The Whiteness of Echo: the always already colonial in archaeoacoustics

In this talk I will play and talk through sounds collected from my fieldwork observing the field of acoustic archaeology, or archaeoacoustics. I propose understanding the figure of echo as a material-semiotic figuration of sonic knowledge production, which analysis thereof can help us understand contemporary assumptions about sound and sonic matter. I aim to outline how the echo is shaped by coloniality, whiteness and cisheteropatriarchy and on the basis of its limitations, I seek to re-conceptualise echo as a feminist and decolonial sonic figuration.

ÆSR Public Lecture - The lecture is part of the ÆSR Lab – Applied/Experimental Sound Research Laboratory. ÆSR Lab is a cooperation project of the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Centre Focus Research) and the Artistic Research Center (ARC), the Institute for Composition, Electroacoustics and Tonmeister:innen-Ausbildung (IKE) of the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. ÆSR Lab is funded by the BMBWF and in co-operation with the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) of the EU.