Field research with Zouheir Atbane in Tafraout, June 2013 (photo: Gilles Aubry).

Listen That’s Us!

Book Chapter

In 1959, the American writer Paul Bowles recorded an ahwash music performance in the Moroccan Berber town Tafraout. In 2013, Gilles Aubry initiated a research on the reception of these recordings in today’s Morocco, organizing listening sessions by inviting local musicians. Listeners from Tafraout offer comments on the «Paul Bowles Moroccan Music Collection».

The listening sessions with local musicians revealed a number of power asymmetries in Bowles’s recording practices, correlating with the social structures of colonialism in Morocco. Colonial continuities also surface in the celebration of «past traditions». It seems that current tensions in the field of cultural politics still echo power imbalances and erasure effects from the past. Gilles Aubry discusses Bowles’ project within the broader field of Western avant-garde music and «white aurality», where sound aesthetic concerns often go together with the invisibilization of the white, masculine, and Eurocentric standpoint.

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This abstract refers to the chapter «Listen, That’s Us! Responses from Tafraout to the Paul Bowles Moroccan Music Collection (1959)» (pages 87–124) of the book «Sawt, Bodies, Species: Sonic Pluralism in Morocco» by Gilles Aubry, published by adocs in 2023. This contribution is part of the Norient Online Special Sawt, Bodies, Species, a joint publication with adocs, extending the physical book into a digital publication with additional video and audio materials. The Open Access publication of this book was made possible with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Biography

Gilles Aubry is an artist, musician, and researcher based in Lausanne and Berlin. He creates installations, films, performances, and radio pieces which explore the cultural, ecological and affective dimensions of sound and listening. He has an MA in sonic arts from the Berlin University of the Arts (UDK) and recently completed a doctoral thesis on sound, aurality, and ecological voices in Morocco. His works have been presented in numerous international festivals and art institutions, including the Marrakech Biennale (2014), documenta_14 in Kassel (2017), and Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid (2020). Follow him on Instagram, and on his Website.

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Gilles Aubry & Zouheir Atbane: «And Who Sees the Mystery» (Video Essay)

Published on May 04, 2023

Last updated on April 03, 2024

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Special

Sawt, Bodies, Species

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Seaweed collectors in Sidi Bouzid, Morocco, August 2018 (photo: Gilles Aubry).

Seaweed, Pollution, and the Voice of the Sea

Book Chapter

by Gilles Aubry

This chapter deepens Gilles Aubry’s engagement with ecological sound through an examination of the voice of the sea on the Atlantic coast of Morocco. He joins biologist Younes Boundir in his scientific research on seaweed, which provides an entry point into industrial extractivism and ecological justice in Morocco. Listening to the voice of the sea opens a discussion on socio-economic and environmental implications of neoliberal management of «natural resources».

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Younes Boundir, born 1993 in Marrakesh, graduated in biological science at Marrakesh Cadi Ayyad University in 2015. Specialized in marine biology, psychology, and ecology, his PhD thesis examined the impact of anthropic pollution on macro-algae on the Moroccan Atlantic coast. He has published several papers on this topic in international peer-reviewed scientific journals. Follow him on Instagram.

This abstract refers to the chapter «Atlantic Ragagar: Seaweed, Pollution, and the Voice of the Sea» (pages 235–75) of the book «Sawt, Bodies, Species: Sonic Pluralism in Morocco» by Gilles Aubry, published by adocs in 2023. This contribution is part of the Norient Online Special Sawt, Bodies, Species, a joint publication with adocs, extending the physical book into a digital publication with additional video and audio materials. The Open Access publication of this book was made possible with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Biography

Gilles Aubry is an artist, musician, and researcher based in Lausanne and Berlin. He creates installations, films, performances, and radio pieces which explore the cultural, ecological and affective dimensions of sound and listening. He has an MA in sonic arts from the Berlin University of the Arts (UDK) and recently completed a doctoral thesis on sound, aurality, and ecological voices in Morocco. His works have been presented in numerous international festivals and art institutions, including the Marrakech Biennale (2014), documenta_14 in Kassel (2017), and Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid (2020). Follow him on Instagram, and on his Website.

Links

Gilles Aubry: «Atlantic Ragagar» (Experimental Film)

Gilles Aubry: «The Binding Effect» (Video Essay)

Published on May 04, 2023

Last updated on April 03, 2024

Topics

Ecology

Listening

Nature

Voice

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Sawt, Bodies, Species

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Music session with Ali Faiq and rwais musicians in Bigra, Morocco, 2018 (photo: Gilles Aubry).

Between Colonial and Ethical Noise

Book Chapter

by Gilles Aubry

This chapter of Gilles Aubry’s book Sawt, Bodies, Species offers a short history of sound technology and music industry in Morocco since its introduction by European record companies in the early 20^th century. Proposing an intellectual engagement with the colonial sound archive and its metadata, together with the Agadiri singer Ali Faiq, Gilles Aubry initiated close listening sessions to early Moroccan rwais music recorded by the French company Pathé.

Unlike the white Western understanding of modern sound as a practice that reproduces, isolates, and idealizes sound, Gilles Aubry suggests that rwais «sound» is characterized by mediation, distributed embodiment, and collective ownership, as well as by a particularly situated ethical noise. Beyond the re-appropriation of cultural artifacts, the concept of «sonic pluralism» (developed in the introduction of the book) allows for the re-purposing of archival knowledge and technology.

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This abstract refers to the chapter «Between Colonial and Ethical Noise: The French Speech Archives, Rwais Sound, and Aural Mediation» (pages 35–86) of the book Sawt, Bodies, Species: Sonic Pluralism in Morocco by Gilles Aubry, published by adocs in 2023. This contribution is part of the Norient Online Special Sawt, Bodies, Species, a joint publication with adocs, extending the physical book into a digital publication with additional video and audio materials. The Open Access publication of this book was made possible with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Biography

Gilles Aubry is an artist, musician, and researcher based in Lausanne and Berlin. He creates installations, films, performances, and radio pieces which explore the cultural, ecological and affective dimensions of sound and listening. He has an MA in sonic arts from the Berlin University of the Arts (UDK) and recently completed a doctoral thesis on sound, aurality, and ecological voices in Morocco. His works have been presented in numerous international festivals and art institutions, including the Marrakech Biennale (2014), documenta_14 in Kassel (2017), and Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid (2020). Follow him on Instagram, and on his Website.

Published on May 04, 2023

Last updated on April 03, 2024

Topics

Special

Sawt, Bodies, Species

print as pdf