{"id":10774,"date":"2023-02-28T07:00:55","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T06:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/?post_type=undoingraceandracism&#038;p=10774"},"modified":"2023-02-28T14:25:12","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T13:25:12","slug":"calling-worlds-into-being","status":"publish","type":"undoingraceandracism","link":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/undoingraceandracism\/calling-worlds-into-being\/","title":{"rendered":"Calling Worlds into Being"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<style>\n\t.dkpdf-download-icon { height: 1.5rem; }\n<\/style>\n\n\n\n\t<div class=\"dkpdf-button-container\" style=\" text-align:right \">\n\n\t\t<a class=\"dkpdf-button\" href=\"\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism\/10774?pdf=10774\" target=\"_blank\">\n\t\t\t<img src='\/wp-content\/themes\/boasblogs\/dkpdf\/download_red.svg' class=dkpdf-download-icon'\/>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t\n\t\t<!-- <a class=\"dkpdf-button\" href=\"\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism\/10774?pdf=10774\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"dkpdf-button-icon\"><i class=\"fa fa-file-pdf-o\"><\/i><\/span> Download PDF<\/a> &rarr; -->\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-10775\" src=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/BLM_Banner-920x518.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"920\" height=\"518\" srcset=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/BLM_Banner-920x518.jpg 920w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/BLM_Banner-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/BLM_Banner-550x310.jpg 550w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/BLM_Banner-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/BLM_Banner.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/BLM_Banner-920x518@2x.jpg 1840w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/BLM_Banner-550x310@2x.jpg 1100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 920px) 100vw, 920px\" \/><em style=\"font-size: 80%;\">BLM Banner<\/em><\/figure>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Black Lives Matter!\u2026Black Lives Matter!&#8230;..Say it loud\u2026. I\u2019m Black and I\u2019m proud! \u2026\u2026I\u2019m Black and I\u2019m so fucking proud!\u201d <\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(BLMB demo 2021)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s been years now since I heard this chant at the Black Lives Matter demo in Berlin in 2021. Since then, the whole world has once again turned on its head. But still, it is a chant that is prescient, powerful, urgent and necessary to repeat again. It is a phrase that needs to be embodied and held, a mantra to guide not only our thoughts but feelings. Black Lives Matter is a global movement responsible for mobilising millions, and in turn elevating Black led movements everywhere. I am considering \u2018<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">movemen<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t\u2019 here as not only that which \u2018moves\u2019 us consciously end emotionally but also the<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> work<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of activism, that <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">action<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to affect and make change. Change not necessarily on a global scale, but \u2018doing the work\u2019 of making structural racism visible, the work of naming, and the work of claiming that which has been systemically denied. \u2018Black Lives Matter\u2019 as a banner helps connect disparate but mobilised communities through naming the central desire for Black lives<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">matter, highlighting that they still don\u2019t, but that they matter to us, and by <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018us.\u2019<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> I am conceiving of those fully engaged in this struggle, where \u2018mattering\u2019 means allowing our lives and the lives of those we love, those we know, those we don\u2019t know to collectively matter too.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In saying \u2018Black Lives Matter,\u2019 I am not just repeating a \u2018phrase\u2019 or a \u2018slogan\u2019 I am thinking about what these words <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">feel like<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">mean <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">to me<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">as a member of the African diaspora in Germany. The chant and statement that heads this piece, written here as \u2018<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">words<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u2019 does their spoken weight no justice. Writing, with all the poetics I can muster can only approximate their complexity, but it can never convey the passion I heard in the need and the want for the call for Black life to matter, to be true. Instead, it is an intention, a need and a demand that was heard and felt through the vibratory sonic encounter of the \u2018call and response\u2019 performed at the demo.