Radical Open Access Collective
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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: SO! Podcast #82: Living Sounds: Rhythms of Belonging
SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA APPLE PODCASTS
FOR TRANSCRIPT: ACCESS EPISODE THROUGH APPLE PODCASTS , locate the episode and click on the three dots to the far right. Click on “view transcript.”
It’s been a minute for the SO! podcast but we are glad to be back–however intermittently–with a podcast episode that shares a discussion between women sound studies artists and scholars. The panel “Living Sounds: Rhythms of Belonging,” was held on September 19 at 6-7pm EDT at The Soil Factory arts space in Ithaca, New York. Moderator Jennifer Lynn Stoever, sound studies scholar and our Ed. in Chief, talks with four women sound artists about their praxis: Marlo de Lara, Bonnie Han Jones, Sarah Nance and Paulina Velazquez Solis.
Marlo De Lara (they/siya) obtained a PhD in Cultural Studies (University of Leeds) and an MA in Psychosocial Studies from the Centre of Psychoanalytic Studies at Essex. Their creative practice works within the realms of sound performance, visual distraction, and film. Using found objects, installation, and various forms of amplification, environments/structures use sound to impart meaning and affect for the participant. As the child of Philippine migrants, De Lara’s unabashed feminist sociopolitical practice/research editorializes on contemporary global conditions. As an arts facilitator, using their critiques of the nonprofit industrial complex and institutional learning, De Lara aims to transgress and subvert traditional hierarchical ways of managing contemporary art spaces. In the role of community care, Marlo uses mutual aid and emergent strategies in combination with decolonial ways of nourishing equity, diversity, and inclusion practices to ensure safety and access for all. Marlo is a Certified Deep Listening Facilitator and shaping a career as Counsellor/Coach/Guide in therapeutic healing methods informed by Western psychotherapeutic/psychological, healing arts, expressive therapies, and various indigenous practices, most specifically sikolohiyang pilipino.
Bonnie Han Jones is a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and performer working with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and is currently a member of the High Zero Festival collective. In 2010, along with Suzanne Thorpe she co-founded TECHNE, an organization that develops anti-racist, feminist workshops that center on technology-focused art making, improvisation, and community collaboration. She has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work extensively at institutions in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Bonnie was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Born in South Korea, she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, spent her formative years in Baltimore, Maryland and Providence RI and currently resides in Chicago, IL.
Sarah Nance is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the intersections of geologic processes and human experience in archived, constructed, and speculative landscapes. Her work has been performed and exhibited widely, at venues in China, France, Canada, Iceland, South Korea, Germany, and Italy, as well as across the U.S.
Paulina Velázquez Solís is a multimedia artist and curator from Mexico and Costa Rica. She works with installation, sound, sculpture, drawing, animation/video, and media performance. She is interested in the body and the biological and natural world in interaction with the cultural and social notions of normalcy and experiences as a multinational individual. Her work has been shown in places like Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo and TEOR/éTica in Costa Rica; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; Ex Teresa Arte Actual in México City; Casa de las Americas in La Havana, Cuba; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Panamá City; Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC; and Root Division and The Lab in San Francisco.
Jennifer Lynn Stoever is Associate Professor of English at Binghamton University, founding Editor-in-Chief of Sounding Out!, and author of The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (NYU Press, 2016). Her research has been supported by the Whiting Foundation, the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Thank you to Travis Johns for the recording and mixing.
—
REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:
SO! Podcast #48: Languages of Exile
SO! Podcast #53: H. Cecilia Suhr’s “From Ancient Soul to Ether”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: SO! Podcast #82: Living Sounds: Rhythms of Belonging
SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA APPLE PODCASTS
FOR TRANSCRIPT: ACCESS EPISODE THROUGH APPLE PODCASTS , locate the episode and click on the three dots to the far right. Click on “view transcript.”
It’s been a minute for the SO! podcast but we are glad to be back–however intermittently–with a podcast episode that shares a discussion between women sound studies artists and scholars. The panel “Living Sounds: Rhythms of Belonging,” was held on September 19 at 6-7pm EDT at The Soil Factory arts space in Ithaca, New York. Moderator Jennifer Lynn Stoever, sound studies scholar and our Ed. in Chief, talks with four women sound artists about their praxis: Marlo de Lara, Bonnie Han Jones, Sarah Nance and Paulina Velazquez Solis.
