The only ______ sound system is a Soundsystem: Word-Sound-Power as fundamental to transdisciplinary anteaesthetics and meaning-making

What is a sound in the language of your dreams? Mine is modumo (with its sibling mošito that means ‘beat’, ‘footstep’, ‘rhythm’…). The root term ‘duma’, in Sesotho exists simultaneously as ‘wish’ and ‘desire’ in English, while homonymously meaning ‘rumble’, ‘thunder’ and ‘drone’. On its route, it riffs to dumediša and dumedišana: ‘greet’ and ‘greet each other’ respectively, an invitation to a call and response. Dumela will then interject: ‘Hallo!’, ‘Hola!’ ‘Thobela!’ and so on and so forth, while its homonym suggests an ‘agreement’ or a ‘belief’. Dumelela, on the other hand, evokes the foreboding notions of power and authority as it means to ‘allow’ or grant a ‘permission’ … 

The seminar considers the everyday, quotidian presence of sound/music as fundamental sensibility to collective study, with a boundless capacity to “keep it moving” or “make things happen”. Sound as a path-breaker. Over two semesters, students will build a shared/communal soundsystem from scratch, accompanied by individual and/or experimental publications (think user guide/manual) that grounds the shared/communal soundsystem, engaging the question: what problem/s does this soundsystem have with the System? 

Always with due respect to the Caribbean roots of soundsystem (in part a vital response to exclusion of Jamaicans in broadcasts), the seminar invites students to collectively analyse and respond to systemic-oppressive systems by imagining the potentialities of radical, joyful and rebellious inclusion promised by a soundsystem today, now, here and elsewhere. 

While the home for the seminar is Room 2 the making of the soundsystem and all facilities and infrastructure that KHM has to offer. Most importantly, the seminar will engage, and make use of the world outside KHM through multiple modalities excursions including but not limited to crate diggin’, festivals, recording studios, archive homes/centres, cinema, the streets… 

Collective outcome: A shared, functional, mobile and sustainable soundsystem 

Individual and or sub-collective outcomes: RISO+ publications