Brandon LaBelle – författare

This book documents Lerin/Hystad s meetings with more than a hundred different plants through sketches, text, and music. The otherness of the non-human is by nature inexpugnable. The baseline of our sharing the planet with them, at this point in its evolutional history, entails making kin while negotiating distance. In line with the mounting environmental concerns, artists began to nurture the desire to present less mediated encounters with nature. Central to Lerin/Hystad s modus operandi is a principle of ecological interconnectedness that manifests the undeniable presence of more than human worlds. The main objective has been that of dismantling the anthropocentric view that humans are the most perfect and intelligent species on this planet while inviting us to reconsider non-human intelligences and complexities as valuable diversity. Lerin connects sensors to the plants that Hystad has carefully drawn in their environment. The sensors register electrical currents that plants produce through their biological rhythms and that form a communicational network with animals, bacteria, and fungi.

Genom teckning, text och musik, samlar den här boken Lerin/Hystads möten med över hundra olika växter. Det icke-mänskliga är, till sin natur, ofrånkomligen annorlunda oss. För att vi ska kunna samexistera på jorden krävs det därför, vid denna punkt i evolutionshistorien, att vi knyter an till det främmande samtidigt som vi också aktivt förhåller oss till dess ofrånkomliga annanhet. I takt med att miljöhoten har ökat har också konstnärerna uttryckt en ökad vilja att genom konsten möta naturen direkt. Lerin/Hystads modus operandi vilar på den ekologiska sammankopplingens princip och förutsätter att det existerar fler världar än människans. Viktigast av allt har varit att nedmontera den antropocentriska bilden av människan som planetens intelligentaste och mest fulländade varelse för att i stället lyfta fram det icke-mänskligas många komplexa intelligenser som delar av en rik mångfald. Lerin kopplar sensorer till de växter som Hystad så noggrant har tecknat i det vilda. Dessa sensorer känner sedan av alla de elektriska impulser som orsakas av växternas egen biologiska rytm och som bildar kommunikationsnätverk tillsammans med djuren, bakterierna och svamparna.

A timely exploration of whether sound and listening can be the basis of political change.

In a world dominated by the visual, could contemporary resistances be auditory? This timely and important book from Goldsmiths Press highlights sound''s invisible, disruptive, and affective qualities and asks whether the unseen nature of sound can support a political transformation. In Sonic Agency, Brandon LaBellesets out to engage contemporary social and political crises by way of sonic thought and imagination. He divides sound''s functions into four figures of resistance—the invisible, the overheard, the itinerant, and the weak—and argues for their role in creating alternative “unlikely publics” in which to foster mutuality and dissent. He highlights existing sonic cultures and social initiatives that utilize or deploy sound and listening to address conflict, and points to their work as models for a wider movement. He considers issues of disappearance and hidden culture, nonviolence and noise, creole poetics, and networked life, aiming to unsettle traditional notions of the “space of appearance” as the condition for political action and survival.

By examining the experience of listening and being heard, LaBelle illuminates a path from the fringes toward hope, citizenship, and vibrancy. In a current climate that has left many feeling they have lost their voices, it may be sound itself that restores it to them.