informed by the idea that thinking must transcend the scope of academic institutions and nurture the singularity of multitudes rather than promoting a single monolithic school of thought: not a global revolution but many small local utopias. The ritual of meeting on the beaches in the late afternoon and drinking and talking was an important part of the Korčula summer school and was continued at ISSA, where initiatives such as Memory of the World, Chto Delat, Forest University, and Aventura presented their practices during the school on the beach sessions. Most of the two hundred participants that attended the current and second iteration of ISSA were activists, journalists, artists, and researchers working on parallel and often interlinked initiatives spanning multiple continents. Casual conversation merged with political critique and speculation ebbed and flowed with the waves.

Although it was not specifically mentioned, I couldn’t help but return to the concept of the archipelago and Edouard Glissant’s theory of archipelagic thinking. The theory of archipelagic thinking originates from the violently colonized scattering of islands in the Carribean, and the dissident philosophical thinking produced there, an arguably different context than the briefly colonized island of Vis that retained its language. Nevertheless, there are similarities in archipelagic thinking, marked by unpredictability, multiplicity-in-oneness, and ambiguity. It calls for an “insurrection of the imaginary faculties” aspiring towards innovative ways of conceiving the world, and resonates in many of the conversations echoing across ISSA and the Praxis journal before it.

Mira Oklobdžija, a panelist in the Praxis discussion, referred to a philosopher who had also reflected from the shores of an island: Aristotle and his definition of three forms of knowledge — theoria, poiesis, and praxis. She outlined some interesting digressions in the two generations of the Croatian summer schools, pointing out that ISSA is more activistic and anchored in praxis than the journal Praxis ever aspired to be. An audience member quipped that perhaps in ISSA, the poetry is precisely in the praxis, and this rings true to the guiding motto of ISSA; “We build the school, and the school builds us.”

Two days of ISSA were dedicated to restoring and expanding the old stone building or school nestled in the Vis hills, which will constitute the main hub of ISSA activities. During the days of To Live Together, the regular working force (usually just a few people) at the construction site swelled to a hundred or more, and work that normally took months was accomplished in two days. We carried wooden planks up the mountain and sanded them to construct the large terrace, and participated in a workshop on how to build traditional, terraced stone walls, a practice called dry stonewalling. This technique is so essential on the islands of the Adriatic that it has been included as an UNESCO intangible heritage of mankind. The workshop was led by Igor Mataić, a doctor of science specializing in geotechnics and environmental engineering who is also part of the Pomalo association, a cultural and action-based initiatives NGO on Vis dedicated to protecting the natural environment and sustainable life on the island. We learned where to place the larger anchoring boulders and how to fill in the gaps with smaller stones, making a type of wedge in the sloped side of the hill. The technique doesn’t need any adhesive or cement but relies on viney vegetation to slowly grow in the gaps of the larger stones, through the earth and pebbles, and hold the wall in place over time.

The incline of the mountain is consistently incorporated into the sustainable design of the school. The circular water system (as a convivial tool) demonstrated various ways of water circulation and collection. We were introduced to the construction of a large sloped surface of layered flat stones behind the house, dedicated to collecting and filtering accumulated rainwater. There is an adjacent fog collector project that catches mist and helps it to liquefy, dripping down into basins at the bottom of the fence-like structure.

CC 4.0 by ISSA School / BONK productions

At some point in the day, we saw a line of people walking up the mountain in single file, the first in the line carrying a large pole with a Wifi antenna at its top, looking for a good position to catch the available wifi and route it down to the house. It looked like a religious march in search of connection. Autonomy and self-management do not mean isolation. This initiative was the responsibility of !Mediengruppe Bitnik, an artist duo, and two core members of the ISSA collective who anchor the islands initiative as a practice of embodied tactical media. The co-founders of the Berlin-based collective originate from Vis and Zurich, and deal with reinterpreting urban technological systems that are not meant to be interacted with, utilizing “deliberate loss of control as a means to question established structures.” “When did we agree to these systems layered on top of society?” they asked in their lecture later in the week, describing their impressive opus of playful interferences. They rendered glitched photographs of urban architectural elements into the original stone structures and infiltrated the Zurich opera with phones that randomly dial citizens and transmit usually inaccessible audio, entangling interference with translation. In the spirit of tactical media, they not only initiated the Wifi antenna but also led a workshop titled Your Own Private Pirate Radio Station teaching participants how to assemble a predesigned FM transmitter circuit board to be used as a tactical tool, an artistic device, and a medium of communication. Participants constructed their own pirate radio stations, and, while edging around the law, achieved communicatation in a relatively local but useful radius.