Marlo De Lara (they/siya) obtained a PhD in Cultural Studies (University of Leeds) and an MA in Psychosocial Studies from the Centre of Psychoanalytic Studies at Essex. Their creative practice works within the realms of sound performance, visual distraction, and film. Using found objects, installation, and various forms of amplification, environments/structures use sound to impart meaning and affect for the participant. As the child of Philippine migrants, De Lara’s unabashed feminist sociopolitical practice/research editorializes on contemporary global conditions. As an arts facilitator, using their critiques of the nonprofit industrial complex and institutional learning, De Lara aims to transgress and subvert traditional hierarchical ways of managing contemporary art spaces. In the role of community care, Marlo uses mutual aid and emergent strategies in combination with decolonial ways of nourishing equity, diversity, and inclusion practices to ensure safety and access for all. Marlo is a Certified Deep Listening Facilitator and shaping a career as Counsellor/Coach/Guide in therapeutic healing methods informed by Western psychotherapeutic/psychological, healing arts, expressive therapies, and various indigenous practices, most specifically sikolohiyang pilipino.
Bonnie Han Jones is a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and performer working with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and is currently a member of the High Zero Festival collective. In 2010, along with Suzanne Thorpe she co-founded TECHNE, an organization that develops anti-racist, feminist workshops that center on technology-focused art making, improvisation, and community collaboration. She has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work extensively at institutions in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Bonnie was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Born in South Korea, she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, spent her formative years in Baltimore, Maryland and Providence RI and currently resides in Chicago, IL.
Sarah Nance is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the intersections of geologic processes and human experience in archived, constructed, and speculative landscapes. Her work has been performed and exhibited widely, at venues in China, France, Canada, Iceland, South Korea, Germany, and Italy, as well as across the U.S.
Paulina Velázquez Solís is a multimedia artist and curator from Mexico and Costa Rica. She works with installation, sound, sculpture, drawing, animation/video, and media performance. She is interested in the body and the biological and natural world in interaction with the cultural and social notions of normalcy and experiences as a multinational individual. Her work has been shown in places like Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo and TEOR/éTica in Costa Rica; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; Ex Teresa Arte Actual in México City; Casa de las Americas in La Havana, Cuba; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Panamá City; Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC; and Root Division and The Lab in San Francisco.
Jennifer Lynn Stoever is Associate Professor of English at Binghamton University, founding Editor-in-Chief of Sounding Out!, and author of The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (NYU Press, 2016). Her research has been supported by the Whiting Foundation, the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Thank you to Travis Johns for the recording and mixing.
—
REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:
SO! Podcast #48: Languages of Exile
SO! Podcast #53: H. Cecilia Suhr’s “From Ancient Soul to Ether”
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD: SO! Podcast #82: Living Sounds: Rhythms of Belonging
SUBSCRIBE TO THE SERIES VIA APPLE PODCASTS
FOR TRANSCRIPT: ACCESS EPISODE THROUGH APPLE PODCASTS , locate the episode and click on the three dots to the far right. Click on “view transcript.”
It’s been a minute for the SO! podcast but we are glad to be back–however intermittently–with a podcast episode that shares a discussion between women sound studies artists and scholars. The panel “Living Sounds: Rhythms of Belonging,” was held on September 19 at 6-7pm EDT at The Soil Factory arts space in Ithaca, New York. Moderator Jennifer Lynn Stoever, sound studies scholar and our Ed. in Chief, talks with four women sound artists about their praxis: Marlo de Lara, Bonnie Han Jones, Sarah Nance and Paulina Velazquez Solis.
Marlo De Lara (they/siya) obtained a PhD in Cultural Studies (University of Leeds) and an MA in Psychosocial Studies from the Centre of Psychoanalytic Studies at Essex. Their creative practice works within the realms of sound performance, visual distraction, and film. Using found objects, installation, and various forms of amplification, environments/structures use sound to impart meaning and affect for the participant. As the child of Philippine migrants, De Lara’s unabashed feminist sociopolitical practice/research editorializes on contemporary global conditions. As an arts facilitator, using their critiques of the nonprofit industrial complex and institutional learning, De Lara aims to transgress and subvert traditional hierarchical ways of managing contemporary art spaces. In the role of community care, Marlo uses mutual aid and emergent strategies in combination with decolonial ways of nourishing equity, diversity, and inclusion practices to ensure safety and access for all. Marlo is a Certified Deep Listening Facilitator and shaping a career as Counsellor/Coach/Guide in therapeutic healing methods informed by Western psychotherapeutic/psychological, healing arts, expressive therapies, and various indigenous practices, most specifically sikolohiyang pilipino.
