Abstract | Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation
This talk investigates the effects of music, sound and storytelling in conflict and post-conflict communities and their distribution through digital media activities. Comparative case studies in the Middle East, Brazil and Northern Ireland serve as a basis for evaluating how sound is used to articulate experiences of violence, to support narratives of resistance and to promote peace building. It will consider common patterns of response and engagement across different conflict settings and identify how participatory music, sound art and performance can influence political agendas and feed into policy-making.
The conceptual frameworks of resistance, resilience and reconciliation highlight specific conflict conditions through which to analyse the effects of sound on community participants and interpret their conflict narratives. This research also addresses a constantly evolving global security environment in which music and the arts are increasingly being recognized as a means of healing or an arena for shared dialogue. However, there is still a gap in scholarship in addressing exactly how participatory and community-led approaches to music, sound and storytelling are being used to mediate and articulate the politics of conflict for wider policy outcomes. The talk will feature excerpts from an artwork created in dialogue with fieldwork from the three case studies, juxtaposing embodied and sonic articulations of conflict.