The workshop For a Global Mutiny Against an Empire of Negligence led by the Pirate Care collective, resonated theoretically both with the act of making private radio stations and with the core principles of ISSA. Pirate Care is a research project and a network of activists, scholars, and practitioners who stand against the criminalization of solidarity. Pirate Care was introduced as a concept inspired by the hybrid figure of the pirate in his/her/their militant glory and autonomy, and the invisibility of the renegade figure of revolt. The pirate carer aims to address unequally distributed care, thus breaking empirical strongholds by repositioning knowledge production. In this sense, care is conceptualized as a militant and direct action practice and a partisan terrain of struggle. The concept of pirate care is grounded in its defining elements of breaking the law and claiming disobedience, critical usage of technology, communing private property and partisan knowledge and learning, queering kinship, and federating practices. Ultimately, pirate care unites anarchist legacies by aligning the vocabularies of diverse movements (such as Marxist & Eco Feminist) and federating fragmented pirate care initiatives. The wish to align vocabularies recalls the Praxis panel talk in which the concept of self-management was repositioned as an essentially anarchist framework rather than a communist legacy, thus interrogating the ownership of definitions.

For a Global Mutiny Against an Empire of Negligence. CC 4.0 by ISSA School / BONK productions

The idea of a federation is deeply important for the pirate carers and a concept that is too often forgotten in our leftist spaces. The pirate carers cultivate a profound suspicion towards positions of morality that frequently digress into judgment. Perhaps that is why, as a participant stated later in the day, contemporary political spaces are filled with “leftists who are looking for a political home where there is none”.  Thus the Pirate Care Collective works with other people’s practices of care, even though they do not necessarily agree with their politics, consequently federating common struggles and unions. This type of activation is essential as a subversion of the often unnoticed “elite capture” and co-option of renegade academic discourse and trickle-down activism. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, in his recent book Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else), states that elite capture is what “stands between us and a transformative, nonsectarian, coalitional politics.” Federating, allyship, and a possible political home for the future left represent a strong undercurrent of thought accompanying the wide breadth of activities at ISSA.

The Pirate Care Collective facilitated a playful and simultaneously dystopic workshop. We were presented with the scenario of being stuck on the island because the mainland had suffered an acute breakdown of infrastructure and civil society. We were then divided into groups and challenged to take roles based on our capabilities of care and assistance. What would we do first? Who does what? Who and what should we take care of? A challenging exercise as you can imagine since it is always the case in such settings that there is an under-representation of engineers, doctors, and herbalists, and an overrepresentation of writers and painters. Nevertheless, throughout the exercise, we realized that skills that are not always valued, such as cooking and emotional perseverance, are essential in small utopias. What will always be needed is clear and calm communication, humor, and (pirate) care, all skills that we expanded during the ISSA conference.

James Bridle, artist and technologist who moved to an island in the Aegean, spoke of his experiments with fog collectors and water purifiers during his lecture and his delight that the ISSA team was developing the same knowledge. Bridle was playful, speaking about the interconnectivity of the world on a metaphysical and organic level rather than an infrastructural and extractivist level. He talked about the hearing of plants and the dancing of bees as active sensory participants in the world and described the solar community of which he is a member on the island where he lives. A solar community provides access to energy for member households through an autonomous solar grid, literally and metaphorically redistributing power through self-management.  Power communities are increasingly common, yet remain especially important to islands that are at bigger risk of being isolated from the main power grids of the mainland. “What was considered the periphery is actually the future,” explained James. The peripheries of the islands are places to prototype and experiment both because they are experiencing the climate conditions of the future and because of the archipelagic poesis ingrained in their seclusion and immersion.

Silvia Federici, an Italian feminist, activist, and writer, addressed us by Zoom in the beautiful, sculpted stone movie theatre in Komiža. She said we must work on “rebuilding the commons and inventing new ways of being together. Crucial as a form of self-defense is expanding our imagination — the new world will not burst out of our head like Minerva from the head of Zeus. It will follow a period of experimentation, breaking with the isolation of the individualization of society, where we don’t confront capitalism alone. We do it in our everyday life by changing how we reproduce life and ourselves.” The ISSA School of Social Autonomy attempts just that, by experimenting and weaving ancestral knowledge with a multiplicity of contemporary and historic schools of thought leaving us all with a profound sense of community, excitement, and hope. When I returned to the depressing and apathetic private conversations of everyday urban life in a capital city on the mainland, I encouraged my friends to join us on the island of the future, where the effects of building and learning together are collective, invigorating and visceral.

Credit: Matteo Principi

GRWM – in an Attempt to Deoligarchise Georgia


28th October, 2024

2 days after Georgian parliamentary elections

How to steal the elections: Georgian edition

 

My naivety did not let me fully believe the game would be so rigged. The data consists of 2,749,674 eligible voters and, somehow, 3,508,294 ballots are claimed by the Election Administration of Georgia to have been cast. From this morning, press speakers from the latter administrative organ insist there was no place for corruption, that elections were held in a peaceful and just environment, that opposition parties intentionally share misinformation, that this is an organised campaign against whatever propaganda they desire to be sunk into this time.

In what follows, I present a toolkit for how to claim the illegitimate power in a country deprived and sick, where elections were won before anyone cast a single vote.

Step 1:

In the days leading up to October 26th, the pro-Russian ruling party, Georgian Dream started massive ‘campaign’, especially outside of capital city – Tbilisi. This campaign mostly focused on taking away the ID cards of potential opposition voters, or buying them. In the second-largest city of Georgia, Kutaisi, the propaganda machine took a form of requests for personal numbers, targeting civil servants, and in this case, kindergarten teachers and their family members. In addition, they were asked to jot down their “wishes” in case of the party’s victory. Not one of them wished for anything beyond basic medical care. Some civil servants were not asked to write down wishes; instead, they were offered benefits in exchange for their personal numbers. The police was involved in the process too, leaving such digital footprint that it did not need any more clearance on the election day.

In a country that is ideologically sick, it nourishes from the mass poverty. The sickness, whether existential, medical, or cultural – becomes a very useful and convenient resource for the Russian puppet-state. The poverty and harsh social conditions are not recognized as problems, but a foundation for “legitimacy”, an endorsement of power. Voters were bought cheaply, at 50-100 GEL each (a mere 20-40 euros) courtesy of the oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili. Stagnation, alongside promises of “higher and higher”, “better and better”, “more and more Georgian” future are the only assets for clinging to power. The name of the party itself, “Georgian Dream” was part of the “not-really-there-yet reality plan”, and I have been sick of the word “dream” for a long time that is empty of any meaning.

Step 2:

Before election day, the GD party made certain that only a handpicked registrar of voters would oversee the process. This was ensured by the legislative change. Therefore, the position of registrar played their part: ID photos were often not checked against the faces of those who came to vote. The observers, in most instances, were not able to see the difference – they were restricted to go near to the regitrar’s table.

Step 3:

By buying the votes and taking away ID cards, we saw a classic example of carousel voting. People were able to cast multiple votes while moving from one place to another. Observers filmed case after case of these violations, and they got verbally and physically assaulted for this, or simply banned. Finger markings were often faded easily under soap and water. Some machines with UV lights to detect these markings were suspiciously broken. Observers who documented these failings and filed complaints often found themselves expelled from the premises, or worse – called upon and beaten by the Georgian thugs outside, who were also working for the GD.

 

November 6th, 2024

11 days after Georgian parliamentary elections

 

Following these events, being out of country, I started to cling onto online media. Several Facebook groups have become focal points for those opposing the regime, resonating amid these turbulencies. A sentiment quickly circulated in these Facebook groups, I saw many posts stating something along the lines of: “it would never be an easy task for us to overthrow this government anyway, how would you imagine life to be so simple?”. Indeed, it has long been challenging on a national level to claim its own space and identity while under the shadow of the Soviet Union, and neighboring Russia, let alone to overthrow a pro-Russian government in the midst of elections.

