Cosmoaudiciones is an artistic research by Miguel Buenrostro, that traces the relationship between the Berlin Phonogramm Archiv and the musical worlds that traveled in and out of the Atlantic, into the Americas. This investigation departs from what linguist Carlos Lenkersdorf calls Cosmoaudición. If our worldview (Cosmovision) is the way we perceive and interpret the world through a vision, then our Cosmoaudición would be the way we perceive and interpret the world through the act of listening (followed by a Cosmovivencia).

Cosmoaudición therefore, implies a way of experiencing the world from a position of openness, it is also the beginning of a relationship with beings and sound formations through shared horizons. This investigation is motivated by listening to broader worlds of meaning, which have been preserved statically, enclosed in sound archives of ethnographic collections.

In our engagement with the archive, we have acknowledged the violence, the power structures, the politics of archiving and the supremacy that is embedded in ethnographic collections. In parallel we have listened to journeys, exchanges and trajectories of music by situating our practice within a listening ethic. This awareness has opened up a portal which has allowed us to enter into relation to music temporalities that precede notions of linear time.

The selected materials we focused on are digitized tapes of oral history and musicas populares that speak of resistance and re-existence through rhythmic memory and journeys across the seas. In our collective listening sessions, we shared knowledge through conversations and musical improvisation with musicians of the diasporas living in Berlin:

Together we have co-listened to recordings and responded to them with musical improvisation. This has opened a space for thinking about possibilities of restitution beyond the return of material heritage. The outcome of our work is manifesting through a series of compositions, gatherings and actions within the public realm that propose a mode of Listening-Sensing-Receiving music and re-embodying rhythm and memory. Musicians will improvise, compose and expand the archive beyond the institution.

Cosmoaudiciones invites the listeners to reflect on the following questions:


How can we restore time from the extracted worlds of meaning?
How can we ‘sound’ the archive with dignity?
How can we re-socialize that which remains absent from the archive?
How can listening practices move us towards re-futuring musical world?

An artistic project by  Miguel Buenrostro



With the participation of Laura Robles, Kunt Vargas, Sofia Escamilla, Fernando Vigueras, Rolando Hernández.

Design by Guido Flichman


Cosmoaudiciones is a project funded by 99 Questions program, curated by Michael Dieminger.




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Cosmoaudiciones

About the Artist
Miguel Buenrostro

Program

Poster

Participants

Laura Robles
Fernando Vigueras
Rolando Hernandez
Kunt Vargas
Sofia Escamil


Berlin Phonogram Archive

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  © Copyright Miguel Buenrostro 2022, All Rights Reserved