Japan and sound: modernity, social constructs and power relations

The aim of this symposium is to identify areas of social friction that may be invisible or poorly informed, but are nonetheless properly not mute; to examine the media and technical devices used to construct and express specific identities through sound; to examine the ways in which sound constitutes an instrument of control or resistance, of cohesion or dispersion of forces, of unification or segmentation of spaces, within the multiple trajectories - international, national or local - that accompany changes in modern and contemporary Japanese society.
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Le Japon sonore © Libre de droit‎

Recent ethnographic and historical research on sound has shown that sound and musical production and listening practices are linked to social constructs, including questions of identity and power relations; in this way, they suggest that the relationship between sound and everyday life must be understood within specific cultural contexts. Thus, the global dissemination of technologies and the standardization of sound production and mediation techniques since the modern era are phenomena that are accompanied by acts of reappropriation and reinterpretation of sound. To question how sound is made, mediated and received is therefore to bring to light a fundamental political tension between what can be reduced to the couple hearing and being heard; to inquire into processes of exploration of the relationship to the other and of psychic and social affirmation of an individual or community self and space; to rethink structures of power through the imprints, and the ecology on which they depend, of a transitory form.

Program

Thursday, November 14 - MSH-Bx and online

10:30-10:45: Opening comments
10:45-11:45: Panel 1: Sound and corporality (eng)
13:15-14:45: Panel 2: Son et représentations ethniques / Sound and ethnic representations (fr / eng)
15:00-16:30: Panel 3: Représentations du média sonore / Representations of sound media (fr / eng)
18:30 - 19:30 Keynote speech / Musée d'ethnographie, Université de Bordeaux

Friday, November 15 - MSH-Bx and online

9:30-10:30: Panel 4: Le son dans l'histoire (fr)
10:45-12:15: Panel 5: Le son dans la représentation et la reproduction de la tradition / Sound in the representation and reproduction of tradition (fr /eng)
13:4(-15:15: Panel 6: L'artiste et la représentation de son milieu / The artist and the representation of his environment (fr /eng)
15h30-16h : Concert

Saturday, November 16 - Online

9h-10h30 : Panel 7 : Scènes musicales et représentations culturelles / Music scenes and cultural representations (fr / eng)
10h45-1éh15 : Panel 8 : Language and voice (eng)
13h15-14h45 : Panel 9 : The agentivity of subjects listening to and producing sound (eng)
15h-16h : Panel 10 : Sounds and nostalgia (eng)
16h15-17h15 : Panel 11 : Sound and representation of social space (eng)
17h15-17h30 : Closing comments

 

Organizers : Jeremy Corral (UMRU 24140 D2IA, Université Bordeaux Montaigne) and Chiharu Chûjô (EA 4186-IETT, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3).