Bonnie Han Jones is a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and performer working with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and is currently a member of the High Zero Festival collective. In 2010, along with Suzanne Thorpe she co-founded TECHNE, an organization that develops anti-racist, feminist workshops that center on technology-focused art making, improvisation, and community collaboration. She has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work extensively at institutions in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Bonnie was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. Born in South Korea, she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, spent her formative years in Baltimore, Maryland and Providence RI and currently resides in Chicago, IL.
Sarah Nance is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the intersections of geologic processes and human experience in archived, constructed, and speculative landscapes. Her work has been performed and exhibited widely, at venues in China, France, Canada, Iceland, South Korea, Germany, and Italy, as well as across the U.S.
Paulina Velázquez Solís is a multimedia artist and curator from Mexico and Costa Rica. She works with installation, sound, sculpture, drawing, animation/video, and media performance. She is interested in the body and the biological and natural world in interaction with the cultural and social notions of normalcy and experiences as a multinational individual. Her work has been shown in places like Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo and TEOR/éTica in Costa Rica; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; Ex Teresa Arte Actual in México City; Casa de las Americas in La Havana, Cuba; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Panamá City; Museum of the Americas, Washington, DC; and Root Division and The Lab in San Francisco.
Jennifer Lynn Stoever is Associate Professor of English at Binghamton University, founding Editor-in-Chief of Sounding Out!, and author of The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (NYU Press, 2016). Her research has been supported by the Whiting Foundation, the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Thank you to Travis Johns for the recording and mixing.
—
REWIND! . . .If you liked this post, you may also dig:
SO! Podcast #48: Languages of Exile
SO! Podcast #53: H. Cecilia Suhr’s “From Ancient Soul to Ether”
Marginalia is a free and open-source, collaborative article annotation and publishing platform. Annotations have historically served as a method of assistance for reading dense and difficult texts and have existed in the margins of the “original” or “main” text. While the concept of marginalia includes not just annotations, but drawings, critiques, illuminations, scribbles and the like.
We think of margins as a space of not often recognized knowledge creation, that is just as important, if not more so than the main body of text. This platform foregrounds non-linear, messy, entangled knowledge making. It is for those seeking online space for communal learning, wild experiments in reading and writing, and intervening into the text to make room for themselves in it.
This project is being developed for the use of collectives and initiatives, research groups, reading clubs, collective learning endeavors and students that need open-source free tools for collaborative work or hybrid working environments. We’ve built Marginalia trying to embrace principles related to feminist methodology, knowledge-sharing, sustainability, accessibility.
If you’d like to get in contact with us, send us an email at hello@margi-nalia.site
This project is supported by Creative Industries Fund NL.
We are excited to share all of the episodes of Thinking Face Emoji, a podcast miniseries by The Hmm, in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures, and supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.
In this inaugural episode of Thinking Face Emoji, Margarita Osipian and Sjef van Beers from The Hmm, are joined by Sam Cummins, of Nymphet Alumni, to discuss the girlboss. Overly familiar with the many critiques this online stereotype has gotten over the years, we shift our focus to look at the cultural and aesthetic environment that led to the girlboss, her inception, and the impact she made on our (online) culture today.
Mentioned in this episode:
What is a Girlboss? | Netflix
Ban Bossy — I’m Not Bossy. I’m the Boss.
Beyoncé at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards
That Feeling You Recognize? Obamacore.
What Do Students at Elite Colleges Really Want?
Nymphet Alumni Ep. 113: Information Age Grindset w/ Ezra Marcus
All-woman Blue Origin crew floats in space
In Space, No One Can Hear You Girlboss
Find Sam and Nymphet Alumni at:
Instagram
Nymphet Alumni
Instagram – Nymphet Alumni
In this episode Salome Berdzenishvili, from the Institute of Network Cultures, and Sjef van Beers, from The Hmm, talk to Dr. Daniël de Zeeuw, from the University of Amsterdam’s department of Mediastudies, about how terms originally associated with incel and femcel communities seem to have reached the mainstream.
