Promise No Promises!

“To Move a Conversation,” is the thirteenth episode of the Tale and the Tongue series. It is a very special one — created through an audio recording exchange over months by artist Luz Broto and Sonia Fernández Pan, the host of the Tale and the Tongue podcast series.“Dear Luz, I am writing to you from my room in Berlin, where the first prominent sun of the year amuses itself by appearing and disappearing. A window that opens becomes a door. A door for a breath of fresh air and an internal change of scenery, as in my case. I kept listening to you, this time with the whole conversation in my ears, feeling two sources of light: that of sun and yours. I find it very telling that your name in Spanish means light. Barcelona’s nights have always been bright for me. And there are places where darkness goes beyond night, reaching into long summer days. As I also told you, snow and ice teach you that walking in a straight line can be very dangerous. You can be very clear about a direction to follow, but not about its path. Something like that happens to me with this letter I am writing to you after our spoken letters.We gave it a name: “Moving a Conversation.” And we came up with a little method: to move around spaces that were related to your projects. You in Barcelona, me in Berlin. I think we found a way to go back to the past by walking into the future.Thank you very much my dear, for moving me around, for taking me to so many places elsewhere, for making space for me among your words.”

Systems, the sixth episode of the series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them, is based on a talk by Kara Springer, an artist of Jamaican and Bajan heritage, who was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, and raised in Southern Ontario, Canada. Her work is concerned with care and armature — the underlying structure that holds the flesh of a body in place. Working with photography, sculpture, and site-specific interventions, she surveys forms of structural support within urban infrastructure and systems of institutional and political power. The podcast series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them emerges from the autumn 2022 Master Symposium at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, supported by SüdKulturfonds. The symposium was devoted to artists and thinkers whose work addresses the importance of retelling and reinterpreting stories and myths that regard identity and gender with all their ecological and spectral entanglements intact. TThe podcast series features talks and performances by Jumana Emil Abboud, Bani Abidi, Christian Campbell, Astrit Ismaili, Acaye Kerunen, Tessa Mars, and Kara Springer.

Names, the seventh episode of the series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them, is based on a talk by ugandan artist, storyteller, writer and performer Acaye Kerunen. Acaye Kerunen graduated with a BSc in Mass Communication from the Islamic University in Uganda, Mbale. Her installation works—featuring hand stitching, appending, knotting, and weaving—are often made with local craftswomen, querying the line between fine art and craft, and centering methodologies of performance, collaboration, social work, and environmental consciousness. The podcast series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them emerges from the autumn 2022 Master Symposium at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, supported by SüdKulturfonds. The symposium was devoted to artists and thinkers whose work addresses the importance of retelling and reinterpreting stories and myths that regard identity and gender with all their ecological and spectral entanglements intact. The podcast series features talks and performances by Jumana Emil Abboud, Bani Abidi, Christian Campbell, Astrit Ismaili, Acaye Kerunen, Tessa Mars, and Kara Springer.

Kiss, the fourth episode of the series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them, is based on a talk with Christian Campbell, a Trinidadian Bahamian poet, essayist, and cultural critic who studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and received his PhD from Duke University. He is the author of Running the Dusk (2010), which won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. In 2015 Running the Dusk was translated into Spanish and published in Cuba as Correr el Crepúsculo.  The podcast series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them emerges from the autumn 2022 Master Symposium at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, supported by SüdKulturfonds. The symposium was devoted to artists and thinkers whose work addresses the importance of retelling and reinterpreting stories and myths that regard identity and gender with all their ecological and spectral entanglements intact. TThe podcast series features talks and performances by Jumana Emil Abboud, Bani Abidi, Christian Campbell, Astrit Ismaili, Acaye Kerunen, Tessa Mars, and Kara Springer.

Shapes, the fifth episode of the series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them, is based on a talk by artist and performer Astrit Ismaili, born in Kosovo and based in Amsterdam. Their artistic practice features bodies that consist of both imaginary and material realities, using alter egos, body extensions, and wearable music instruments to embody possibilities for becoming. In the act of singing, they explore the role of voice in pop culture and identity politics, asking what it means to make audible a body politic. The podcast series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them emerges from the autumn 2022 Master Symposium at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, supported by SüdKulturfonds. The symposium was devoted to artists and thinkers whose work addresses the importance of retelling and reinterpreting stories and myths that regard identity and gender with all their ecological and spectral entanglements intact. TThe podcast series features talks and performances by Jumana Emil Abboud, Bani Abidi, Christian Campbell, Astrit Ismaili, Acaye Kerunen, Tessa Mars, and Kara Springer.

