The new season of Sonic Interventions engages with Asian (diasporic) perspectives and opens with a conversation of Prof. Dr. Doris Kolesch, Dr. Layla Zami, and Emma Lo with artist-scholar Dr. meLê yamomo. In this first episode, they discuss sonic relationalities and archival practices. Learn more about his work, such as 'Echoing Europe’, the Decolonial Frequencies Festival, and DeCoSEAS.

In conversation with

meLê yamomo

meLê yamomo is an Assistant Professor of New Dramaturgies, Media Cultures, Artistic Research, and Decoloniality and author of Sounding Modernities: Theatre and Music in Manila and the Asia Pacific, 1869-1946 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). He is the co-project leader and principal investigator of the European Joint Programming Initiative Cultural Heritage (JPICH) project Decolonizing Southeast Asian Archives (DeCoSEAS), and laureate of the »Veni Innovation Grant« (2017-2022) funded by the Dutch Research Organization (NWO) for the project »Sonic Entanglements: Listening to Modernities in Southeast Asian Sound Recordings« (2017-2022). meLê is the winner of the Open Ear Award, the most prestigious composer’s prize in the Netherlands, and one of the 2020 KNAW Early Career Awardee by the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also currently a member of the Amsterdam Young Academy. meLê is also resident artist at Theater Ballhaus Naunynstrasse where his creations Echoing Europe, sonus, and Forces of Overtones are on repertoire. meLê also curates the Decolonial Frequences Festival and hosts the Sonic Entanglements podcast. In his works as artist-scholar, meLê engages the topics of sonic migrations, queer aesthetics, and post/de-colonial acoustemologies.

Website

Decolonial Frequencies Festival

Echoing Europe

DeCOSEAS

Sounding Modernities

Credits

Sounds

Recording of the Philippine Constabulary band, 1910 (USCB Cylinder Audio Archive)

Wax cylinder recording of Oggayam sung by Perfecto Balagani, recorded by Jeno von Takacs in Kalingga, Philippines 1934 (Berliner Phonogrammarchiv)

Sri Margana listening and singing along with Raden Mas Jodjana (Berliner Lautarchiv)

Photos

Cover, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and Zé de Paiva

Portrait, meLê yamomo

Podcast Info

Concept

Dr. Layla Zami, Postdoctoral Researcher in Performance Studies

Moderator
Emma Lo, PhD researcher in Theater Studies

Producer
Freie Universität Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Intervening Arts
(SFB 1512 Intervenierende Künste, TP B05)

Funded by
German Research Society (DFG)

In Cooperation with

FU Berlin, Institut für Theaterwissenschaft

Eufoniker Audioproduktion