Collaborative aesthetics in global sound art

Situation

A new generation of artists has emerged in the Global South in recent years, whose practices demonstrate a direct, critical engagement with sound on a conceptual, material and affective level. Sound artists, experimental musicians and radio producers operate across transnational networks, combining remote digital modes of intervention with offline activ- ities. These initiatives generally attest to a critical attitude by artists towards the forces of globalization, and simultaneously to a creative engagement with new modes of being and acting in the world. This research project engages with global sound art and experimental music by focusing in particular on the role, capacities and aesthetics of collaboration, a concept which re-emerged in the arts in the 1990s. By using dialogical and interventionist strategies, collaborative art forms now extend beyond the aes-thetic object to include wider forms of public engagement. As a result, the role of the artist has moved from the position of a “content producer” to that of an “epistemic partner” and “mediator” in the construction of social knowledge.