Tuesday September 22nd we will be hosting a talk by Gascia Ouzounian here at Notam. The talk is based on Ouzounian forthcoming book The Trembling City: The Sonic and Atmospheric Violence of Vibrational Warfare. The Trembling City: The Sonic and Atmospheric Violence of Vibrational Warfare.
Gascia Ouzounian is a sonic theorist and practitioner whose work explores sound, space, urbanism, and violence. Ouzounian is the author of Stereophonica: Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts and The Trembling City, which investigates cities in relation to sound and vibrational force, particularly in the contexts of war, genocide, and mass violence. Ouzounian serves as associate professor of music at the University of Oxford, where she leads Sonorous Cities, an ERC-funded research project that explores experimental approaches to sonic analysis and design in architecture and urban practice.
Expanded Frames for Sonic Investigation
This talk explores expanded frameworks for sonic investigation through the lens of genocide and its aftermath, building on the claim by the sonic investigation agency Earshot that sound and listening can reveal forms of violence that go beyond dominant visual paradigms of evidence. Drawing on ‘earwitness’ testimonies from survivors of the Armenian Genocide, alongside sonic and atmospheric approaches to contemporary conflict, I examine a set of concepts for investigating violence through sound: sonic memory, sonic residue, after-sound, and Sonic Weather. I examine testimonies that describe sounds which linger «in the ears» for days or even decades afterwards – embodied traces of mass violence that persist beyond the moment of killing. I also address less visible forms of violence, including atmospheric occupation and vibrational warfare, in which the air and built environments are weaponised through pressure, turbulence and chronic sonic threat. Finally, I propose a ‘negative acoustics’ attentive to absence, disappearance and denial – treating what cannot be heard as a form of evidence. This talk is based on my forthcoming book The Trembling City: The Sonic and Atmospheric Violence of Vibrational Warfare (MIT Press, 2026). Further information and pre-orders are available from MIT Press.
https://www.music.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-gascia-ouzounian
https://ephemeral.observer/