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Therefore, it is the sonic that I want to proceed from, not just the content of what is said and heard, but what is felt, invoked, evoked, and embodied in the sounds and soundscapes that emerge in the transformative space of the Berlin, BLM demonstration. I make no claim about other BLM demonstrations elsewhere, although undoubtably there are parallels. Rather for this purpose I am drawing on my participation in the annual BLM demo in Berlin as an organizer and crew member. The demo in my experience can feel like an almost utopic microcosm where a radical imagination is performed, one reflected in the title of this piece, \u2018Calling worlds into being.\u2019 The \u2018Call\u2019 is an action and invocation that has prompted the questions; what are we calling into being? What is undone and remade in the \u2018call\u2019 and the \u2018response\u2019? And what are the imaginary and material repercussions of this fugitive wish, this prayer, this claim, this \u2018call\u2019 that we throw out into the air, that we release from deep inside us?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is not the space to answer all these questions here. But I want to consider instead some of the ways in which the sonorous and embodied articulations of the demo become transformative, and how such transformation can call in change. In thinking of sound, I want to qualify that my use of the term includes \u2018noise \u2018 and how it functions \u201cas a way of disrupting a perceived status quo\u201d (Schramm, Krause, and Valley 2018, 251) and extends to not just the heard, but that \u201cfelt sound,\u201d (Campt 2017, 13) sound that registers as vibration activating the body, mind and releasing emotions in various formations. There are many layers contributing to the sonic atmosphere (Eisenlohr 2018) at a BLM demo such as; whistles, bells, voice, movement, the police, traffic and music in the form of live performances and the sound-system that accompanies and leads the demos\u2019 procession through the centre of Berlin, from the Mitte business district to the historically migrant neighbourhood of Kottbusser Tor, south of the centre. In doing so, the demo creates a mobile soundscape, forming a sonic and phonic topography that is shaped through contact and proximity to the embedded histories of the city and the bodies which form the demo every year with the sounds they make and bring. One of the most urgent sounds at the demo is that which extends the vocal range, the \u2018chant.\u2019 The chant, which is performed as \u2018call and response,\u2019 heralds our arrival, precedes and recedes us, makes claims and challenges socially and sonically inscribed norms. I want to think here about what \u2018<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">that<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019 sound does, its content and how its production creates a space for potential transformation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-10779\" src=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Man_holding_sign-920x518.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"920\" height=\"518\" srcset=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Man_holding_sign-920x518.jpg 920w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Man_holding_sign-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Man_holding_sign-550x310.jpg 550w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Man_holding_sign-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Man_holding_sign.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Man_holding_sign-920x518@2x.jpg 1840w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Man_holding_sign-550x310@2x.jpg 1100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 920px) 100vw, 920px\" \/><em style=\"font-size: 80%;\">Skin color is not a crime.<\/em><\/figure>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBlack trans-lives matter, Black drag lives matter, Black kids matter, Black dreams matter, Black hopes matter, Black culture matters, Black dreams matter, Black future matters, Black ideas matter, Black businesses matter!\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(BLM demo 2021)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like all chants at the BLM demo, this chant is significant, it is so, not only for what it imagines but the ways in which it points to a present and a future. It functions on multiple registers and is more than a proclamation that Black life matters. What occurs in this extended chant, which begins by calling forth the notion of precarity through foregrounding<a style=\"font-size: 80%; line-height: 125%;\" href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\"><sup>[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Black trans-lives, shifts register to open a up a space of possibility, refusing the finality of death in its continuation for trans-lives, drag, kids, dreams, hopes, culture, futures, ideas, and Black businesses to matter. It is, to borrow from Tina Campt, a claim to a \u201cfuturity\u201d (2017) where these words like wishes ignite the possibility to imagine an otherwise existence. By positioning Black lives alongside hopes and dreams, even dreams of financial security, it is a way of calling a different world into being.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This chant troubles the notion that Black life is synonymous with precarity and death through its unabashed confidence that Black ideas, dreams, and futures should matter, those ephemeral desires, thoughts and feelings that become the force that perpetuates motion. To excavate this further Ashon T. Crawley asks; \u201cwhat happens when we bring enunciation close, make the concept rub up against, fugitivity, two terms moving, seemingly, in antithetical directions?\u201d (2016, 36). The chant embodies this inherent tension, calling forth injustice whilst simultaneously calling forth hope, a hope which is \u2018fugitive.\u2019 Crawley argues that \u201csuch releasing becomes the grounds from which to be enfleshed anew, to announce an otherwise desire than what is normative. The fugitive enacts by enunciative force, by desire,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">by air, by breath, by breathing\u201d (2016, 36).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I want to call Crawley\u2019s notion of becoming \u201cenfleshed anew\u201d what it is: transformation, to be remade, to be transformed not only at the register of intellect, or emotion, but of the body. The performance of this chant, through voice, breath and body is the site of this remaking, and as such, I return to the question; what does this chant feel like? That \u201cfelt sound\u201d(2017, 13) which Campt encourages us to recognise, the hum and vibration that unleashes the archive stored in the muscle and bone that is \u2018released\u2019 in the production of the chant, that enunciative breath, a sound which vibrates the body with potential and meaning. This transformation is experienced as not only a tonal shift as we enfold those words into us, but the desire which radiates from their intention generates a sense of rising, in and of the chest, that same spot where weight is felt in its contrary. A physical release that is quite literally uplifting, it does so not by negating the experiences of racism and marginalisation. Rather, by making us complicit in naming the desire to have a full life, one not defined by struggle and resistance but by our \u2018hopes and dreams,\u2019 it is a chant that works to affirm, and in doing so, makes space for living!<a style=\"font-size: 80%; line-height: 125%;\" href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\"><sup>[2] <\/sup><\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This &#8217;space\u2019 that Katherine Mckittrick has termed \u2018Black Livingness\u2019 (McKittrick 2021) is a register which is reparative and restorative, made manifest in and through those practices, modalities and desires which re-centre Black ways of knowing and being.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As such, this heard and felt sound can be transformational, but Brandon LaBelle in his work on acoustic justice (2020) as well as Tina Campt (2017) who is instrumental in moving our conception of sonic articulations, both warn us of the attention paid to \u2018heard\u2019 sound, which not only privileges the \u2018hearing world\u2019 but limits our understanding of sound. Therefore, I want to conclude by considering the kinetic embodiment of sound at the BLMB demonstration in dance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-10781\" src=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Lady_smiling-920x518.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"920\" height=\"518\" srcset=\"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Lady_smiling-920x518.jpg 920w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Lady_smiling-1440x810.jpg 1440w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Lady_smiling-550x310.jpg 550w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Lady_smiling-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Lady_smiling.jpg 1920w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Lady_smiling-920x518@2x.jpg 1840w, https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Lady_smiling-550x310@2x.jpg 1100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 920px) 100vw, 920px\" \/><em style=\"font-size: 80%;\">Joy at the BLM demo<\/em><\/figure>\n<p>There are countless moments at the demo that could illustrate this imbrication, but none more profound than the spontaneous gathering that occurred at the end of the 2021 Demo at Spreewald Platz, in Berlin. A small square that marks the end of the demo journey and where the final speeches and musical performances are held. When I arrive, Dancehall is shaking the ground, people are lost in the music. A large group of around 30 people have drawn together as close as possible to the stack of speakers on the side of the truck. The speakers\u2019 vibrations create a magnetism, which in turn propels the sound through the body as \u201caccelerant\u201d and \u201camplification\u201d (Henriques and Ferrara in Stratton and Zuberi 2016). They are locked onto each other, all eyes connecting, communicating beyond words seen in the shift of movements that mirror, compliment, and reflect the music and sounds they are feeling and each other. There is a release in the extension and elasticity of their limbs, people rolling and flexing like water. Bodies rising and falling to the beat of the music. Creating a temporal disturbance through the warping of time found in the aural and embodied registers which we welcome as overwhelming immersion. Soon a semi-circle is formed, signalling the stage and the space for self-expression, this is the point where the transformation that has already occurred becomes explicit, a transformation made in the vibrating crucible of bodies that have atomized liberation and a radical imagination in the extension of their movements and in the sweat on their skin.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What this scene demonstrates is that dance and sound are prefigurative practices that call a different world into being. Where eruptive practices and expressions that centre both joy and life create powerful openings. At the start of this piece, I asked; what are the imaginary and material repercussions of this \u2018calling\u2019?\u00a0 And I find my response here, in this multisensory encounter with the transformative power of a sonic force articulated not just in the voice and the breath, but in the vibratory resonance of dance as a performance of liberation. What these encounters <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018do\u2019<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is produce reverberations in the days, weeks and years that follow. The BLM demo and its sonic articulations create a space of possibility and for a moment we collectively experience an eclipse of the world we have with the world we want.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<figure><iframe title=\"VideoPress Video Player\" aria-label='VideoPress Video Player' width='500' height='281' src='https:\/\/video.wordpress.com\/embed\/oE1Z1stS?hd=0&amp;cover=1' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen allow='clipboard-write'><\/iframe><script src='https:\/\/v0.wordpress.com\/js\/next\/videopress-iframe.js?m=1674852142'><\/script><figcaption>\n<p style=\"font-size: 80%; line-height: 125%;\"><em>\u2018Joy\u2019 is a sound and Image piece that meditates on the anti-gravitational capacities of dance as \u2018Refusal.\u2019 It is made with footage from the Berlin BLM demo in 20201 and includes sounds from the demo and across the African diaspora. Film by Melody Howse, Camera by Solomon Mekonen<\/em><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Footnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> 2021 marked a rise in the number of deaths among the Black transgender community with 48 deaths in the USA be the end of the year. One of those people was Tony McDade who was killed a month before the BLMB demo and his death was reflected in the chant. Link to articke: https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/jun\/14\/us-trans-transgender-deaths-2021<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> In cross community settings such as the BLMB demo the languages of communication are primarily German and English. Many of the of chants are in English reflecting their North American origin although a number of chants are always spoken in German likewise mirroring origin.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>References<\/strong><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-indent: -2em; padding-left: 2em;\">\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Campt, Tina. 2017. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Listening to Images<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Durham: Duke University Press.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Crawley, Ashon T. 2016. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Fordham Univ Press.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Eisenlohr, Patrick. 2018. \u2018The Work of Transduction: Voice as Atmosphere\u2019. https:\/\/doi.org\/0.1515\/9780520970762.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LaBelle, Brandon. 2020. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Acoustic Justice: Listening, Performativity, and the Work of Reorientation<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">McKittrick, Katherine. 2021. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dear Science and Other Stories<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Errantries. Durham: Duke University Press.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Schramm, Katharina, Kristine Krause, and Greer Valley. 2018. \u2018Introduction: Voice, Noise and Silence. Resonances of Political Subjectivities\u2019. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Critical African Studies<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> 10 (3): 245\u201356. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/21681392.2019.1610013.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Stratton, Jon, and Nabeel Zuberi. 2016. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Black Popular Music in Britain Since 1945<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Routledge.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em><strong>Melody Howse<\/strong> is an Interdisciplinary Researcher, filmmaker and writer from Belize &amp; UK. She received her Master\u2019s in Visual and Media Anthropology at the Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin in 2016. And is currently completing a PhD in Anthropology at the University Leipzig where her doctoral thesis focuses on racial encounters and the body. Alongside pursuing a PhD Melody works as a community researcher lending her skills in research, writing and video production to Black led organisations in Berlin.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"autor":[634],"class_list":["post-10774","undoingraceandracism","type-undoingraceandracism","status-publish","hentry","autor-melody-howse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism\/10774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/undoingraceandracism"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism\/10774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10789,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/undoingraceandracism\/10774\/revisions\/10789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"autor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boasblogs.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/autor?post=10774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}