Promise No Promises!

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sirens, the second episode of the series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, is based on a talk by artist Aura Satz. She speaks about the sound of sirens and emergency signals and about turning bodies and things into speakers, transducers, antennaes or musical instruments.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.

Sirens, the second episode of the series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, is based on a talk by artist Aura Satz. She speaks about the sound of sirens and emergency signals and about turning bodies and things into speakers, transducers, antennaes or musical instruments.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.

Labour of Listening by Kate Lacey is the first episode of the new podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, based on the 2022 symposium with the same title. In her contribution the author and Professor of Media History and Theory at the University of Sussex talks about the act of listening as a form of labor, about listening out and listening in and what it means to create a space, where speech and listening can take place.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.

Labour of Listening by Kate Lacey is the first episode of the new podcast series Ages of Receivership: On Generous Listening, based on the 2022 symposium with the same title. In her contribution the author and Professor of Media History and Theory at the University of Sussex talks about the act of listening as a form of labor, about listening out and listening in and what it means to create a space, where speech and listening can take place.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.

“To find each other, again,” the tenth episode of the The Tale and the Tongue series, follows a conversation with artist Sylbee Kim. The title stems from a comment Sylbee Kim made, when she refers to the situation of meeting again with people, we haven't seen for quite some time. For her the intensity and fragmentary intimacy of many relationships happen during intense work processes, where she collaborates with many other people who also shape her projects. To find each other is a way to find oneself. Being in relationship allows us to perceive that which remains and that which wanders along the way.Sylbee Kim’s projects radiate a strong interest in life and body consciousness, both social and individual at the same time. Watching Sylbee Kim’s videos, conversations or ideas resonate, that come up recurrently when talking to others: a certain mythological self-expression of capitalism, the confusion between spirituality and religion, the Western tendency to scepticism, the moral superiority of secular and scientific knowledge, socially scripted feelings… In her projects, videos are elements that are part of a larger whole: an environment or an aesthetic ecosystem. Several objects, colors, lights, different intensities of space and sound are equally important in providing an experience for the viewer, who becomes a temporary inhabitant of a temporary setting.The conversation with Sylbee Kim took place in Berlin in July 2022. She refers to Berlin as a locus of affection. Having grown up mainly in Seoul, passing through other places, and having come to Germany during her student years, her place of belonging is not a specific place, but a constant situation of feeling “in between”. Her words on belongingness remind that to feel at home we need certain places but that we can also feel at home being with certain people. Again, finding each other can be a way for finding oneself.