Mentioned in this episode:
“‘Teh Internet is Serious Business’: On the Deep Vernacular Web Imaginary and its Discontents”
Based and confused: Tracing the political connotations of a memetic phrase across the web
Find Daniël at:
Bluesky
uva.nl
In the third episode of Thinking Face Emoji, Margarita Osipian from The Hmm and researcher Mita Medri, are joined by writer and cultural commentator Ana Sumbo, to discuss the online phenomenon of looksmaxxing. Hunter vs prey eyes, the canthal tilt, siren vs. doe eyes, angel vs witch skull, or a FYP filled with Gigachad jawlines. This is the landscape, or some might say cesspool, of looksmaxxing. With its incel-verse undertones and radical history, we discuss whether this phenomenon is just another glow-up trend or is it signaling a resurgence in eugenics?
Mentioned in this episode:
“men used to go to war” | TikTok clip from Kareem Shami
The Slow Burn Back to Eugenics by Ana Sumbo
The Digital Legacy of Eugenics project by Lila Brustad
Rage against the machine: how incel culture went mainstream in 2023 by Günseli Yalcinkaya
Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future by Anita Chan
I tried all of the most popular looksmaxxing glowup tips! | TikTok clip from Michael Hoover
Deathnics thread on looksmax.org
Yassified Eugenics by Abha Ahad
POV: How the SS officers pulled up to the Nuremberg trials | TikTok clip from Kareem Shafti
Are you the hunter or the hunted? | Instagram video from @rawreturned
Lard of estrogen | Instagram video from @nickfraserrrrr
Find Ana at:
Substack
In this episode, Maja Mikulska from The Hmm and Anielek Niemyjski from the Institute of Network Cultures are joined by Maya B. Kronic – co-author of Cute Accelerationism and Head of Research and Development at Urbanomic – to discuss all things Sock. From Bushwick enbies to memes and fancy foot cover-ups, the conversation focuses on what it means to explore gender nonconformity, both online and offline.
Mentioned in the episode:
Having roommates in Bushwick be like
Logged On podcast episode with Maya
NB names be like
Demi Lovato being nonbinary for less than a year
Gender adventure TikToker
Enby barista trend
Socks in queer experience
Zettay Ryouiki
Find Maya at:
readthis.wtf
In the fifth episode of Thinking Face Emoji, Margarita Osipian from The Hmm and Anielek Niemyjski from the Institute of Network Cultures are joined by writer and independent researcher Salome Berdzenishvili, to discuss the online aesthetic of the post-Soviet sad girl. Together they dissect the sad girl industrial complex to explore how this aesthetic emerged, and how it shapes and reflects the visual and emotional archives of Soviet and post-Soviet eras.
Mentioned in this episode:
Лана Дель Рей – Летняя Печалька – Lana del Ray Summertime Sadness with voiceover
Girl Online – Symposihmm playback
Preliminary Materials For a Theory of the Young-Girl by Tiqqun
Becoming and Unbecoming – Eastern European Girlhood Online by Salome Berdzenishvili
Moy Marmeladny trend on TikTok
#Slavic Core – TikTok
Clean girl in a post soviet country TikTok by Sh.Sayadze
How to Become as Intimidating Yet Visually Striking as Brutalist Architecture by Sumayya Bisseret Martinez
Mental health walk in Eastern Europe TikTok trend
Eastern European girlhood on Instagram, bikini in puddles compilation
Find Salome at: networkcultures.org/blog/author/salome/
In the sixth and last episode of the season we delve into the future of girlhood in online culture. Since 2023, the so-called “year of the girl” with trends like girl math, girl dinner, and the Barbie movie’s influence, girlhood has become a widely discussed cultural and theoretical concept. We’ve learned that the figure of the girl has evolved into a digital strategy rather than a fixed identity, one that is shaped by algorithms, aesthetics, and performance. Together with one of the initiators of @everyoneisagirl Ester Freider, Lilian Stolk from The Hmm and Mela Miekus from the Institute of Network Cultures explore how femininity is performed online and the end of identity.
Mentioned in this episode:
Pinkydoll’s NPC TikTok live
“Everyone is a Girl” by Alex Quicho
@everyoneisagirl on Instagram
Ghosted 1996 on Instagram
Sighswoon on Instagram
“Networks and Their Discontents“ by William Kherbek referenced in “I’m Like a Pdf But a Girl“ by Ester Freider
“Side-eyeing the cyberbaroque“ by Ester Freider
“Hallucinating sense in the era of infinity-content“ by Carolina Busta
Princess Substack highlights
Find Ester at: Instagram Linktree
Thinking Face Emoji is a podcast by The Hmm, in collaboration with The Institute of Network Cultures, and financially supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL.
Jingle and sound design by Jochem van der Hoek.
Editing by Salome Berdzenishvili.
Cover art by Aspirin.
