Listening to Space Diffractively: the Hydrosonic (sub-)Arctic

This presentation examines the entanglements of socio-economic infrastructures and environmental transformations in the subarctic city of Tromsø through sound and listening. The analysis draws on three collective soundwalking and soundsitting experiences developed and guided by local participants, recordings made during and after these walks and sittings, subsequent focus group interviews, and a sound installation at the harbour. Building on Karen Barad’s notion of diffractive reading (2007), I propose a diffractive listening approach as a way of attending to urban and environmental relations that are difficult to apprehend through visual and anthropocentric modes of inquiry alone.

Although the empirical work focuses on a relatively small coastal area, diffractive listening makes perceptible the ‘wickedness’ of the entanglements and intersections of colonialism, extractivism, industrialisation, gendered and racialised relations, and multispecies coexistence that are shaped by uneven power dynamics. Listening with Arctic waters in this way offers situated and embodied ways of engaging with environmental transformations and the uneven relations through which they occur. At the same time, our research suggests that sound and listening can open other ways of imagining futures for (sub-)Arctic spaces that are grounded in attunement (Kanngieser and Todd 2020), attention (Weil 1947/2002), and repair (Macharia et al. 2023).

The presentation draws on research carried out within the framework of the Arctic Auditories – Hydrospheres in the High North (RCN 325506) project

Speaker
Dr Katrin Losleben’s research lies at the intersection of musicology, literature, media studies, and feminist posthumanist inquiry. She holds a PhD from the University of Music and Dance Cologne and is currently affiliated with the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, where she serves as a Professor of Feminist Research. She is co-editor of the European Journal of Musicology and has authored and edited six books to date.

As principal investigator of Arctic Auditories – Hydrospheres in the High North (RCN 2021-2026), Katrin leads research on sound and listening in (sub-)Arctic environments. This international project employs artistic and feminist research methodologies to explore how sound and listening shape knowledge and understanding, particularly within the unique contexts of (sub-)Arctic urban and semi-urban spaces.

Chair

Liza Griffin