Here, now, then, there 

We cordially invite you to participate in the first Pausition in the framework of our project HOW WILL YOU ASCERTAIN TIME? – a listening workshop with Lee Ingleton and Syma Tariq:

Here, now, then, there takes its title from M. Jacqui Alexander's critique of the normatively assumed linearity and hierarchy embedded in time, which she takes as a crucial category that constitutes the social. Alexander in particular troubles the dichotomy between distanced tradition/contemporaneous modernity, in which "the West is presumably ‘here and now,’ while the Third World is ‘then and there’”. Following Ella Shohat, she argues instead that "time is scrambled and palimpsestic, in all the Worlds..."

Here, now, then, there proffers a series of listening modalities that aim to draw out this "palimpsestic” time, taking listening as a form of expectant negotiation, where multiple temporalities collide, meet, tear apart and co-exist. We intend this workshop to be an opportunity to share experiences of time, as well as listen collectively to “various ways in which racialization and colonization are being consistently written into modernity’s different projects”.

Here, now, then, there encompasses four activities that aim to be generative and informal. For the introductory session, each participant is invited to bring one “artifact” – for example, a recording or sound, an object, a note, a ticket, a story – that expresses a personal experience of waiting. Following this, a listening session of sound works chosen by the convenors and a soundwalk that takes in public timepieces will be staged as exercises in shared listening-time and space for further reflection. Lastly, a collective reading-and-response afternoon will draw us together in a final discussion, with diverse printed material provided for the group by the convenors.
 

​​Syma Tariq (UK/Pakistan)  formerly a freelance journalist and music promoter,  is currently completing her PhD at the centre for Creative Research into Sounds Arts Practice, University of the Arts London. Her practice-based research approaches the 1947 partition of British India as a sonic condition, investigating its discursive and temporal separations through testimony, fiction, historical silences and sonic-archival modes of knowledge production after colonial destruction. Her associated sound project Partitioned Listening works with these critical themes through the audio essay form. She engages in various types of work otherwise, including writing, editing, recording, DJing and sound production and curation. Syma has initiated several collaborative audio projects for artistic contexts including A Thousand Channels (Ancestors, Lahore/ Colomboscope, Colombo); R22 is Burning (Palais de Tokyo, Paris/ Radio Appartement 22) and Café Univers (Contour Biennale, Mechelen), and has contributed to The Funambulist, Radio Al-Hara, Vancouver Queer Arts Festival, Listening Across Disciplines ii and the forthcoming book Pak*stan Desires: Queer Futures Elsewhere (Duke University Press). She has presented in several international settings and is an arts associate at the British School at Athens.

Dr Lee Ingleton is a Sri Lankan-Australian composer and artist working in the fields of socially engaged arts and experimental, electronic musics with a practice spanning research, writing, installation, composition, performance, curation, pedagogy & activism guided by queer-trans-feminist, anti-racist political paradigms. Lee’s work since 2007 focuses on collaboration as a mode to engage the social, uncovering hidden histories and re-working historical amnesias of marginalisation. Their practice as a solo artist focuses on the use of personal experience to explore cultural practices and histories through performance scores, sound and interactive media. Current projects include their debut EP,  Dancing With Toots Benedicta, and You Will Never Travel for A Thousand Channels (Colomboscope, Sri Lanka). In Greece, Lee established AveloSpace (since 2017), a LGBTQIA+ makerspace in downtown Athens; collaborated with the socially engaged art group Gender Panic (2018–19); and co-curated with Aphrodite* Film Festival (2018–19); Athens Museum of Queer Arts (2017–19); and Sound Acts Athens (2015–17). Previously, Lee collaborated extensively with cultural partners Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP) & Electra, both based in London, producing workshops, symposia and performances. Lee has published internationally and is the author of www.feministfrequencies.org and curator and archivist of www.hernoise.org.