By Jonathan Mallinson
Within the space of just five days in June this year, William Moorcroft was twice in the news. One item recorded the sale at auction (for a record-breaking price) of a particularly rare example of his ceramic art. The other reported the rescue from liquidation and the return to family ownership of his pottery works in Burslem.
The vase, in double gourd form, is decorated with carp, swimming through reeds in an eye-catching palette of red and ochre. The object is indeed rare; only three others, similar but not identical, are known to exist. Its significance, though, derives not just from its rarity or its current market value, but from the circumstances of its creation.
It dates to 1914, the year following Moorcroft’s move to his own works from J Macintyre & Co, where he had been employed as Head of Ornamental Pottery since 1897. This was a turning point in his career, the outcome of increasingly tense relations with the firm’s General Manager which had resulted in the closure of his department. It was a moment of liberation, the opportunity to create pottery entirely on his own terms, with the small devoted team of co-workers (as he called them) which followed him from Macintyre’s. Designed and built in less than six months of intense activity, these new works were the mark of his determination and self-belief, clearly seconded by Liberty’s who co-funded the project.
What more appropriate motif to capture the import of this moment than that of the carp, symbol of perseverance and courage, whose arduous journey up the Yellow River to a famed waterfall cascading down from the Dragon’s Gate was the stuff of Chinese legend. Any carp strong or brave enough to make a final leap over the waterfall would be transformed into a dragon, but such an exploit was rare.
Moorcroft’s vase recalls high points in his earlier career. The carp motif featured in a limited series of vessels made at the turn of the century, when his innovative Florian ware was generating exceptional critical acclaim; and its distinctively rich palette characterised some of his last (and most successful) designs at Macintyre’s. But there is nothing celebratory about this pot, for all that Moorcroft’s move to Burslem represented a remarkable triumph over adversity. It depicts carp, after all, not a dragon; it suggests a journey, not a parade. And this is not surprising for an artist who already, in his professional and personal life, had experienced multiple challenges and setbacks. And more were to come. His first year at Burslem was beset by practical problems of different kinds; and others, global and uncontrollable, were on the horizon, extending unforeseeably far into the future. But for Moorcroft, challenge was creative, adversity was there to be overcome. As he wrote to his daughter on 17 October 1930, just short of a year after the Wall Street crash: ‘I feel that difficult times are with us, to force the best out of us. We do better work when we are faced with something to fight against’. This pot is characteristic of that creative response, a profession of faith, a statement of intent to turn adversity into art.
It is an exceptional vase in many ways, but it offers, too, a broader insight into Moorcroft’s vocation as a potter. Evidently not made for commercial production, this evocative object was, nevertheless, sold (or gifted), reputedly acquired by its first owner as a wedding present in the year it was made. And what is true of this piece is true of his art as a whole. Moorcroft’s pots were clearly made for sale, but they were not conceived as (merely) commercial commodities. His enduring ambition was to express in clay his personal response to the world about him, his sense of beauty, and to share it with others. Writing to his daughter on 20 November 1930, he put this into words: ‘ I feel there is a need for interesting, individual things. […] We want pleasant things to live with. Not extreme, not fashionable, but things that will be the outcome of careful thought, things built with the spirit of love in every part of them’. And such objects were not confined to those with the highest monetary value. One hundred years before this record-breaking sale, the Pottery Gazette of September 1925 reported that the then exceptional sum of £100 had been offered for ‘a single piece’ of Moorcroft’s pottery, displayed at the British Empire Exhibition the year before. But this was just half the story of the potter’s appeal, as the critic observed: ‘we are just as much comforted by the thought that even a simple and tolerably inexpensive piece of Moorcroft ware is regarded by thousands of people as a priceless possession’.
That Moorcroft’s work is still highly valued today tells us something about the capacity of his very personal art to reach out across time, but also, more generally, of the continued need for ‘interesting, individual things’. The post-pandemic world of 1930, in the grip of escalating political tension and economic uncertainty, is not without similarities with our own. How fitting, then, that a vase which so powerfully exemplified Moorcroft’s guiding principles at the birth of his new works, should surface, however briefly, in the same week that this same factory, which had long continued to make pottery to the designs of his son, Walter, before passing out of family hands, had been bought by William’s grandson. An encouragement like no other at the start of this new journey to the Dragon’s Gate.
'William Moorcroft, Potter: Individuality by Design' by Jonathan Mallinson is an Open Access title available to read and download for free or to purchase in all available print and ebook formats at the link below.
