Infrasonica is a digital platform of non-Western cultures. We record, analyze and debate the eeriness of sound and its auras, linked to the world with the audible, the hidden and the sensitive. Infrasonic waves operate at a frequency that is undetectable by human ears even though they are often generated by massive ecological phenomena, such as the movement of tectonic plates or the deep currents of the ocean. Infrasonica aims to be a catalyst for those vibrations.
The platform includes archives of experimental sound and visual artists, as well as theoretical musings on contemporary critical thought. By relying on a borderless network of collaborators, Infrasonica blends essays, conversations and speculative works that encourage critical curatorial and research projects.
- Audible Matter / Wave #6
January 2022 - 6
Audible Matter / Wave #6:
Audible Matter was the title of our second Current, exploring the relationship between sound, the audible and matter. By acknowledging the distance between the human-known and the enigmas of the planetary-unknown we are keen on exploring the possibilities of sound as a place for cognitive and sensitive growth in kinship with the planet. We opened this Current by asking about mediation and translation, about indigenous epistemologies in tandem with the non-human world and about silence and infrasonic registers of sound.
Through the exploration of audible matter, we aim to learn from river’s stones, speculative archeological objects, specters of colonial history, bells transformed into weapons, Mayan textiles, volcanoes, diasporic histories and sonic images. We know that an exploration of the sonic must debunk the cognitive reduction of the audible to Western reason.
By taking distance from the common separation between matter and sound, we propose an understanding of the sonic in tandem with the materiality of the world to which humans comprise merely one part. In this case, we participate in a system of knowledge that, instead of belonging to us, we belong to. We are part of something larger than the sum of our individualities. A forest and its sounds can be understood as a non-human knowledge system, where matter, sound and audibility are not completely separate.
We close Audible Matter with Wave #6, and we cannot express enough gratitude for the trust of the many artists, curators, scholars, thinkers, musicians, activists, weavers and poets who dedicated their time and creative energy to the development of these three Waves. We couldn’t do this without you. We are also grateful to you, our dear listeners, for your time and consistent complicity. We know you are out there, and this is the Us that constitutes our community. We exist because you are reading these lines.