[-empyre-] occult auscultations

[Alex Borkowski]

Hi all,



It’s such a pleasure to do as Arshiya and Renate so warmly invited and take
a few deep breaths in this soft-skinned space!



Rather serendipitously, I’ve found myself imbibing the many exciting
vignettes emerging from the listserv alongside a chapter from Jacob
Smith’s *Eco-Sonic
Media <https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520286146/eco-sonic-media> *about
divination technologies—from rhabdomancy wands to metal detectors—that
sense various subterranean treasures. As users listen for aberrant
frequencies, these practices stage material encounters with past
inhabitants of a place through an act of “occult auscultation.” Smith
suggests that these practices might be allied with environmentalist and
conservationist movements, as they initiate intimate sensorial engagements
with the earth and re-invest value in discarded objects. This seems to
resonate rather beautifully with expanded connections invited by the Age of
Aquarius: attuned to charged spatio-temporal overlaps and hauntings, yet
grounded in place and planet and ripe for reorientation towards ecological
care.



This speculative media archaeological approach is similar to that which I
take in my own research. My doctoral project, still in its very nascent
stages, considers the performances of 19th century spirit mediums as sonic
interfaces. I seek to chart an alternative genealogy, and a future ethical
trajectory, of feminized voices in media technologies that exceeds the
regressive gender politics encoded in voice-activated personal assistants,
such as Siri and Alexa. This project is also aligned with my preoccupation
with voices more broadly—wavering between declarative self-presence and
spectrality, embodiment and disembodiment (what Mladen Dolar
<https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/voice-and-nothing-more> terms an
“ineradicable extimacy”)—which I explore through my creative practice as a
writer and artist. I’ll be presenting a collection of sound works, titled *The
Hydrocephalus Suite, *this spring at the plumb <https://theplumb.ca/> at
Toronto that sound the gossamer dreamscape between text and body.

Looking forward to further discussion,

Alex
*Alex Borkowski* (she/her)

*PhD student, Communication & Culture*
York University

alexborkowski.net <http://alexborkowski.net/portfolio/>
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