Intersectional Listening and Positionality

A SHARED KEYNOTE SPEECH

by AMANDA GUTIERREZ and BÉNÉWENDÉ SEGUEDA

IN COLLABORATION with VERONICA MOCKLER

Presented at the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, Listening Pasts – Listening Futures

I invited one youth, a woman first-generation immigrant in Canada, to reflect on the question of listening collectively while imagining the future of Acoustic Ecology. This keynote project aimed to reflect on the pressing issues that politically and ecologically concern our situated listening experiences. When I look into the relational form of listening, working with aural pedagogies, I understand that we have diverse forms of perception. Since the early stages of our life, each carries a unique set of sensory formations, our cultural heritage and familial strings that wave into the construction of our personhood. Therefore, to listen to the future, I must listen to the past that expands my grounds and the grounds of further generations that will co-create the future soundscapes, their diversity and the ecological attunement that will unfold. These perspectives are an open invitation to embrace situated experiences from a non-western perspective, understanding that listening must be diversified and destabilize universal sound theories. 

In the past, present, and future, immigrant women of colour voices are often unheard if not silenced. Therefore, I opened the WFAE podium to reflect on what Acoustic Ecology means to one member of this future generation. I invited high school student Segueda Benewende for this project to elaborate and deliver the keynote speech collaboratively. The lecture was developed through an aural pedagogy workshop led by artist Veronica Mockler and myself as project co-leads.

World Forum of Acoustic Ecology 2023