Gender of Sound

Gender of Sound is an artistic research project led by artists Susanna Jablonski and Cara Tolmie. Attempting to find ways to listen together with specific emphasis on how we might perceive sound through a frame of “gender”, the project hosts an ongoing series of listening events that endeavour to find a collective language that can accommodate multiple testimonies of listening.  Through this group reflection we attempt to understand both the social and personal dynamics of how we listen - the political, cultural and affective implications of this and what our listening might expose about the preferences, histories and associations we each hold within our bodies.



Gender of Sound Listening Sets

A Gender of Sound Listening Set typically lasts for two hours, each hour dedicated to an invited guest. Each guest is invited to share 20 minutes of sound within the frame of the project a er which there is 40 minutes for a group reaction on what has just been heard. This is not a Q+A, but rather a space to test out multiple ways of articulating both personal and common experiences in order to widen our conception of what ‘listening’ can be.

We wish to call not only the ears but the full body into account through our group listening, acknowledging the flesh of listening - each sensorial and emotional component that contributes to the production of meaning that we derive from sound. Although the participants cover a wide range of practices and experience - artists, musicians, choreographers, DJs - each of them consider music or sound to be a major infuence in their lives. Previous sessions have teased forms such as the playlist, DJ, performance, lecture, live set and dance perfomance. Variously, these offerings have touched upon such questions as corrupting gendered categorsations of voices in choirs, subjective narratives in response to Latin American remix cultures, the spatial politics of DJing and comprendhing percussion histories through trans-experience.


Listening Set #5: SGFA conference, Tokyo

Sarah Hennies (b.1979, Louisville, US)

Tomoko Hojo (b.1988, Tokyo, JPN)

Listening Set #4: Edition Festival, Stockholm

Sarah Hennies (b.1979, Louisville, US)

Leif Elggren (b.1950, Linköping, SWE)

Listening Set #3: Format Galleri, Malmö

Hanni Kamaly (b.1988, Olso, NO)

Anna Waerum Hansen (b. 1985, Copenhagen, DK)

Listening Set #2: Index, Stockholm

Natalia Rebelo (b.1986, Sao Paolo, BRA)

Alexandra Nilsson (b.1979, Stockholm, SWE)

Listening Set #1: Marabouparken, Stockholm

Pedram Nassoiuri (b. 1990, Stockholm, SWE)

Ellen Söderhult (b.1986, Stockholm, SWE)