What interests me here is how living with this collective purpose shapes individual ways of living. A few years ago, my friend and I had a conversation about a phenomenon of “Georgian sadness”. He had just got back from his studies in Austria, and I remember him being struck by how easily a sense of happiness could be achieved in Vienna, and how people could feel content from simple pleasures – from having a cinnamon bun at a cozy café, or getting niche second-hand book found at an open-air market. “In contrast”, he said, “we do not allow ourselves that kind of joy; we have to break down and analyse the feeling of well-being before we can let it settle. We have to philosophise the very state of happiness as we do not accept it without question, but we put a demanding effort into introspection, almost as if it needs to be earned while asking ourselves whether it should feel good at all. Like, if we go skiing, it’s not enough to say it was fun – we frame it as a liberating experience, we talk about the grand, edgy mountains, the thrill of the descent, as if joy must be made complex to be valid.”

I would add that people around me, myself included, rarely describe sweet moments as “happy”. We do not seem to embrace these experiences but we feel the need to over-construct our feelings, rationalise them, turn them into something existential. This emotional landscape also inhabits our resilience against the regime. In the immediate aftermath of the elections when the shock effect was intact, these resilient practices found a foothold in the familiar terrain of endurance – that “ousting Russian government was never going to be easy, so why even be nihilistic about it when we are not used to simplicity anyway?”.

Having said this, I want to delve into the dynamics of activism in the context of Georgian elections. In offline spaces, such as streets overtaken by protesters, the pro-Russian government employs a range of strategies to delegitimise the very purpose of the demonstration, alongside with activists. This mechanism is usually manifested online through governmental TV channels that selectively share the demonstration footage, often forming hate-driven narratives, or underreporting attendance to portray “how purposeless the demonstration is due to a small amount of people”. Additionally, an army of bots attack real users in comment sections, further reinforcing hate language towards protests. I realised I became a bot also, however, I am attacking the ruling party in turn, through their online channels, media outlets and official FB pages of pro-Russian parliamentary members.

December 3rd, 2024
39 days after Georgian elections

 

Using fireworks as a tactic against water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets has proven effective so far, despite the government’s recent ban on local stores selling pyrotechnics. This form of resistance not only disrupts and belittles the suppression, but also symbolises the purpose of the protest movement. Precisely, street protests transcending the traditional resistance forms have formed a political and cultural space where people are actively reclaiming Georgia’s political landscape. This environment has become a platform for citizens to practice solidarity, and show the defiance in a way of collective self-determination.

 

 

The resistance and civil disobedience on the streets that are manifested through multiple forms are unfolding in real time on a daily basis. Protestors are shaping a specific infrastructure of solidarity on-site, which is getting more and more tangible in ways of remarkable unity and organisation. This infrastructure has strengthened over time, that then has helped the movement to adapt and expand.

What began on Rustaveli Avenue, has now decentralised, as the demonstrations are spread across various districts in Tbilisi and even in small rural cities of Georgia – places with no prior history of hosting such protests. There is a rotating system protestors use to ensure a continuous presence. Some remain on the streets from afternoon until late evening, whereas others replace them to hold the space through the night. This wave of protests is often met with the harshest dispersion, as police forces use brutal tactics, ranging from violent, unjust arrests, beatings, to threats of rape.

These acts of state violence have further helped the movement to expand, reinforcing the power of people to demand freedom.

The country currently is paralysed, and today we see dozens of arrests of opposition party leaders, bloggers, and activists, that have a strong positionality in the political scene. This brings back the wave of repressions that also has been the case during the summer when governmental forces were calling and violently threatening ordinary citizens attempting to silence them. Even though the regime remains aggressive, the resilience of the movement also alters itself to adapt to the present circumstances. What can be seen on TikTok is a great representation of how memeified the protest movement has become.

And lastly, what we also see is the emergence of gender dynamics within the protests, which further ridicules the governmental forces having any legitimacy while claiming they are the representation of the people’s aspirations – statements that are far removed from reality.