Filtered listening to Inuit songs, sounds and voices in Switzerland
Switzerland has a long-standing tradition of scientific explorations and academic research in and of the Arctic and its inhabitants. This allowed among other things, the creation of corresponding archives, including sound collections, in Swiss museums. In the last few years, Swiss interest in that region resulted in several museum exhibitions, (music) festivals and performances by Inuit artists. However, the question of how we are listening to Inuit and the Arctic in Switzerland remains open. Drawing on A.M. Kanngieser’s concept of ‘Sonic Colonialities’, the dissertation focuses on historical and contemporary Swiss modes of listening to Inuit songs, sounds and voices. I am particularly interested in Swiss ‘Sonic Colonialities’, emerging out of intersections between archives, museums and academia, and how they have been filtering what or who becomes audible in Switzerland. Therefore, the dissertation explores how colonial logics, forms of knowledge-making and racialized and/or gendered (sonic) imaginaries about Inuit and the Arctic have been shaping Swiss modes of listening. And how these listening practices have been informing how Inuit songs, sounds and voices have been collected, handled, interpreted and mediated in Switzerland. The dissertation will answer these research questions in form of a multi-sited ethnography, focusing on an ethnographic Inuit sound archive, museum exhibitions, festivals and performances by Inuit artists as the predominant sites of sonic encounters between Swiss audiences and Inuit songs, sounds and voices. Therefore, applying an interdisciplinary approach combining postcolonial, feminist and affect theory with scholarship from sound studies and ethnomusicology is crucial. As focus lies on listening, I am also exploring ‘Listening Sessions’ as a method to critically examine such sonic encounters. Furthermore, a critical reflection of my own listening positionality as a female, Swiss and non-Inuit research will be an integral part of the research process. By focusing on listening and the auditory, the dissertation on the one hand contributes to Sound Studies scholarship, where there is still a lack of studies focusing on race, gender and difference in sound. On the other hand, it adds to studies on postcolonial Switzerland who are increasingly examining representation of ‘Others’, but where sonic perspectives are missing so far.
