Urban Audio-Feminism

Workshop with Monika Żyła

Active listening session and sound walk

What’s the sound of patriarchy in the urban space?  What would be the female response to a masculine-dominated sonosphere? In this workshop, sound will guide our understanding of urban space and social relations taking place in this space through active listening. It will also provide a point of departure to imagine possible social utopias where diversity, inclusion, respect, and acceptance nurture social interactions. In an audio walk followed by a group reflection, we are going to actively engage with our urban sonic environment and imagine and reimagine it as a sphere of possible female emancipation, liberation, and speculation. The urban soundscape will be considered as a space where women and female-identified people could regain their agency on their own, equal terms.

Monika Żyła is a musicologist, cultural theorist, author, artistic director and pianist. She is working on her Ph.D. dissertation “Contemporary Music and Its Others: Female Composers, Gender Politics and Constructions of National Identity at the Warsaw Autumn Festival” (working title) in the Department of Musicology and Dance Studies at the University of Salzburg. She holds workshops and lectures on gender issues in contemporary music and sound art both in academic and festival contexts. She has published articles in Glissando, Ruch Muzyczny, Dwutygodnik, Odra, Krytyka Polityczna, Circuit-Musiques Contemporaines, and Contemporary Music Review. Her peer-reviewed article “The Need for Otherness: Hispanic Music at ‘Warsaw Autumn’” was published recently in Contemporary Music Review, Volume 38 Issue 1-2.

The workshop will take place outside in all weather, so please bring your own weatherproof, warm clothing & tick repellent!

Date: Tuesday, September 14th, 2021
Time: 4-6 p.m.
Location: Workshop will take place in public space. (Meeting point at the festival site: protagon e.V., Orber Str. 57, 60386 Frankfurt am Main).
Fee: 30€
Participants: 20 persons
Language: German
Please bring: own weatherproof, warm clothing & tick protection