The Ethnography Lab is thrilled to present a series of AAA/CASCA-adjacent events in November:

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 17, 2023

Selective Listening and Wishful Hearing: Shaping Soundscapes in Toronto’s Kensington Market
Farzaneh Hemmasi (farzaneh.hemmasi@utoronto.ca)
Metro Toronto Convention Center, Room 703
No registration required.

As part of the Transmissions/Transitions Sound Installation at AAA:
The Kensington Market Soundscape Study is a community-engaged team ethnographic research project that uses qualitative and arts-based research to understand how residents and business owners in this famously diverse Toronto neighborhood attempt to shape their local auditory environment. Loud conversations (friendly and unfriendly); buskers strumming acoustic guitars; DJs playing hours long electronic music sets; and delivery trucks loading in vegetables to the neighbourhood’s food sellers are some of the Market’s characteristic sounds. For some, the neighborhood’s densely layered soundscape is an indication of its vibrancy and relevance. For others, it is a sign of social decline that demands governmental intervention. The KMSS installation shares some of KM’s beloved and polarizing sounds via a mixing board and headphones. Using fader knobs and sliders, users can adjust soundscape components by selectively muting and increasing and reducing the volume of the various channels. The installation both presents our sonic data and is a kind of artistic wish fulfillment, allowing users to exert a level of control over their auditory environment that is not so easily accomplished in daily life.

Transmissions/Transitions Sound Installation at AAA:
Sound provides unique ways to think with and through transitions. DJs transition between records, radio transmits through space, and transduction pushes back against assumptions about presence and immersion. Inspired by the multiple possibilities of transitions in and through sound (as remixing, transmission, transduction), this sound installation includes soundworks (radio documentaries, field recordings, sound ethnographies, mixtapes, etc.) related to the conference theme.

More information here: https://leonardo-cardoso.com/events/transitions-transmissions-sound-installation/

Engaging Toronto Community Activists on Building Local Economic Resilience
Emily Hertzman (emilyhertzman@gmail.com)
Café Pamenar (307 Augusta Ave.)
Registration: https://shorturl.at/dFRT9

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 18, 2023

Play! Infrastructures of Collaborative Ethnography
Noha Fikry Ismail, Jean Chia, Nick Smith, and Kassandra Spooner-Lockyer
Anthropology Lounge (19 Ursula Franklin St.)
No registration required.

What is playful ethnography?
Join us for some interactive fun with games, schemes, and diversions about ethnographic fidelity, guilt, composition, and fieldwork friendship. These experiments derive from a collaborative ethnographic project on play conducted by ethnography lab members Noha Fikry Ismail, Kassandra Spooner-Lockyer, Jean Chia, and Nick Smith. The event will begin with brief introductory remarks by the researchers followed by food and drink, with all contributors on hand to discuss and play along.

Anthropologist as DJ
As part of Transitions/Transmissions: An Installation of Sound
AAA Sound Studies Section
Tranzac Club (292 Brunswick Ave.)
No registration required.

We invite scholars to perform their soundworks as selectors, DJs, and curators to amplify the installation and bring the conference out into the city. We ask: What if the anthropologist were a DJ? How would she perform scholarship, fieldwork, and research? How can we push the creative, collaborative, or dance-able possibilities for multimodal ethnography? Each selector will perform their set comprised of fieldwork videos, curated music videos, archival recordings, vinyl records, and DJ-ready field recordings.

Sound provides unique ways to think with and through transitions. DJs transition between records, radio transmits through space, and transduction pushes back against assumptions about presence and immersion. Inspired by the multiple possibilities of transitions in and through sound (as remixing, transmission, transduction), this sound installation includes soundworks on a wide range of soundscapes (from Indonesian popular music to the early morning city sounds in Gulu, Uganda) and modes of transmission (from live radio broadcasting to audiovisual documentaries). Contributors to the installation draw on the tensions between the audio recording as artifact and sound’s ephemerality. In transitioning from research site to sound installation, their soundworks propose an auditory bridge from fieldwork to conference space, creating zones of dialogical listening within and between them. Equally attuned to the AAA/CASCA 2023’s theme, the works presented here address various transitional instances – including migration, displacement, protest, archival databases, music queering, and interspecies relationships.

The exhibit will culminate with Disco Ethnography. During this post-installation party, scholars will perform their soundworks as musicians, curators and DJs to amplify the installation and bring the conference out into the city. We ask: What if the anthropologist were a DJ? How would she perform scholarship, fieldwork, and research? How can we push the creative, collaborative, or dance-able possibilities for multimodal ethnography? Each selector will perform their set comprised of fieldwork videos, curated music videos, archival recordings, vinyl records, and DJ-ready field recordings. Participants will explore unexpected resonances, echoes, and friction.

Co-Sponsors:
Music and Sound Interest Group, Society for Cultural Anthropology, University of Toronto Ethnography Lab, Texas A & M School of Performance, Visualization and Fine Arts.

Curators:
Leonardo Cardoso (Texas A & M) and Alexandra Lippman (Pomona College)

Co-Organizer:
Farzaneh Hemmasi (University of Toronto)

Schedule:
Installation: Thursday, November 16, 9am-5pm, Metro Toronto Convention Center, Room 703
Reception: Friday, November 17, 8pm-12pm, Tranzac, 282 Brunswick Ave.