Programme
(TBA)
Dates: 26-28 August 2025
Venue: Moni Paou, South Pelio
Jump and Wave: Sound, Movement, and the Break from the Caribbean Archipelago
Jessica Swanston Baker
Considering “waves” as an invitation to think with music and sound’s capacity to move us, to orchestrate retreats and returns, we engage with waves and sound through the musical practices of the Caribbean region. In the context of hurricanes and other forms of ecological destruction, we will listen to (and with) post-hurricane riddims—sonic responses to waves as sources of destruction— such as Puerto Rican reggaeton and Haitian Raboday. Understanding the Caribbean archipelago as a place that invites creative misinterpretations as a method, we will explore how fast-paced “jump and wave” carnival music such as soca and wylers draws our attention to the body as a site of cyclical and powerful oceanic movement. Another crucial aspect of a wave’s mobility is the break—the moment when a wave’s momentum and amplitude become so great that the crest overturns. This phenomenon mirrors a key element of Caribbean musicality: the energy of sound, dance, and revelry—jouissance—that culminates in a sonic break as the energetic apex of regional genres. By tracing these cycles of creation, rupture, and renewal, this presentation explores how Caribbean musical practices harness the ebb and flow of waves—both literal and sonic—to reimagine and re-sound creative possibility.
Attuning to the waves
Jean-Paul Thibaud
Waves act as a powerful resonator of our attentions and affects. What about the sonic existence of waves? On a provisional basis, we can distinguish three ways of tuning in to the sounds of waves.
The first mode involves molecular perception. We listen to the waves as close as possible to their foam. It is a matter of paying attention to the small perceptions made up of an infinite number of microscopic bubbles that explode on the surface of the water. This is the level of the infra-ordinary, of a barely audible world, at the threshold of the perceptible.
The second mode involves rhythmic perception. We listen to the waves breaking regularly on the beach. The uninterrupted movement of the waves and the constant alternation of ebb and flow produce a rocking effect. This is the level of the ordinary, everyday world to which we are accustomed and familiar with.
The third mode involves a cosmic perception. We listen to the waves unfold in the immensity and incommensurability of the sea. It is as if the boundaries between the ego and the world were disappearing, as if it were possible to approach a sense of eternity. This is the level of the extraordinary, of a borderline experience that induces an oceanic feeling.
Mediterranean Spectra
Gavin Williams
This session explores waves as a fold within scientific modernity, as both the object of and means to knowledge. We will consider waves as sites of relentless epistemic conversion, which at once facilitate the amassing of data and the creation of sensory worlds. Our focus will be upon the spectrogram as technique of for representing sound, light and radio waves across chemistry, astronomy, and music studies, and as a powerful means to environmental knowledge and environmental harm. A way of knowing waves, spectrograms are at once a means of making worlds: we will consider the world-sound-pictures they have generated over time and continue to produce across diverse fields of fossil fuel extraction, acoustic ecology, and climatology. We will examine wave-enabled themes of cosmology and planetarity in the context of the Mediterranean, inquiring after the worlds sounded and imaged from this region, together with how the Mediterranean looks and sounds from outer space. Participants will each receive a spectrographic gift in advance of the seminar: a picture, sound file, or short literary extract, which they will be asked to comment on in the course of the session.