In Conversation: Counterlistening with Mhamad Safa and Gascia Ouzounian

In this talk, interdisciplinary researchers Mhamad Safa (RCA) and Gascia Ouzounian (Oxford) discuss different approaches to ‘counterlistening’: listening against official and hegemonic narratives of contested events, including in the contexts of war and genocide; and listening for sounds and voices that have been occluded and erased, particularly in the aftermath of mass violence. They discuss different approaches to listening as a tactics and mode of resistance in their own work and others, drawing attention to forensic listening projects by Lawrence Abu Hamdan and others; analyzing earwitness testimonies; ‘speculative listening’ (Hartman) to denialist and colonialist archives; and ‘urgent listening’ (Kurda) in times of crisis. The conversation will also reflect on critical approaches to sonic architecture and sonic urbanism, understanding the sonic city as a site of political and social contests and a field in which power relations are expressed and manifested, including in the cases of sonic warfare and atmospheric violence.

Gascia Ouzounian is a sonic theorist and practitioner whose work explores sound in relation to space, urbanism, and violence. She is the author of Stereophonica: Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts (MIT Press 2021) and the forthcoming The Trembling City, which investigates cities as in relation to sound and vibrational force, particularly in the contexts of war, genocide, and mass violence. Ouzounian leads the project Sonorous Cities at the University of Oxford, where she is associate professor of music. She hosts the conversation series Countersonics: Radical Sonic Imaginaries, which asks how sonic practices can operate as modes of resistance and repair in times of conflict and crisis. Her work has featured at Mosaic Rooms, daadgalerie, SAVVY Contemporary, Akademie der Künste, Sursock Museum, Goethe Institute, OSCILLATIONS Festival, and Café OTO, among others.

Mhamad Safa is a London-based sound artist and architect whose work explores the intersection of multi-scalar spatial conditions and their sonic make-ups. His practice addresses the aural legacies of traditional subcultures, occultism, armed conflicts, shock and the aftermath of violence. He graduated from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths University in 2019 and received his PhD in Law from the University of Westminster in 2024. He is an Associate Lecturer in Architecture and Media Studies at the Royal College of Art in London.