The uncanny soundscapes of the Palestinian exile

rethinking technics, memory, and sound

Özgün Eylül İşcen

pp. 199-216

in: Milena Droumeva, Randolph Jordan (eds), Sound, media, ecology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

This chapter investigates the question of technics and memory in the context of mediated soundscapes of exile by bringing the field of soundscape studies into a dialogue with the work of Bernard Stiegler. The role of technologically mediated memory is underlined while offering a critique of the industrialization of memory under the dominance of mass, standardized media. The video works of Mona Hatoum and Basma Alsharif, however, encourage an alternative artistic style and political desire by intervening into the already-there of history that has been destroyed or repressed. Ultimately, this chapter complicates acoustic ecology's prescriptive emphasis on balanced "ecology" and suggests that the practice of soundscape composition provides a template for grasping how media practice is being used to articulate the subjectivity of global patterns of displacement.

Cited authors

Stiegler Bernard