I Eat Here, the first episode of the series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them, is based on a talk by Haitian artist Tessa Mars. In her painting and performance practice she proposes storytelling and image-making as transformative strategies for survival, resistance, and healing. Her work is centered around Tessalines, her hybrid alter ego based on the leader of the Haitian revolution, Jean-Jacques Dessalines; through her, Mars investigates gender, history, tradition, and narrative. The podcast series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them emerges from the autumn 2022 Master Symposium at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, supported by SüdKulturfonds. The symposium was devoted to artists and thinkers whose work addresses the importance of retelling and reinterpreting stories and myths that regard identity and gender with all their ecological and spectral entanglements intact. TThe podcast series features talks and performances by Jumana Emil Abboud, Bani Abidi, Christian Campbell, Astrit Ismaili, Acaye Kerunen, Tessa Mars, and Kara Springer.

Inheritance, the second episode of the series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them, is based on a talk by Pakistani artist Bani Abidi. Bani Abidi studied painting and printmaking at the National College of Arts, in Lahore, and later attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work addresses, in part, forms of nationalism amid the Indian-Pakistani conflict and the violent legacy of partition. The podcast series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them emerges from the autumn 2022 Master Symposium at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, supported by SüdKulturfonds. The symposium was devoted to artists and thinkers whose work addresses the importance of retelling and reinterpreting stories and myths that regard identity and gender with all their ecological and spectral entanglements intact. TThe podcast series features talks and performances by Jumana Emil Abboud, Bani Abidi, Christian Campbell, Astrit Ismaili, Acaye Kerunen, Tessa Mars, and Kara Springer.

Feathers, the third episode of the series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them, is based on a talk by Palestinian artist Jumana Emil Abboud. Her artistic practice constellates personal stories and collective mythologies, weaving folklore and contemporary tales to navigate themes of memory and dispossession. Employing drawing, video, performance, objects, and text, she surveys place and resilience amidst the topography of Palestine.  The podcast series Songs to Sound Worlds Stories to Rewrite Them emerges from the autumn 2022 Master Symposium at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, supported by SüdKulturfonds. The symposium was devoted to artists and thinkers whose work addresses the importance of retelling and reinterpreting stories and myths that regard identity and gender with all their ecological and spectral entanglements intact. TThe podcast series features talks and performances by Jumana Emil Abboud, Bani Abidi, Christian Campbell, Astrit Ismaili, Acaye Kerunen, Tessa Mars, and Kara Springer.

Holding on to Writing is the fourth episode of the Feminisms in the Caribbean series, which emerges from a conversation with haitian writer, poet and novelist Kettly Mars. Haiti is at the heart of her creation, being a pretext for her relationship with words, her fondness for storytelling and the exploration of the human soul.During her process of writing words often come before ideas. The writer's body becomes a medium for the words, broadening a visceral relationship with language. One of the extraordinary qualities of words is that they cannot always explain themselves: they are content, but they are also form. They are result, but also process. Writing becomes something that happens and not just something writers do. It is a social, intimate, and responsive encounter with language that allows realities to appear within other realities. Writing can be an ethical tool and a compass in moments of disorientation. Moreover, "holding on to writing", an expression of Kettly Mars during our conversation, can make it a way of life.It was not until her thirties that Kettly Mars was able to devote herself fully to writing. Her previous work in administration brought her into contact with another kind of language very different from that of literature: the language of bureaucracy, which is also the language of institutional power. However, she was not so much influenced by this kind of language as by the people she met at the time. Kettly Mars, who has written extensively in French, also writes in Creole. While the two languages are part of her identity, her emotional relationship is not the same with each of them. This relationship also includes the socio-political context of Haiti over the years, during and after the Duvalier dictatorship. Different from history books, which are a collection of historical facts, names and events, novels and fiction add new meanings, add multiples senses and add everyday lives to official history.

