Death Cities: Hearing Atmospheric and Spatial Violence - Talk by Professor Gascia Ouzounian

Ruskin School of Art (128 Bullingdon Rd, OX4 1QP, Oxford)

Thursday 13 February 2025, 5-6.30 pm

Booking required: https://bit.ly/Ruskin_ContArtTalks

This talk explores atmospheric violence—violence that is pervasive, diffuse, immanent, ‘in the air’—and spatial violence, what Herscher and Siddiqi (2014) have described as ‘the manifold forms of harm mediated through built environments,’ focusing on the role of sound and listening in violence ‘becoming atmospheric’ in cities (Peterson 2021). It references earwitness testimonies, citizen journalism, and clandestine investigations pertaining to the 51-Day War in Gaza in 2014 and contemporary Beirut in exploring how cities become sites of atmospheric and spatial violence, and how this violence is heard by those who are subjected to it. How is the listening subject reconfigured when their primary apprehension of the crumbling world around them is through sensing vibrations, including through the coupling of their body with the violent shaking of buildings? How do sound and listening participate in the spatial violence that characterizes urbicide? And what strategies have artists and activists developed to make audible forms of atmospheric violence that otherwise go undetected and unnoticed today?

Image: The aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on October 9, 2023, leaving widespread destruction in the Rimal area.

Copyright: Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) in contract with APAimages, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons