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The Anatomy of Sound and  Image in Contemporary Media: A Conceptual Journey with Arzu Karaduman in the Footsteps of Chion

Gökhan Çolak Leave a comment

Interview Series: Beyond Synchrony: Dialogues on New Media and Sensory Aesthetics

1. Within the framework of your academic trajectory and theoretical orientation, what were the main intellectual or aesthetic motivations that led you to focus on moments in which synchronization breaks down? Could you explain how this interest emerged and what kind of shift it created in your research path?

My focus on asynchrony emerged from a moment of analytical failure. One evening at Georgia Tech, I was watching Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia with friends from the Turkish Student Organization who organized the screening. Midway through a dialogue scene, something happened that stopped me cold: the characters’ voices continued, but their lips no longer moved. I remember physically turning to scan the faces of my friends sitting next to me, curious to see whether anyone else was as startled as I was. The shock of the moment of my realization that I witnessed a genuinely new technique of cinematic audiovisual asynchrony compelled me to consult with my cohort as well as my professors in the Moving Image Studies program at Georgia State University. I knew this new technique was not an instance of internal monologue, not acousmatic voice, not a voice-over, not an ellipsis; none of the established categories in film sound theory applied. Out of my fascination with this technique emerged the concept of the “cryptic voice,” a voice that is simultaneously present and absent, uttered and withheld, audible yet refusing to align with the moving lips of its speaker. One of my most exciting publications is the forthcoming chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Media and Vocality, because it will introduce this foundational term more fully with an extended analysis of the dialogue scene in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia as well as another scene in Ceylan’s Three Monkeys.

The cryptic voice became the conceptual spark that redirected my research toward identifying and naming the new sound-image relations as they emerge in contemporary cinema. This shift eventually led to my broader methodological framework, anasonicity, which examines what I describe as spectral, barely audible, or structurally “unsyncable” sounds in contemporary global cinemas. My project “Sounding Anew: Anasonicity in Contemporary Global Cinemas” revisits existing film sound terminology and proposes “anasonicity” as a new methodological approach designed to address emerging sound techniques that transform conditions of audibility and inaudibility in contemporary cinematic experiences. Taken together, these sounds radically disrupt synchronization and require new modes of listening, while the films that deploy them unsettle linear temporality by rendering the sounds of past, present, and future indistinguishable within their narrative worlds.

I call “Sounding Anew” the sonic counterpart of Akira Lippit’s Atomic Light (Shadow Optics). The conceptual seed for anasonicity –or asonority, as I use the terms interchangeably– was planted in Lippit’s formulation of avisuality, his term for the paradox of what is visual yet invisible, an impossible type of visuality that emerges with the birth of cinema, the X-ray, and psychoanalysis in 1895. Lippit’s insight is that by the late twentieth century, the image itself had begun to exceed the limits of visibility. Anasonicity takes up that provocation on the terrain of sound. If avisuality charts the limits of seeing, anasonicity attends to a parallel shift in our experience of hearing that happens a hundred years later: sounds that slip between the audible and the inaudible, voices that fall out of synchronization in completely new ways, sounds that refuse to anchor themselves in time. Attending to the contemporary anasonic nature of cinema then, I name the emerging sonic techniques that trouble what we think sound is supposed to do in cinema, and, by doing so, ask us to critically attend to such moments that demand a new ear and a new thinking.

2. Your work appears to resonate with Michel Chion’s approach to the sound–image relationship. How has Chion’s theoretical framework shaped your scholarly orientation, and in what ways do you expand, reinterpret, or challenge the conceptual space he opened?

Michel Chion remains foundational for thinking about cinematic sound: his attention to the phenomenology of listening created the conceptual template many of us have inherited. While serious scholarly engagement with sound and sound–image relations began in earnest with the 1980 Cinema/Sound special issue of Yale French Studies under Rick Altman’s editorship, it was Chion’s Audio-Vision that became truly indispensable to the evolution of film sound studies. Since the 1980s, the field has expanded and transformed, but Chion’s framework endures as one of its most generative intellectual anchors.

I was particularly impressed by Chion’s capacity to generate incisive terminology in Audio-Vision, especially his formulation of the acousmêtre, which offered a model for how conceptual precision can illuminate phenomena that had long remained elusive. Among all the formal elements of cinema, sound is notoriously difficult to analyze, and Chion’s work demonstrates a rare patience, rigor, and passion for close listening.

Chion visited Atlanta to give a talk at Emory in 2017. Having encountered the cryptic voice in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, I carried my bewilderment directly to him. After his lecture, I approached him to recount the dialogue scene and to ask what he made of the voice emerging from unmoving lips. He knew the film well and immediately remembered the scene, and yet his response, “It’s just the ambience!” sounded unexpectedly dismissive and was invaluable precisely because it exposed the limits of our established vocabulary. My aim is not to overturn Chion’s legacy but to expand and complexify the conceptual field by naming new audiovisual phenomena that contemporary cinema is producing. In this sense, I see terms such as anasonicity, cryptic voice, echoing sonic flashback, and muted image as the next theoretical steps after Chion: concepts that build on his groundwork but are calibrated for an emerging audiovisual landscape and explained through deep philosophical engagements.

3. The original English terms you have developed to describe moments in which synchronization slips, breaks, or is intentionally disrupted offer a significant contribution to the literature. How does your process of conceptual creation unfold? What theoretical, aesthetic, or phenomenological criteria guide the emergence of a new term?

A new term never precedes the phenomenon; it arises only when a film insists on it. My process is grounded in close listening —what I call a gesture of “listening through,” borrowing from Derrida’s method of “reading through” texts against themselves— and in allowing films to challenge the limits of the theoretical lexicon we already possess. This careful act of listening through these films involves returning to a scene again and again, hearing it anew each time, in repetitions that arrive with difference and produce something new each time. After all, many of the sounds I study are barely audible, and some of the techniques I name appear only fleetingly in most films rather than in extended sequences like the example in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. So an attentive ear is the key to the process.

Sometimes colleagues and friends help direct my attention to certain films. After my first presentation on the “echoing sonic flashback” in The Revenant (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2015) at the Sinefilozofi Symposium in 2022, Dr. Serdar Öztürk mentioned a brief but striking use of the cryptic voice in Pelin Esmer’s Something Useful (2017), which I am presenting on at this year’s symposium. I am equally grateful to Jordan Chrietzberg, who recommended The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023); to Jazmine Hudson, who pointed me toward Sinners (Ryan Coogler, 2025); and to Cameron Kunzelman, who suggested Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021). These recommendations become invitations to texts that demand to be listened to with care. I am currently extending my research on what I term The Anasonic Zone of Interest, have begun developing a piece on Sinners, and still await the opportunity to encounter Memoria, whose limited circulation has made it particularly difficult to find.

To clarify the process of conceptual creation, I could list three simultaneous criteria that guide the emergence of terminology:
• Phenomenological precision: What exactly is being heard? At what level of perception: audible, barely audible, spectral, remembered, virtual?
• Narrative function: How does the sound alter temporality, embodiment, relations to memory, or the ethical space between characters?
• Theoretical necessity: Can existing terminology account for the phenomenon? If not, what new concept is required, and what conceptual gap does it fill?

I call these subcategories of anasonic sounds “impossible,” because their functions stretch the boundaries of audiovisual asynchrony as defined in established film sound scholarship. Cryptic voice, for instance, emerged from recognizing a voice that is spoken, heard by other characters, and fully audible—yet unaccompanied by lip movement. Echoing sonic flashback, which I explore through Park Chan-wook’s Lady Vengeance in my recent chapter for Derrida and Film Studies, names a distinctive form of aural flashback that operates like an echo, where past sounds reverberate closely following the present sounds like an echo. The muted image (bridge), which I introduce in a forthcoming 2027 article for a Derrida Today special issue on Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, 2023), describes an impossible form of synchronization between images and sounds across two scenes, creating an impossible match that dislocates spatial or temporal continuity.

In each case, I am identifying an impossible doubleness: sounds that are both present and absent, synchronous and asynchronous, grounded or embodied and spectral. I guess my genuine curiosity drives the will to coin new terms each time I notice a mismatch between sound and image in contemporary films. Ultimately, conceptual creation begins with listening to what cinema is doing—and inventing terminology only when existing language can no longer describe its operations.

4. In contemporary cinema and television, the sound–image relationship is increasingly heterogeneous, fragmented, and often deliberately detached. How do you interpret this trend in relation to the broader transformation of contemporary narrative structures? What does this growing separation reveal about the perceptual habits of today’s audiences?

Contemporary audiovisual storytelling has moved further from classical notions of linearity, audiovisual unity, and strict synchronization, even in realist films or TV dramas. Rather than treating the soundtrack as a stable accompaniment to the image, or simply as its subordinate, many contemporary films mobilize sound as an autonomous and sometimes unpredictable force, which I find exhilarating. This fragmentation or destabilization reflects a broader transformation in contemporary narrative structures; stories increasingly unfold not as single temporal continuums but as intertwined temporal planes: memory, anticipation, dream, trauma, regret, and potentiality. For instance, my work on “crystal sounds” in contemporary global cinema and television traces multiple instances of these destabilizing sonic formations, even in otherwise completely disparate texts such as Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight and HBO’s Westworld. And I am certain there are further cases that similarly stray from conventional sound–image coherences. 

New forms of asynchrony, in this context, become a perceptual challenge even in the already fragmented and contemporary narratives. These texts ask audiences to feel before they identify, to listen before they decode, and, to borrow from my own method, to “listen through,” again and attentively. Their refusal of easy comprehension is not unwarranted; I think they resist disposability. These works gain their ontological power from their radical sonic, audiovisual, and narrative experimentations. They force us to return to certain scenes repeatedly, to be able to engage with them at the philosophical level they operate.

Contemporary viewers are accustomed to media environments where multiple temporalities and sources coexist; streaming interfaces, multi-screen displays, algorithmic feeds inundate our everyday realities. Their perceptual habits have become layered, fragmented, and non-linear. Cinema is responding in kind, producing radical forms of asynchrony that not only resonate with these habits but also challenge the audiences further by demanding deep philosophical engagements.

Many of the films I study enact what Derrida calls différance, a temporal and spatial deferral, or what Deleuze theorizes as the “crystal,” an indiscernibility between the actual and the virtual. In this sense, the separation of sound from image is not fragmentation for its own sake. It is a mode of attunement to contemporary subjectivity, a way of making perceptible the disjunctions, overlays, and spectral echoes that define our media-saturated lives. And it is often precisely this radical rethinking of audiovisual relations that allows these films to do philosophy.

The digital media ecosystem—including streaming platforms, social media videos, and multi-screen environments—introduces new technical and aesthetic challenges to sound–image synchronization. How do you think these environments reshape the audiovisual relationship? Do you see these synchronization shifts evolving from technical glitches into deliberate aesthetic strategies?

Yes, what once appeared as “errors” or “glitches” are now being absorbed as expressive strategies. Digital media environments including streaming platforms, TikTok videos, algorithmically compressed sound files, autoplay transitions, and skip functions normalize the experience of rupture, elision, and discontinuity. Cinema has responded by formalizing these experiences: asynchronous editing, displaced soundtracks, spectral voices, or echoes of the past that intrude on present time. For example, the echoing sonic flashback or the cryptic voice are not accidents of mishandling but deliberate manipulations that express heterogeneity of time through memory, trauma, displacement, or temporal paralysis.

Of course, tight synchronization between image and sound and the accompanying expectations of temporal continuity and linear narrative progression remain the norm if we consider the thousands of films produced globally each year. However, the shift from analog to digital has introduced new aesthetic sensibilities and technical possibilities that continue to reshape what filmmakers can do with the soundtrack. For example, Mark Kerins was one of the first scholars to trace a level of sonic complexity to the creative potential of surround-sound multichannel formats. Others have similarly noted the increasing indistinction between sound effects and music in contemporary digital sound design, where layers of sonic material can be manipulated with extraordinary precision.

Digital tools have made it possible to craft soundtracks that are denser, richer, and more structurally complex. As a result, synchronicity is no longer the default formal expectation but merely one option among many. Digital media and digital culture defined by compression artifacts, algorithmic modulation, nonlinear temporality, and platform-specific listening habits have fundamentally transformed the conditions of auditory perception. In my scholarship, I see that cinema has responded the transformed conditions of audibility by experimenting with the dramatic and philosophical possibilities of what I call “unsyncability”. Conversely, and perhaps more intriguingly, we can argue that cinema has anticipated and even instructed the audiovisual logics of emerging technologies and those who design them. For instance, I claim that the technique of the muted image that foregrounds voice as media in the impossible synchronization between the voice and a pair of foreign lips reappears today in the artificial synthesis of prosthetic voices and faces in deepfakes and AI-generated content of our current media ecology.

Publishing all your work and terminology in English makes your concepts more visible in international scholarship. How does this linguistic choice influence your theoretical framework? In what ways does producing terminology in English shape the nature or boundaries of your conceptual work?

To be completely honest with you, I have never pursued scholarly work in any language other than English. I attended Zonguldak Atatürk Anatolian High School, where nearly all courses were taught in English. My B.A. in American Culture and Literature and my M.A. in Media and Visual Studies at Bilkent University continued this trajectory, as English was the institutional language of instruction. As a result, my intellectual formation, reading habits, writing practices, and theoretical vocabulary have all been shaped entirely in English.

At the same time, English is the primary language of global academic discourse in Film and Sound Studies, and developing my terminology in English ensures that the concepts circulate widely beyond national contexts. I see scholars writing in languages other than English like German, Portuguese, or Finnish citing my published works. I am not sure that publishing these concepts first in Turkish would have enabled that kind of international reach.

English also imposes a productive rigor. It demands conceptual precision: a new term must justify itself etymologically, analytically, and philosophically. This pressure toward clarity ultimately strengthens the concepts. For example, asonority could not have existed merely as a convenient linguistic parallel to Lippit’s avisuality, that is an elegant analogy invented in the final sentences of a 16-hour comprehensive exam. That day at GSU, I simply coined it without knowing what it meant or how to fully theorize it, and I finished my exam with a long list of questions in the space allocated for answers. Asonority/anasonicity had to accrue methodological and analytical clarity, enough to withstand the scrutiny of my dissertation committee: Angelo Restivo, Alessandra Raengo, Calvin H. Thomas, and especially Akira Lippit as my outside reader. I am deeply grateful for their patience, which allowed the concept to mature into the methodological framework it finally evolved into. In short, English, despite being my second language, has been a conceptual and philosophical playground for me throughout my entire academic life. 

Looking toward the future of your research, what new theoretical questions are you pursuing within the study of sound–image relations? Are there particular themes or conceptual directions you plan to deepen in your upcoming work?

My current trajectory continues to expand the conceptual umbrella of anasonicity. At present, I am in conversation with Palgrave regarding my first book project, which will likely take the form of a short pivot, given that I have already published several peer-reviewed articles and chapters that have divided the larger project into smaller, thematically coherent components. I am also working on an article titled “Au revoir to voix: Muted Images in Anatomy of a Fall,” which introduces the term muted image as a technique that produces an impossible synchronization by pairing the visuals of one scene with the soundtrack of another. To my knowledge, the first use of this technique appears in Park Chan-wook’s Lady Vengeance (2005) and later at the climax of Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall (2023).

A second term I am developing is the “meta-burden of representation,” which I use to analyze the self-reflexive structure of Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction. Here, Jefferson responds to the long-discussed “burden of representation” placed on artists from marginalized communities, yet does so within a work that becomes, through its very critique, burdened by the same representational expectations. This concept expands existing theories of race and representation by foregrounding the recursive, self-conscious pressures placed on creative labor itself.
Concurrently, I am pursuing a chapter for Bloomsbury’s The Music Video Industry: Interviews, Close Looks, and Takes, in which I examine the expanded terrain of the music video through an interview-based study of The Seasons, a large-scale audiovisual collaboration between composer Sebastian Currier and filmmaker Paweł Wojtasik. Among the questions I will bring to the artists first and then elaborate upon analytically in the second part are: How might we understand the lineage between expanded cinema as presented in concert halls (where films are screened with live accompaniment) and in museums (as installation-based, multi-format objects) and the contemporary music video? And, conversely, do music videos or experimental films with a music-video logic—Álvarez’s Now!, Conner’s Cosmic Ray and A Movie, Anger’s Scorpio Rising, Workman’s Precious Images, Devo’s Mongoloid—inform The Seasons’ approach to structure, rhythm, and montage?

Finally, although my published scholarship has thus far been exclusively in English, I intend to return to Turkish cinema with sustained attention. I have long been drawn to the sonic textures of New Turkish Cinema (mid-1990s to the present). Therefore, my next major project will be a second monograph on the sounds of this cinematic movement, exploring how the oeuvres of Reha Erdem, Pelin Esmer, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Emin Alper, and Tayfun Pirselimoğlu respond sonically—as much as thematically—to the country’s evolving political landscape. This project will allow me to bring my conceptual framework into dialogue with the cinematic traditions that shaped my sensibilities, potentially in a bilingual format.

Across these endeavors, the guiding question remains constant:
What new forms of listening does contemporary media demand, and what new vocabulary must we devise to account for them?

A Feminist Lens on Memory: Griselda Pollock on Art, Trauma, and Representation

Gökhan Çolak Leave a comment

Interview Series: “Memory, Representation and Resistance: Thinking Alternative Media Cinematically through Academic Perspectives.”


I. Feminist Art History and Representation

In Differencing the Canon, you propose a feminist re-reading of Western art history. How does this approach challenge traditional ideas about “greatness” and the exclusion of women artists? > [Reference: Differencing the Canon (1999)]

This is a slight misreading of the purpose of my book Differencing the Canon.  A canon is the official version of knowledge, and it is official story of Western art that  I am challenging Not only does this official story exclude almost all women artists, but it does also so because the issue is structural. The canon is formed to achieve a particular purpose: to establish a mythology of masculine creativity, that is further shaped by racial and geopolitical hierarchies, sexual normativity, and a hierarchy of materials and processes favouring the chosen media used in  Western art ( painting and sculpture versus ceramics and cloth).

Firstly, I had to establish what a canon is: a body of accepted knowledge and  method for making this knowledge appear to be an unquestioned truth. So, we have to show how the official story of art is constructed both by what it excludes and makes unthinkable and  by what it presents as being transparently the sole  truth.  The title of the book identifies such  selectivity, suppression  and exclusion as an active ideological process.

Feminist deconstruction of the canon is neither offering an alternative nor trying to include what was systematically excluded.  It has to reveal the power systems and their ideologies which naturalize a version one version of knowledge making invisible the ‘politics’ that produce these systematic exclusions and hierarchies of value. Another version of this idea is from British literary critic Raymond Williams who proposed an idea of a ‘selective tradition’ created by scholars that favours the dominant class, and I add, gender and  socio-geo-political nations. dominant religions and normative sexualities.

Differencing is a grammatical form— a gerund—of  a verb that does not exist in English. To differ is to disagree. To be different is the condition of variety.  To difference is my invention of a word that enables me to create a feminist concept. It is drawn from the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida and his theory of deconstruction, and also indirectly from Michel Foucault. Derrida’s deconstruction is a process that reveals how the  ‘the selective tradition’ is created and suppresses certain knowledge and produces a smooth surface that makes any alternative unimaginable. Foucault , writing about the formation of the archive, taught us, however, that what has been made to become invisible has not disappeared. Rather it is folded out of sight.  We can open the fold and find that history that was suppressed. So, we are not adding women back into art history. My book exposed how  actual history is suppressed through folding some knowledge out of sight or by suppressing historical and social  conditions of production or denying the role of ideology: systems of belief and ideas that favour the dominant social groups.

Knowledge of women as artists was folded out of sight, given the massive documentation in history of their constant presence, for the purpose of creating a mythology about the individualism of each artist ( personality, intellect, interests, desires expressed in art: the expressionist thesis of art) in a society in which individualism was granted only to men of certain privileged classes.  To exclude artists as women can only happen in societies in which their social and ideological systems have already created a hierarchy amongst human beings on the basis of gender. Gender divisions are no more natural than class divisions or religious divisions.

These are created divisions, and the word woman signifies not a just a person of one type or another. Woman means not-man and the term functions as a negative  through which Man comes to signify the only pure type of the human.  The canonical denial of artistic and intellectual creativity to women is necessary for men to claim that they alone are the pure human with intellect and creativity.    We have to deconstruct the process by which man and woman are not two equal forms of humanity but are an opposition of plus and minus. This is why however many times we put on exhibitions or write books about women artists, we make almost no change, no progress. For 50 years I have watched this happen over and over again and every new exhibition gathers women artists together as ‘rediscoveries’. Differencing the Canon was an analysis of the ideological structure that  has in effect defeated our feminist  attempts to normalize the creativity of both women and men.  Greatness  like genius has also been stolen by men for men alone.  From a feminist deconstructionist perspective, we are not wanting to select some women for ‘greatness’.  We have to develop as curators and art historians and critics ways of seeing their art, ways of interpreting what women in all their diversity and singularity are creating, not because women all share some essential femininity. Each artist-woman is unique as an artist but also is living in a patriarchal, racist, often  religiously fundamentalist, capitalist and sexist and heteronormative world. Artists challenge us to see the world differently and from many perspectives. The issue is what art does, what it reveals, what we learn.  The art market  is not interested in art. It buys and sells brands.  Contemporary art world is based on names  of artists that become brands for  a massive  speculative investment market.

Your early work in Vision and Difference critiques how women have historically been portrayed in art. In what ways do these gendered visual patterns continue to influence today’s cultural and visual practices? > [Reference: Vision and Difference (1988)]

Let me make another small correction. Vision & Difference is a collection of ‘essays’ addressed to Art History, the academic discipline that studies art  while the essays challenge the story that Art History has made canonical: the only authorized version of art and its histories.  The essays are also about  studying art as representation: that means not as the individual expression of one artist’s imagination. Representation means that all artists participate in a cultural activity in which there are traditions of visual representation and also patterns of ideological meanings that these representations have affirmed or sometimes contested and even changed.  

Whose interests have the visual arts served? What visions of the world and how it is ordered have the visual arts produced by means of signs, materials, media, scales, locations. Whose vision of world has dominated, become normal? We know in the past the powerful rulers,  religious leaders, ruling classes commissioned artists to make works for the purposes of confirming the vision of the world of the powerful.  This is why the central essay in this book is ‘Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity’ which was my feminist  conversation with and challenge to the social historian of art, T J Clark,  who had transformed my understanding of 19th century French art by focusing on the significance the new metropolis and its new urban culture.

My question was: what does the modern city mean for women of different classes. The  bourgeois women do not work but can go to the park, go shopping, drive around in carriages, or go to the theatre. Working class women are exposed  in their often-visible work to predatory sexual exploitation by the men of the leisured classes. So, I analysed which spaces of the city the men and women involved in creating Impressionism, an egalitarian independent art society with both women and men artists involved in its creation, chose to paint and how.

I then asked myself if I can discern a difference in the space they chose and the way they represented women in these spaces. Thus, I introduced the idea of the gaze, developed in film theory. Who is looking at whom? Who is being  subjected to a sexualizing gaze?  How did Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot not only reveal the pressure of the masculine heterosexual gaze in public places but also represent the mutual gazing between women, or between adults and children?      This is another earlier example of differencing the canon of Impressionist painting and revealing that the division between what artist-men and artist-women represented was not public space versus private space, but between those parts of the city where men and women of all classes moved about and those spaces where bourgeois men looked at or purchased working class women for sexual reasons.

Does this still happen? In the West, the sexualization of women is even more rampant and normalized in certain cultures overtly or secretly. Why do we think we have made any progress at all when we look at the major platforms of representation today: social media. It reflects back to us a picture of the dominant imagination.  People believe that progress will happen. Being a structuralist feminist,  I do not hope.  I analyse the systems of representation and the social systems and their ideologies.  We appear to have forgotten these terms and these modes of deconstructive analysis. Representation of women has deteriorated and with social media, and beyond on the dark web, the brutalization and dehumanizing sexual abuse of women is beyond  horror. Given that one woman is killed every 40 minutes world-wide by a partner or family member, we must stop believing childishly in automatic progress and start naming patriarchal and phallocentric systems that produce  ‘men’ as beings who believe they have rights—including to life—over women and ‘women’ who accept that this is normal.  I see very little evidence of any real or systematic change in the representation of women because we have made so little progress to changing this system.

II. Trauma, Memory, and Feminist Aesthetics

In After-affects / After-images, you explore how trauma shapes the experience of art. How can visual art provide a space for processing or representing traumatic experiences? [Reference: After-affects / After-images (2013)]

My argument in this book is not that traumatic experiences are processed or represented. Neither is possible.  The core conclusion of that book is that artists, who have endured horrendous experiences  such as famine, near death in genocide, sexual abuse, bereavement, exile and survival of extreme suffering may spend a lifetime of making art to create a formal  framework for a possible  ‘encounter’ with the trauma which is then transformed aesthetically.  This is not about cure or relief. It is about the relations between forms, colours, processes, time, spaces and the potential for this encounter with trauma that was a missed encounter: an event that overwhelmed the psyche’s capacity to process it and left the artist possessed or haunted by a shapeless pressure of an unknown ‘thing’ that occupies her or his psyche without she or he being able to grasp it .

In all the case-studies in the book, I noted that the processing of this shapeless, unknowable pressure of  the trauma was not a cathartic event but a matter of a lifetime of creating an aesthetic procedure or structure for a transformation through aesthesis: colour, mark, form, process: some painting, some film making, some sculpture, some video and installation. Each case study needed the most rigorous formal, material, structural analysis of how each artwork did its work. Work in German is Arbeit and Freud chose that word for what the psyche does in processing life events: in his terms the work of mourning, Trauerarbeit, working through: Durcharbeiten.  I want to stress the importance of psychoanalytical theory rather than everyday psychology. You will know that I have drawn in this book on the theories proposed by artist and psychoanalytical theorist Bracha L Ettinger who created the term artworking, Kunstarbeit as it were, to propose a specific mechanism for understanding what I was naming aesthetic transformation in which aesthetic is not about the beautiful but about how we, the viewers, are affected by colour, touch, movement, duration, sound: the senses when we experience artworks.

Trauma cannot be a topic or subject matter for art: that would merely represent something as an event. Particularly in the wake of modernist acknowledgement of the autonomous affects of colour, field, medium, temporality, etc.  art  can be a site for this managed ‘encounter’ with residues of trauma that can also touch and move a spectator not with a topic or sense of specific event, but to compassion and hospitality to suffering.

In Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum, you argue that memory is not only personal but also political. How does feminist aesthetics reshape our ways of remembering?  [Reference: Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum (2007)]

It is not feminist aesthetics that reshapes our way of remembering, it is that aesthetic practices may facilitate new ways of our responding to the encounter with art, as I suggested in the last question.  Are there feminist aesthetics? Certainly, there are philosophers who ask questions about the aesthetic experience from feminist perspectives: that is to challenge the masculine as the sole position of such experience or analysis.

Feminist is not an entity but a position of questioning, that is constantly questioning itself. Since women are the majority of the population and the only group who is systematically killed just for being women on a mass scale (femicide is the term for this), attention to the life and dying of women is a preoccupation of feminist thought. This means defining patriarchy as a form of socio-political-economic domination and phallocentrism as the psychological, linguistic and ideological justification of a system of male domination and privilege.  Feminist means analysis, deconstruction, contestation of how phallocentric patriarchies intersect with and are integrated with various economic systems such as capitalism or feudalism and with religious-theological-political systems.   Feminist is a mode of enquiry and research, not a women’s alternative. Feminist means caring for all oppressed, disadvantaged and suffering minorities including the world’s majority, women and girls. If art and its histories form cultural memory, the canons of art preserve and that justify male domination and hence the violation of the human rights of women and girls whose humanity is diminished and whose lives are put at risk. 

My virtual feminist museum is a concept and a device for asking: what would the world be like and what would we as people be like if we encountered in museums those forms and works of art that were oriented to and celebrated life: the preservation of life? Without idealizing women, who are as deformed as men are in their mentalities and ideologies by the phallocentric and patriarchal systems of power, feminist thought and analysis functions as a critical space of resistance and transformation that has to question and challenge itself, to learn from its own blind spots and negotiate its internal differences and potential hierarchies of privilege.

I do not work with feminist aesthetics but what I termed feminist desire: desire for the end of oppressive dehumanizing systems of power, of the kind of greed that is destroying our planet and rendering millions of lives almost unliveable and dehumanized.  Rather than worrying about keeping women in their places,  we all need to ally to keep the planet alive, and to do so we need feminist thought that names and challenges the basis of inhumanity: which is that one group of humans treat their fellow humans as instruments not people.

In 1972, a French writer, Françoise D’Eaubonne, an art historian, wrote a book titled Feminism or Death. It was the first feminist eco-critical texts linking the fate of nature and the planet to the fate of women… feminism is thus not a specialty for feminists. It is a condition of future existence for the planet and humanity. Can art do some work in this direction? Yes. Must we all deconstruct and denounce patriarchy and phallocentric thinking. Indeed.

III. Visibility, Institutions, and Feminist Curating

What curatorial practices or institutional strategies have you seen succeed in making space for women and other marginalized artists within mainstream art institutions?

Very few, for the reason that the issue is structural and cannot be mended by gestures of mere correction.  But we can and must study strategies that propose different models and address the key elements of curation. These are not packaging ‘art’ as an experience  for visitors to gain pleasure or acquire cultural capital. Currently museums and galleries, shaped above all by a rampant art market and art fairs where vast  amounts of money are being made and from whom they get their funding to make exhibitions and purchase artwork, are not examining alternative models. They are about entertainment, cultural capital and further securing financial investment in objects branded by artist names by giving collectors  and foundations that now own lots of works of art the seal of high cultural value. 

I used to teach courses on  exhibition histories and focused on a history of five DOCUMENTA exhibitions since 1989, a key moment in European history with the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall.  This was a study of curatorial strategies in this major exhibition of contemporary  every five years and its was fascinating since these platforms of the biennials are now the major exhibition form.

In the few exhibitions I have curated, the framework has been conceptual: not just a theme, a period, an artist, a topic. My aim has been to encourage visitors to grasp the relations between the works they encounter and the histories, concerns, traumas, and indeed aesthetic transformations that are being tipped into visibility and aesthetic encounter by artworking.  It is not that the art is made a woman, a category, already defined by  the hierarchy of value of men versus women. It is the position from which she intervenes into a field of meanings, a pattern of discourses, a conversation about practices and modes of art making.  How do these works of art do their work to transform my understanding of the world, my sense even of self, of others, of changing perspectives. My recent exhibition was titled Medium & Memory, and I selected eight artists all of whom have different practices, different concerns, yet all were brilliant transformers of their chose media: painting, video, drawing, collage, photography. All were deep thinkers about their practices. All were very engaged with different kinds of memory: memory of a book that has been read, memory contained in images that we collect and encounter that shape patterns of thought,  memories that are missing because political trauma made them beyond imagining and remembering.  I try to bridge the worlds of critical social historical feminist art historical writing and the intense issues of the present world through artworks that provoke responses and indeed incite words as we describe what the artwork is doing and how they lead us to discuss issues and concepts.

Medium refers to the great lesson of modernism. Memory addresses the burden we carry from our consciousness of the modern world that we inherit and this fearful, endangered and violent world in which we are now living,  with uncertainty and dread.  Can we, will we ever create a humanity shared by all and with the living planet on which we depen? Can we come together in thoughtful, ethically sensitive and life-oriented artmaking that is not about speculative profiteering of the very few who having made billions and get richer and richer while people starve, are washed away in floods caused by climate change caused by fossil fuel use, die from heat, or are murdered, as women are with relentless regularity.

Art has been a rich and brilliant site of  creative thought in aesthetic languages. I still believe in its criticality.  But as you ask me questions about my project over 50 years as a feminist art historian, I am hoping that some memory of what feminism has tried to achieve over 200 years worldwide will survive or even now challenge our complacency as disaster looms even as it has already has destroyed life worlds of many vulnerable peoples.

Feminist is one form of attention to women, certainly, but also to life, a life that is human for all and in being human, knows that we are the ones who must care for this planet or  die. Art is not about entertainment, prices,  fashion, celebrity or an even earning a living writing about it.  It is a uniquely human activity that is called to account for the same responsibility. Often it is already performing that, if only we knew better how to read what it is doing and can do to affect us and change our understanding.

You often reflect on “absence” in dominant art histories. Can absence itself become a meaningful feminist strategy of presence or resistance?

Not at all!  Resistance comes through being present, writing, creating, arguing, surviving, persisting.   I do not have confidence that the feminist revolution of which I was a part since 1968 is being preserved, fully studied and remembered, understood in all its complexity and intellectual and artistic brilliance. It can become a  category, an investment potential. For me it has always been a politics of practice and of knowledge. It is continuing and self-challenging and adapting and learning. The artists are always one-step ahead.

Feminism is now a memory, sometimes presented in distorted and reductive fashion. It has a very long history and dispersed geography. It was never one thing. It is a partner in continuously imagining how we might all live together, all living forms, in dignity and safety from violence and impoverishment of spirit and bodily life. This is very urgent. Those called men and those prepared to be the women that patriarchal cultures design and the violently police must be challenged to realize that this a moment of choice for humanity and life on this planet itself.  Capitalism is still  a force that has not been tamed for life, and we see this is an obscenity of  the divisions of wealth and poverty , greed and indifference on this planet.  Feminism, art and thought are partners in this continuing struggle.

A Bilingual Journey of Visual Narrative: Interview with Leila Sofia Medina on Documentary, Journalism and Representation

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Is bilingual journalism for you merely a method of communication, or is it also a matter of identity and representation?  

Bilingual journalism is deeply tied to my identity. As an Ecuadorian video journalist living in New York, being bilingual allows me to tell stories that often go unheard—stories of people who navigate two languages and two cultures. It’s not just about translating words; it’s about representing lived experiences and ensuring that our communities are accurately portrayed, while also highlighting narratives that are often overlooked.

What role does language play in visual storytelling? How do you develop methods to transcend linguistic boundaries?  

Language is essential when connecting with the people you’re interviewing—it helps you understand them better and even relate to their story. But visual storytelling allows us to go beyond words; it becomes a universal language. The power of video lies in showing a story in a way that allows viewers to connect with characters, even if they don’t speak the same language.

What kind of connection do you draw between bilingual journalism and documentary filmmaking?  

For me, the two are inseparable and work hand in hand. Documentary gives me the space to explore stories in depth, while bilingual journalism lets me represent my community. Both require trust, empathy, and immersion in the context of the story, as well as connecting with the people involved.

Creating multilingual content requires more than just a technical skill. What kind of ethical or cultural responsibility do you believe it entails?

Regardless of language, I believe it’s essential to stay true to what your sources are saying and to their lived realities. When translating, writing, or editing, I always ask myself: Am I keeping the context intact? Could this harm the person or community involved? Am I portraying them fairly? That ethical responsibility is always present.

When telling stories in different languages, is it more important to remain faithful to the spirit of the language or to universal narrative structures?  

I don’t believe there’s a single universal narrative structure. There are many ways to tell a story, and as a storyteller, you need to understand your subject to determine how best to tell it. Every story, character, and context is different. So rather than forcing a formula, I prioritize preserving the spirit and authenticity of the story.

How do you manage the processes of translation and subtitling in your multilingual projects?  

If the project is in Spanish, I usually do the translation and subtitling myself. I try to maintain the richness of the language, knowing that some expressions may not directly translate. When working in other languages, it’s important to collaborate with someone who understands the language and can provide an accurate, culturally aware translation.

How does this linguistic diversity affect the global circulation of your stories?  

Being bilingual is definitely an advantage—it allows me to collaborate with a wider range of publications and outlets and to shape stories for different audiences. It’s also helped me understand how to tailor storytelling styles based on whom the viewer is.

For you, is documentary filmmaking a transmission of reality or a form of creative reconstruction?  

I think it’s both. It’s a transmission of reality, but with your vision as the filmmaker. Documentaries allow for creativity and deeper emotional connection while staying rooted in truth. As long as you’re honest with the facts and the people involved, you can bring in creative elements to strengthen the story—otherwise, it becomes fiction.

When choosing your subjects, do you look for a personal connection, or are you more guided by societal needs?  

You need to feel connected to a story to tell it well—not necessarily on a personal level, but emotionally and intellectually. That connection helps you invest the time and care the story deserves. At the same time, I also ask myself: Why this story? Why now? What impact can it have? That’s where societal relevance comes in.

What are some of the most difficult ethical dilemmas you’ve faced during fieldwork?  

One challenge is deciding whether to include moments of vulnerability—moments that might make a story more powerful but could leave someone feeling exposed. I ask myself: Is this adding something meaningful, or is it just emotional drama? Another dilemma is knowing when to protect someone’s identity and making sure they understand what it means to be on camera or have their name shared.

Compared to classical cinematic language, how would you define the unique expressive power of documentary?  

Documentary is cinema—there’s no doubt about it. It might be less polished sometimes, but the goal is the same: to tell a compelling story that connects with audiences. The difference is that documentary is grounded in real life. There’s room for imperfection, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful or cinematic.

Among your projects so far, which story has impacted you the most, and why?  

Two projects stand out. One is a short documentary I made about migrant families from Ecuador who journeyed to New York. It opened my eyes to the reality so many face—not just the struggle to arrive, but the continuous challenges they face even after getting here.  

The second is a school documentary I did about a local drag artist in Astoria. It explored themes of family, grief, and chosen community. It helped me discover a world full of resilience and passion, and I learned so much from this artist and their journey.

What themes tend to stand out in your documentaries—such as migration, identity, or social struggles?  

I’m drawn to stories about identity, gender, and migration—especially within the Latin community. I find power in stories of people who are finding or rebuilding themselves. Those narratives are deeply human and universally resonant.

What is your process of developing a project—from the moment you first conceive the idea to the final edit?  

It varies depending on the project. For short stories, I usually start with a question or something I’m curious about. I research, identify potential sources, and start interviewing. After filming, editing is my favorite part—it’s where everything comes together, like solving a puzzle. For me, it’s the moment where the heart of the story really takes shape.

How has your experience at CNN en Español contributed to your independent projects?  

It was my first real experience in journalism, and I see it as my school. It taught me how to structure a story, how to shape it in a way that connects with people. I covered stories from many different communities, which made me even more passionate about storytelling. That experience definitely pushed me toward pursuing documentary filmmaking more seriously.

“The Evolution of Journalism: Digitalization, Writing, and Artificial Intelligence with Genevieve Hartnett”

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Journalism in the Digital Age

In your opinion, what is one of the biggest transformations of the journalism profession in the digital age?

I’m still relatively new to the business of news, but I would say the expectation of coming right out of school and landing up immediately on a masthead. Freelance reporting has become such a large part of getting your foot in the door at certain publications It also allows you a freedom to go after stories you might not always get to at a large news organization. It makes a career trajectory sometimes feel less certain, but also allows for more independence in the media landscape.

How do you evaluate the impact of social media on news consumption? What are its advantages and disadvantages compared to traditional journalism?


I used to be more cynical about the fact that a large portion of people get their news from social media. However, after seeing the work of people like Bisan Owda and Motaz Azaiza and their on the ground and award winning reporting from Gaza, I’ve realized how much citizen journalism can not only inform but also tap into communities in a way that traditional media may not always be able to. Even if their coverage is not in traditional news media outlets, they show a tenacity and kindness to the communities they report on that inspires me as an early career journalist. 



Readers’ trust in news sources has been shaken. How can we rebuild the credibility of journalism in the digital age?


I think so much of the reason reader’s trust in news sources has been shaken is because there is still a lot of mystery to the business of journalism and how we actually do our jobs. I’ve learned so much about investigative journalism through reading She Said by Meghan Twohey and Jodi Kantor on how they broke the Harvey Weinstein story at The New York Times and really getting a look into their reporting process. I think transparency into our journeys with certain stories can really help build trust and relatability with the public.

Also, so many people feel that journalism and journalists only exist in cities, and really only in the biggest cities at that. So many incredible leaders are working to bring quality journalism to rural and local areas where reporters are going out of their way to reach forgotten communities. I think these publications and initiatives in news deserts can help demystify the work of journalists, and maybe even bring more people with different perspectives to the profession!

What do you think about the impact of algorithms and personalized news feeds on journalism?


I mainly think that algorithmic bias is just something that more people need to be aware of and how it’s affecting the ways we communicate with one another. The amount of times I hear someone give a hot take they think no one has heard before, meanwhile it’s verbatim from something that was in the latest episode of Subway Takes! These algorithms really can make you feel like we’re all living the same existence, being fed the same content.  I think encouraging a healthy dose of skepticism about why you are being shown a certain video is something we should be teaching more of.

Journalism, Writing and Artificial Intelligence


How do you interpret the impact of artificial intelligence on the news production and content creation process in journalism?


I feel like most journalists I speak to are still relatively skeptical about relying too heavily on AI – not only for its intelligence impact, but also of that on the environment. That being said, it is being more heavily integrated into all aspects of our business, from hiring to even processing data for stories. Everyone is able to draw their own line, but for me, I always want my creativity to lead the way in my writing process.



What do you think about the use of artificial intelligence-supported tools (ChatGPT, automatic news writing software, etc.) in journalism?


I try to look at AI as a tool that you learn how to use in order to not get left behind. What that often looks like for me is using Otter or Descript to transcribe interviews, or sometimes entering a story I wrote into Chat GPT to help with making a concise pitch to a publication by pulling out the main ideas.  Still, I don’t think it has the capability to truly replace journalists, as so much of our work is connecting with people on a human level.

What do you think about the ethical dimensions of AI-supported content? How should the boundary between artificial intelligence writing and human journalism be protected?


While I think that AI can be a tool that we use to make some of the organization process of writing easier, I am wary about ever letting it actually write stories or content for us. It may be able to imitate styles of famous writers or publications, but I don’t think it can ever substitute for intellectual curiosity that is required in human journalism. In my masters program, we’ve learned about AI and how to use it for certain projects, but we still have strict rules about using it to write entire stories. I think news organizations ought to have similar guidelines, and many already do.



Do you think artificial intelligence is a tool that makes journalists’ jobs easier, or is it a threat that changes the nature of the profession?


I think we as journalists need to learn how to use it as a tool so that it doesn’t change the nature of our profession. Sorry if that’s a cop out 🙂 In one of our classes, a friend and I drafted an AI tool called ManiFFFest (the three f’s are For the Freelance Frontier) that would help freelancers figure out where to pitch a story they were working on. The idea was to have the app do the work of pitching, emailing follow ups, etc while you get back to focusing on writing and reporting. Obviously it’s a big dream, but I think AI tools for journalists need to have the real people in mind from their inception.

The Future of Journalism and Writing

What are the biggest challenges for young people who want to be journalists and writers today?

I think one of the layover effects of algorithms and the isolation forced by the Covid-19 pandemic is that it can be harder to develop a unique voice. Weirdly, I think you learn more about what you actually think and your own opinions when you’re in a group with others, discussing ideas and how your opinions may differ. Developing a real sense of community with other writers or creatives is one of the best ways to find your own perspective, which is so critical to stand out in a crowded field. 

How will journalism develop in the future? What skills should the new generation of journalists have?

I think in order to survive, journalism needs to embrace diversity in its hiring and perspectives that it promotes. We are in a political climate where tools that fueled segregation are being implemented disturbingly fast. As an industry we need to be prepared to protect the many gains that we have made in being more inclusive of different voices. As a member of the new generation of journalists, I’m trying to develop my skills in adapting to periods of crisis and uncertainty. To me, this means building up your own skills outside of a traditional job and potentially creating your own avenues to success.

How do you evaluate the rise of independent journalism and alternative media platforms?

I’m really curious to see how Substacks from established journalists may totally shift the media landscape in the next five to ten years. What may have started as ways for writers to express their own opinions have become some of the leaders on breaking details from stories that news organizations may not be reporting. Will these Substacks become mini news rooms of their own, breaking news before others can get to it?  

I’m also interested to see what happens in the podcast space next. Audio journalism is one of my major interests as I think it can tell stories and engage more listeners in editorial content than ever before. After their crucial influence on the 2024 Presidential election, I’m curious to see if podcasts become even more prominent in delivering news or potentially dwindle from over exposure. 

In your opinion, what will be the most important technological developments that shape the future of journalism and writing?

If there is anything that AI could do to really be a net positive in the future, it would be some kind of tool to assist with media literacy, especially for young people. The cutting of funds to the arts and humanities really worries me in terms of the long term effects it will have on dissemination of information and encouragement of creativity.  If we teach skills to people at a young age on how to think more critically not just about what they see on the news, but also asking them what they thought of the movie they watched or the song they just listened to, already we are developing smarter individuals who might go on to give new perspectives to the media landscape.

Interview with Experimental Music and Sound Artist Katsura Mouri on “Noise Istanbul Festival and Experimental Music”

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Interviewer: Pr Carnet Magazine Editor-in-Chief, Academician and Author Semay Buket Şahin.

Mouri-san, we know you as an experimental sound artist, but could you tell us more about yourself? Who is Katsura Mouri?

I am a musician and sound artist who performs using toy turntables as musical instruments.

Rather than engaging in conventional turntablism techniques such as scratching or beat juggling, I amplify the hum noise produced by the turntable and perform with it as if it were a musical instrument. This hum noise can be modified through effects processors to create ambient tones or timbres resembling those of a guitar.

In addition to utilizing hum noise, I also amplify sounds picked up by the cartridge, following an approach similar to John Cage’s Cartridge Music. Furthermore, I incorporate circuit bending techniques that manipulate the internal circuitry of the turntable to generate sound.

In recent years, I have also been engaged in the creation of three-dimensional artworks and sound installations that incorporate turntables.

You recently visited Istanbul for Noise Istanbul. Could you share your experience of performing at the Noise Istanbul festival? How did the festival’s atmosphere and audience influence your approach to performance? Additionally, how did you find Istanbul in terms of its cultural and artistic energy? As an experimental sound artist, did you find anything particularly inspiring?

The festival venue was located in the new city district, lined with sophisticated shopping streets. It was a magnificent concert hall housed in a modern European-style building.

I was quite surprised by the number of young people in the festival audience. Some were leaning forward, listening intently, and I could tell that they were genuinely enjoying the music.

At a previous festival where I performed, I was influenced by the audience’s energy, which led to a highly energetic performance on my part. This time, since the audience was deeply engaged in the music, my performance became more focused on sound. While it was not perfect, I believe I was able to deliver a solid performance.

Istanbul was a fascinating city where European and Asian cultures seamlessly merged.
One of the most memorable experiences for me was visiting the Blue Mosque. Its beauty and grandeur far exceeded my imagination, and I was instantly captivated. Inside the mosque, some people sat quietly in meditation while others prayed, creating an atmosphere of tranquility that contrasted sharply with the bustling streets outside.

Although the architectural form, scale, and color palette were entirely different, the sense of sacredness and the slow passage of time reminded me of Japanese Zen temples. I once created a  three-dimensional artwork based on the theme of Zen, and I feel that my visit to the mosque might inspire me when I next work on a Zen-themed piece.

I found Istanbul to be a remarkable city that embraces and coexists with diverse cultures, including both historical heritage and modern urban life.

A short walk from the city center led to places where one could enjoy nature, and the presence of numerous travelers from around the world reminded me of Kyoto, where I live. This sense of familiarity gave me a strong feeling of connection to the city.

Experimental music often challenges conventional norms. What drives you to continue working in this niche genre? Through your work, what do you hope to communicate or achieve?

As many may already know, experimental music has been shaped by legendary artists such as Pierre Schaeffer, a pioneer of musique concrète, and John Cage, who explored the full potential of experimental sound and influenced countless artists. I, too, have been deeply inspired by them.

I find great joy in exploring how to innovate new and unconventional sounds. Of course, coming up with groundbreaking innovations like John Cage is no easy feat. However, even achieving small innovations brings me immense satisfaction, and that serves as my motivation.

Additionally, when an audience resonates with my work, I feel a profound sense of happiness, which also fuels my drive.

I do not create my works with the intention of conveying a specific message to others. I am simply doing what I love.

There is no set goal or destination in my artistic practice—I am not striving to achieve something specific. I am simply in pursuit of what is fun and interesting.Moving forward, I want to continue exploring the possibilities of the turntable.

What led you to choose experimental music and turntablism as your primary means of expression? Were there any specific moments or influences that shaped this decision?

When I was 19, I was a rather unconventional DJ—so much so that no one could dance to my sets. In fact, some audience members even left the venue.

Around that time, I started working part-time at Parallax Records in Kyoto, where I met a group of people with whom I formed an ensemble that performed with records simultaneously. Rather than following a typical DJ style, we experimented by striking the turntable cartridge, generating scratch noises, and exploring alternative ways to perform with turntables.

After the group disbanded, I found it difficult to transport two Technics SL-1200 turntables and a large collection of records to live venues on my own. This led me to start using toy turntables, which were lightweight and easy to carry. At the same time, I had grown tired of the conventional DJ setup, where the turntables were placed on a table.

Coincidentally, I was really into Jimmy Page at the time, which inspired me to develop a performance style where I held the turntable like a guitarist rather than using it in a traditional DJ manner.

In the collaborative album Various Histories, you explore the fusion of sound textures and soundscapes. Through this collaboration, what have you learned about your artistic identity and the possibilities of experimental music?

For tracks 1 through 4 on this album, I edited and restructured the recordings of our improvised performances. Not just for this project, but in all my works, I compose through a process of re-editing recorded sound. When improvisation is recorded, both the good and the bad elements are captured. By extracting only the best parts and reassembling them, the result can be an entirely new and extraordinary piece that surpasses the original recording.

This album was created by selectively reconstructing the most compelling elements—such as the mechanical noises from Tim Olive’s magnetic pickups, the scratch noises from prepared records, and the drones produced by turntables.

Much like how John Cage used environmental sounds as musical material, I find excitement in treating noise and sound itself as raw material, reconfiguring it with creative intent to transform it into something even greater. Just as environmental sounds are limitless in variation, I see infinite possibilities in the sonic textures and noise generated by musical instruments.

In today’s cultural landscape, why do you think experimental music is important? Do you see it as a means of pushing boundaries, expressing individuality, or responding to social change?

Experimental musicians are, by nature, already highly individualistic simply by constantly challenging new ideas. It goes without saying that experimental music has expanded cultural boundaries—figures like Merce Cunningham and John Cage, who applied chance operations to performance, are prime examples.

However, I believe that not only experimental music but also all forms of culture and art—including visual arts, design, architecture, media, dance, and fashion—are equally important. Engaging with and understanding a wide range of artistic and cultural fields broadens one’s perspective far more than focusing on a single discipline. To adapt to social change, we must be able to respond quickly and flexibly to shifting environments. Understanding experimental music may help eliminate preconceived notions and biases, allowing for a more agile response to various changes.

Recently, emerging technologies such as AI and virtual reality have been gaining attention. AI-driven music production and VR concerts are expanding the possibilities of the future. While it is uncertain how experimental music will be utilized and evolve, I am excited about the transformations that will come with technological advancements. I, too, am eager to continue exploring new challenges in the future.

Interview with Boğaziçi University, Philosophy Department Member Barry Stocker on “Philosophy in the Context of Politics, Ideology and Education”

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Interviewer: Academician, Author and Pr Carnet Editor Semay Buket Şahin

Dear Barry, how would you define philosophy? In your opinion, is philosophy a part of science, or is it a discipline that goes hand in hand with science?

Defining philosophy is a philosophical question itself, so any answer presumes something about philosophy, and tends towards circularity. In terms of etymology it means love of wisdom, but one major philosopher, Hegel said that complete philosophy is what becomes wisdom. Despite the etymology, we might also think of philosophy as something different from wisdom, as philosophy is a form of inquiry, while wisdom presumes a state of mind, or a way of being, in which the thinker is identical with wisdom and passes it on rather than engaging in inquiry. If philosophy is related to science, is maybe the science of sciences, then that turns philosophy into essentially epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge, which is a branch of philosophy, so that philosophy is something within philosophy.

If philosophy is not knowledge the obvious alternative is that it is a form of deductive reasoning about abstract principles which tells us something about the structure of reality, which may be a kind of knowledge, but is not the same as the gaining of knowledge in specific science, and is not even the same as the most general form of science. Another possibility is the phenomenological approach in which philosophy reveals some kind of essential reality which is not covered by the scientific pursuit of knowledge or deductive reasoning. Alternatively, returning to Hegel we mighty regard it as the practice of a particular reason which is ‘speculative’ (recognises that identity is also always difference) and dialectical (proceeds through negation of particular universals from an absolute perspective).

This is just a sketch of some of the contours of any debate about what philosophy is. Despite what some philosophers have hoped, philosophy cannot realistically be regarded as just the most general form of scientific method, or the results of a method of abstract reasoning which might be deductive or speculative, or as an access to a kind of pre-theoretical grasp of the cosmos preceding epistemology, metaphysics, logic and speculation. Some have regard philosophy as a form of clarification of problems using the tools of logic or linguistic concepts, but clarification is not the same as resolution. All the approaches mentioned, and others, can be regarded as legitimate parts of philosophy, but if we thinking about what philosophy in its most general sense, I believe it must be something do with the search for universality in explanation and definitions, which always runs into tension between singularity and universality, parts and wholes, particularity and the absolute, subjectivity and objectivity, fragmentary ideas and complete system. This is a list that can be constantly extended. The point is that philosophy is what explores the gaps, inconsistencies, paradoxes and contradictions which emerge in trying to resolve the oppositions just listed. I particularly like Kierkegaard’s suggestion that paradox is the passion of thought, and believe it can be adopted without assuming anything much of what makes up Kierkegaard’s philosophy.

According to your book chapter “Tragedy, Myth, and Liberty in Interstate Theory” in Liberty and Security in an Anarchical World Vol- I how does your polycentric model of sovereignty address the challenges posed by modern globalized conflicts, particularly those involving non-state actors?

A polycentric approach to sovereignty recognises inevitable realities, with regard to the competitive, changeable and localisable nature of institutions designed by humans. While it seems just about possible to have a kind of large centralised imperial nation, these depend on the existence of external threats or anxieties about the external world, which give some basis to a very vigorous exercise of hard power within state boundaries. We might hope for more peace and stronger international institutions, but it seems to be structurally impossible to have a unified global sovereign which either rules in a centralised way or has a coherent structure of devolved sovereignties covering the whole world.

The first option is always going to be disturbed by localised resistance and power competition at the sub-global level. Even if in some way, it is possible to have very integrated uniform sovereignty actglobal level, we are clearly far from such a situation. It could only emerge in a long term way in the far future. This possibility seems to be me to be very abstract, and in reality there could never be a global community possessing a sufficiently dense consensus on interests and principles, to make anything possible more than a very limited form of global sovereignty, which would be in a kind of shifting unstable balance with the sovereignty of nations or the partially shared sovereignty of blocs of nations. Even small nations face periodic challenges to inner sovereignty from the sharper forms of citizen dissent or various kinds of flows of information, population movements economic activity which spill over national boundaries. Completely self-contained sovereignty of nations is impossible as is a completed integrated global sovereignty.

How would rationalistic and homogenizing tendencies of transnational institutions might accommodate the need for global responses to issues like climate change and pandemics? What are your thoughts about that?

Rationalistic and homogenising tendencies in international institutions provide for some basis for international al action on climate change and pandemics. The rationalising and homogenising tendencies also create problems. A single centre trying to impose a unique approach for the whole world will not allow for the benefits of localised experimentation, comparison of solutions, and full debate of polices. Realistically national governments will be a necessary location for information gathering, policy formation and actions.

There may be some grouping of this as in the European Union , but even this is not an exercise of fully integrated sovereignty commanding a cross-European administration. In reality it is based on compromise between elects of European decision making and what nations agree. It is very clear that global co-ordination cannot go any further than this model and is likely to be less. The facts of climate change and the conditions for future pandemics don’t tell us what the best solutions are. These are fields which include unpredictable feedback, at the natural level enhanced by collective human action producing its own feedback. We can’t know in advance what the best possible solution is. We don’t know what the best solution is for different parts of the world given different conditions. There is no perfect solution there is just a variety of trade offs between various actions with various consequences outside the fields of climate and pandemic control. We cannot possibly have perfect knowledge of how to compare the results of a multitude of trade offs in a variety of possible feedback loops. Even if we did have a perfect rational solution based on perfect knowledge of the future, we would still not be able to perfectly control the politics about which kinds of costs populations are likely to tolerate. Some global co-ordination is desirable but we should not deceive us that there can bear perfect global coordination on perfect solutions.

Do you think that if we had adopted the Roman educational system of the Septem Artes Liberales, regardless of race or religion, we could have achieved a more civilized, globalized, and intellectually advanced society today?

The Septem Artes Liberales combine a quadrivium of astronomy, geometry, arithmetic and music with a trivium of rhetoric, grammar and logic. Whatever merits this may have had for the ancient, medieval and early modern worlds, it is not an adequate way of defining basic knowledge for the present. It certainly never produced I can’t right now say how this compares with classical education in southern, central and eastern Asia, which is the obvious point of comparison. It maybe worked in the Roman Empire, then Catholic (later Catholic and Protestant) Europe for providing some common understanding, but it has never been a global model and chant be now.

There is an issue now of global communications, travel and economic flows, which does make the issue of a broad global consensus on the basics of education relevant for present times. That is not the same as arguing that a rigid seven-fold structure can be universally applied. A broad universal education at pre-university level should presumably include mathematics and some high quality of understanding of your own language. This requires some study of literature and history.

The greatest understanding comes from doing something like this one more language, some study of at last one foreign language should be part of any education core, which also serves needs of communication. A well shaped education core should really introduce everyone to the starting elements of all major sciences, natural and social, which means physics chemistry, geography, biology, psychology, sociology and economics. For contemporary life, we should probably add communications studies and information technology. Philosophy provides a way of thinking about foundations and connections between these ares of knowledge. It is rather difficult to study before 16. Before 16, I favour studies of values and critical reasoning. Ideally this should absorb and replace classes specifically devoted to religion, which can be best studied in a critical and comparative environment. Increasing globalization suggests more elements of comparative studies in these areas where applicable. So I don’t have anything as compact as seven areas of study. What I have suggested above covers 14 areas (before getting into foreign languages), so that is a doubling of the old septet. How this is worked out in practice will inevitably vary between global regions, countries and even within countries, allowing for different circumstances along with the benefits of experimentation and comparison.

There is no way of studying all 14 of these things simultaneously throughout the years of compulsory schooling. Schooling should introduced all of them to all students at some point. Constant study is necessary for mathematics and any foreign language (at least one, and in some multi-lingual countries this can be complicate by requirements to study more than one language of that nation). This should be combined with constant study of at least one area of natural science and one area of social science, along with national literature and history (preferably with comparative elements for both). That makes a core sextet, though of a more variable kind than the classical septet. At sixteen this can be joined by philosophy, as once you start to study any field in any real depth, philosophical questions do arise, so that would make a septet, though at this point maybe some choice should be allowed regarding whether to study both social science and natural science.

Six subjects enough for pre-university study and maybe that could drop further in the final year of pre-university study. All countries of the world following something like this patterns probably a prerequisite for properly educated people throughout a global community, equipped to cope with life in any part of the world.

What would you like to say about philosophy education in Turkey? How would you interpret it in terms of language, culture, and history? Do you think Latin and Ancient Greek education should be introduced at earlier stages in Turkey to support the development of free thought?

It is difficult for me to generalize about philosophy education in Turkey. I understand there is less of it at high school level than there used to be which is unfortunate. As with other countries, I favour making classical languages more available as subjects of school study, but it is not possible to make this compulsory. Experimentation in schooling should be allowed in which some schools could specialize in offering classical languages. I certainly think there should be far more departments in this area in Turkish universities, though equally there should be more departments concerned with ancient languages and literatures of the Near East and Asia, as this is the obvious major alternative to the Graeco-Roman-western tradition. None of these traditions should be seen as isolated and self-contained. The complete study of the history of liberty certainly requires some awareness of ancient history and texts, but I don’t think we can make liberty as a way of thinking influencing education too dependent on study of ancient sources. Some element of this is necessary in philosophy and some other humanities, but in general, liberty has to appear through education in emphasis on the development of individuality of a kind which is free thinking, critical and responsible. Some element of classics in the world of education is a significant part of this, but it cannot be the full story. Philosophy has to be understood primarily in terms of a cross-national tradition across centuries in which nations have greatly changed, so it cannot possibly be understood in terms of national tradition or culture or history. Good philosophy in any country depends on having an internationalized and comparative sense of tradition, culture and history.

What types of research can be conducted in the field of philosophy today? What are the studies you have undertaken in relation to philosophy? Do you believe that alternative learning methodologies can be developed in this field?

I don’t have a strong view about new ways of learning philosophy. I teach in fairly old fashioned ways without much resort to tech ology in the class. Philosophy is inevitably affected by new forms of technology and communication, but I can’t see this changing the core. Different instructors can have different views about use of technology. This should be let opt individual choice. In the end all philosophy education has to be directed towards philosophical texts and forms of reasoning which are not obviously greatly changed by technology. I studied most aspects of western philosophical tradition as an undergraduate, making a special effort to study Continental European Philosophy after Kant since this could only be studied as an option (elective), not as part of the core courses. In my postgraduate work, I was very oriented towards Continental Philosophy and its relationship with literary studies.

I also developed interests in political theory, during that time, as an area of academic writing, though I have always read in that area anyway. There are some other things I came across then to do with philosophers who have a very literary aspect to their work, who still interest me, particularly Giambattista Vico and Michel de Montaigne. There was a period in which I was concerned with Wittgenstein, along with connections between Continental and Analytical Philosophy (that is philosophy very oriented towards science, logic, and conceptual analysis). Though that is till of some interest to me, it is not an area where I aim to write much anymore. I have been interested for some time on Foucault and theories of liberty, but have been slow to really consolidate my writing in that area and getting it published. Something similar applies to Vico’s contribution to thinking about philosophy as the philosophy of the human world, in which history and literature are central.

I am aiming to make progress in these projects, along with other writing commitments, which currently include work on Foucault’s view of seventeenth thought. Recently I have published on philosophy and literature and Derrida’s ethics. I aim to keep working on ethics as well as philosophy and literature. I have thoughts about tragedy related to both fields and that may express itself in future writing.

Interviewer: Academician, Author and Pr Carnet Editor Semay Buket Şahin