Archive

SOUND ARTS
Towards the Encounter with Utopia(s)

Rui Chaves

ARTISTIC RESIDENCIES  OF THE MASTER’S PROGRAMME IN ARTS OF SOUND AND IMAGE_ESAD.CR  IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE CULTURAL ASSOCIATION OSSO_4TH EDITION_2025
28 APRIL TO 2 MAY, 2025
OSSO FACILITIES IN THE VILLAGE OF S. GREGÓRIO, CALDAS DA RAINHA

In this five-day laboratory dedicated to listening, imagination, and collective creation, we will explore together the potential of sound as a tool to reinvent the world and confront everyday dystopias. Through practices such as creative writing, field recordings, and performative actions, we will seek individual responses to the challenges posed by the current crisis of imagination, which allows necropolitics and authoritarianism to advance unchecked. Singing in the streets of São Gregório. Improvisation with the dawn chorus. A guided visit to the neighbor’s garden. Conversations with strangers. An instruction for an almost impossible action. The proposal is to open spaces to observe, listen, and dream up alternatives, including sonic interactions between humans and non-humans. At the end of the week, each participant will present their own “sonic utopia,” a result of the collective experiences shared in an open space of listening and exchange. Is it possible to rediscover, in small everyday practices, the memory that there are paths to other futures?

Rui Chaves is a professor, artist, and researcher in the field of sound studies. His interests include performance, politics, and archives. He holds a PhD in Music from Queen’s University Belfast (2013) and was a postdoctoral researcher at NuSom – Research Centre for Sonology at the University of São Paulo. In 2019, he co-edited with Fernando Iazzetta the volume “Making it Heard: A History of Brazilian Sound Art” (Bloomsbury). Since 2019, he has co-directed the netlabel Berro with Iazzetta. He was a visiting professor at the Department of Visual Arts at the Federal University of Paraíba (2020–2024). His artistic practice often involves poetic approaches that investigate the relationship between sound, memory, and personal and collective narratives.