Preemptive Listening Day One: Aura Satz

Part of a larger research project that takes the siren as a prompt for exploring the politics of listening and emergency, Preemptive Listening (2024) brings together musicians, activists and thinkers to propose alternatives modes of sounding and recalibrating the signal. The film weaves together original music by Mazen Kerbaj, Raven Chacon, Evelyn Glennie, David Toop, Elaine Mitchener, Camille Norment, Laurie Spiegel, Maja S.K. Ratkje, Anton Lukoszevieze, BJ Nilsen, Ilpo Väisänen, Rhodri Davies, FUJI|||||||||||TA, Sarah Davachi, Christina Kubisch, Moor Mother, Horomona Horo, Debit, and Kode9, alongside the voices of Khalid Abdalla, Daphne Carr, Asantewaa Boykin, Niki jones, Erin Matariki Carr, and Arturo Escobar.

Shot using a mix of 16mm film and drone cameras, Preemptive Listening is driven by its soundtrack which activates images of sirens and emergency systems across the world, from Fukushima, Chile, the Netherlands, the US, to Israel and Palestine. Prompting a range of visual and sonic associations, the film considers the siren as an emblematic sound of resistance, oppression and extinction; as a cipher of trauma; as a mouthpiece for sonic governance and crisis management; and as marker of territorial control.

Aura Satz

Aura Satz is a London-based artist based who works with film, sound, performance and sculpture. Her works explore a distributed, expanded and shared notion of voice, and are made in conversation, using dialogue as both method and subject matter. Satz has made several film portraits of listening and compositional practices as well as works centred on sound technology and unusual notation systems. ‘Preemptive Listening’ is her first feature film, with support from artist residencies at Walker Arts Centre and EMPAC, funded by an AHRC fellowship hosted at the Royal College of Art.

This event will be BSL interpreted.

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