Conversations, essays and performances extending from the film by Aura Satz
Who raises the alarm, and in whose interest? What might a siren sound like for the entangled human, non-human, and more-than-human?
This collection emerges from and expands upon a three-day programme at Tate Modern, held alongside the premiere screening of Aura Satz’s film Preemptive Listening. The programme brought together musicians, artists, historians, sociologists, and activists (several featured in the film), to think through the siren—not simply as an emergency signal, but as a tool for listening, remembering, sensing, and reimagining. Speaking to the sirens that are and those that could be, from sonic warfare to ecological disaster, the conversations circled back to recurring questions of how we might rewrite the scripts of urgency, survival, and resistance.
This collection extends those discussions, gathering voices that interrogate how we listen to sirens from different perspectives and positionalities—poetic, political, and personal. Here, the siren is not just an object but a method, a diagnostic tool that reveals power relations and raises urgent questions of (sonic) governance.
Contents
“In Conversation”—Aura Satz and Beatriz García-Velasco / “Three Sonic Beads” In honour of Ukrainian novelist, war crimes researcher and poet Victoria Amelina—Valentine Umansky / “Listening Sensations”—Evelyn Glennie in conversation with Aura Satz / ”Emergency Hearing”—Hillel Schwartz / “A Duet”—Mazen Kerbaj and Khalid Abdalla / “Phantom Sirens”—Margarida Mendes / “Can unseen art be a beacon? Don’t Follow the Wind and the Fukushima nuclear disaster”—Jason Waite / “Iron Aura, Phantom Core”—Xenia Benivolski and Camille Norment / “Repurposing the Siren: Insights from Deep Time”—Carina Fearnley / “Sirening as a verb”—Arturo Escobar / “Sensing Invisible Threats”—Francesca L Cavallo in conversation with Jennifer Gabrys, Riar Rizaldi and Jana Winderen / “Choreographies of Organisation”—Raven Chacon interviewed by Irene Revell / “Performance in the Tate Tanks”—Elaine Mitchener and David Toop.
This online collection is guest-edited by the core Preemptive Listening team—Aura Satz, Francesca Laura Cavallo, and Irene Revell—based at the Royal College of Art, alongside Tate’s Valentine Umansky and Beatriz García-Velasco, and Liquid Architecture Editorial Associate Joel Stern (RMIT University).
Preemptive Listening at Tate Modern
Day one: Screening / Day two: Performances / Day three: Symposium.
Acknowledgements
With support from an AHRC research, development and engagement fellowship hosted at the Royal College of Art, Tate Film, and Liquid Architecture. Tate Film is supported by Fondazione In Between Art Film.
For future film screenings and related events please refer to the website preemptivelisteningfilm.com.
Liquid Architecture is an organisation for artists working with sound and listening, based on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country. Disclaimer is Liquid Architecture’s online journal—disclaimer.org.au.
Preemptive Listening, a film by Aura Satz, with newly imagined sirens by Laurie Spiegel, Evelyn Glennie, Maja S. K. Ratkje, Anton Lukoszevieze, BJ Nilsen, Ilpo Väisänen, Rhodri Davies, Mazen Kerbaj, FUJI|IIIIITA, Sarah Davachi, David Toop, Christina Kubisch, Moor Mother, Raven Chacon, Elaine Mitchener, Camille Norment, Horomona Horo, Debit, Kode9, and spoken by Khalid Abdalla, Daphne Carr, Asantewaa Boykin, Niki Jones, Erin Matariki Carr and Arturo Escobar.