"Rhythms of pleasure", episode twelve from from The Tale and the Tongue series—arises from a conversation with choreographer and performer Julia Barrette-Laperrière. Sonia Fernández Pan and Julia Barrette-Laperrière met at a dance class where everyone danced a lot except Sonia, who just watched the others move as she was unable to follow the steps. After that class they started talking about body, pleasure, desire, and music; about electronic dance music as a kind of continuous orgasm with no beginning and no end, closer to the female logics of pleasure, and rock music, by contrast, being more like a male ejaculation with short, hurried songs. Julia talked about her project Falla, where she moves and is moved by a dildo in collaboration with the musician and guitarist Pia Achternkamp. One of the many motives behind it was to consider the guitar as an icon of masculinity, as a sort of sonorous phallus. The way in which gender takes over bodies, pleasure and music is very present in Falla. Here, Julia expresses and moves an alternative female sexuality, freeing it from so many inherited complexes.  This conversation with Julia Barrette-Laperrière “took screen” at the end of October 2022. Sonia Fernández Pan asked her about her archetype of the dangerous woman: for whom or for what can a woman be dangerous? Julia, who now expands this archetype beyond women, understands this dimension in the plural. Being dangerous, as a form of resistance, happens when people come together and ally themselves for a common cause. When Julia explains her personal and social relationship with femininity, her way of being a boy growing up reminds Sonia of many other experiences she came across. Sonia also feels part of the debate about gender pronouns, which simultaneously widen and tighten, and wonders if the rhythms of pleasure can be part of identities, making them strategic and non-essential for us to move in different ways.

“Hi, How Are You?”—episode eleven from The Tale and the Tongue series—arises from a conversation with Era Qena, an enthusiastic storyteller. Era is currently an active member of the social centre Termokiss in Prishtina. She was also part of the team of the European nomadic biennial Manifesta14, which took place between July and October 2022 in the capital of Kosovo, where Era Qena and Sonia Fernández Pan first met. The words “hi, how are you” came up a few times during their conversation, connecting to basic forms of hospitality and mutual care. This seemingly simple question is not always easy to answer. In some texts Sonia read about Kosovo and Prishtina, the notion of hospitality was a constant. Era would refer to an ancient book where hospitality already appears as a set of rules and principles. Far from written or spoken rules, conversations and shared stories are a place where hospitality can also happen.  The conversation for this podcast episode took place in October 2022. Sonia and Era started talking about the difficulty of owning your own place when you are very young. Half of Kosovo’s population is under thirty years old. In addition there are the severe limitations imposed by the EU on Kosovars, who need a visa to travel to other states. This reconnects with imbalances in hospitality: when it happens on the one side but not on the other. The conversation however led also to other directions: to private spaces with public uses, to Termokiss and its influence on other projects and social structures, to taking care of street dogs, to relationships in digital times, to the many lives that appear in one’s own... For the question “how are you” is both a personal and collective one.

Score for Bellapais Abbey, the sixth episode of the series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, is based on the online performance with the same title, by Berlin-based writer Jazmina Figueroa. Score for Bellapais Abbey includes instrumental music and ambient sounds intermingled with spoken word. The podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening emerges from the Spring 2022 Master Symposium, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, in collaboration with Vuslat Foundation.

Repetition, the fifth episode of the series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, is based on a talk by artist Nour Mobarak. In her talk she shares the composition Father Fugue which is composed of conversations with her father, a polyglot who has a 30-second memory, and improvised a capella songs by Nour Mobarak. The podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening emerges from the Spring 2022 Master Symposium, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, in collaboration with Vuslat Foundation.

Subject, the fourth episode of the series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, is based on a talk by Bill Dietz, composer, writer, and co-chair of the Music/Sound Department in Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts in New York. Within the setting of his talk he speaks to the audience unamplified, reflecting on the power of the structural and infrastructural preconditions of audibility in spaces specially designed and equipped for talks and presentation. The podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening emerges from the Spring 2022 Master Symposium, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, in collaboration with Vuslat Foundation.

Hunger, the third episode of the series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, is based on an online conversation by xwélmexw (Stó:lō/Skwah) artist, curator, writer and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University Dylan Robinson with Quinn Latimer. Dylan Robinson’s work spans the areas of Indigenous sound studies and public art, and takes various forms, offering him a space to integrate the sonic, visual, poetic, and material that are inseparable in Stó:lō culture.The podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening emerges from the Spring 2022 Master Symposium, at the Institute Art Gender Nature HGK FHNW, moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer, in collaboration with Vuslat Foundation.