Nishat Awan – Atlas Otherwise

Sonic Acts Podcast

Atlas Otherwise by Nishat Awan SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022 16 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands While there have been many attempts to think and make maps differently, the atlas is usually understood as a compendium of maps rather than a form of knowledge production. How can we rethink and remake the atlas otherwise to tell stories that do not follow the logic of colonisation and of property? The recent forensic or evidentiary turn in the arts has been ushered in through the scopic view of satellites and the ubiquity of image material across digital platforms. Such practices of digital witnessing allow us to ‘see’ further and deeper into places that are at a distance from us, but at the same time they create the conditions that make certain subjects recede from view. The empty geometric volumes of digital cartography also intensify the absence of materiality and the removal of experience from traditional atlases. How might we rethink notions of testimony and evidence in relation to the digital, knowing also that the witnessing of violence requires forms of empathy and affectivity that are not always readily available within computational forms of knowing? How can we think of the digital not as a tool or a method, but as a realm of possibility that may allow certain lives and worlds to become (il)legible, mourn-able and addressable on their own terms? This presentation is an attempt to rethink the atlas as an archive that is produced through the entanglements of matter, moisture and our own and other’s inhabitation. Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 took place at various locations in Amsterdam, interweaving an exhibition, sound performances and discourse programme, accompanied by artist presentations, workshops, excursions and more. As a part of the Biennial programme, the Leaving Traces symposium opened up a forum in which to become attentive to pollution’s invisible, yet harmful touch. Actively rethinking our relation to the climate and our planetary legacies, an array of artists, researchers, curators, and scholars spoke of the many faces of toxicity – from fossil fuels to plastic, from nuclear energy to chemical pollutants. The gathering staged real stories and events of exposure, thinking about ‘leaving traces’ not just as the material act of spreading toxicity, but as art’s potential to reach out and act as a disruptive force in the world. Find out more at https://sonicacts.com/archive/biennial2022 https://nishatawan.me Curation & production: Sonic Acts Recording: Engage! TV https://engagetv.com Sound mastering: Monty Mouw http://flippendisks.com Design: Catalogtree https://catalogtree.net Sound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros http://www.vivapunani.org/