March 14 2025 – Ear oder Ohr, Open-Rehearsal in Johannesburg

EAR ODER OHR

Taking as its starting point Ulrich Süsse’s composition Ear oder Ohr (1979), the project aims to re-examine genealogies of experimental music and sonic engagement from a South African perspective. Conceived in Durban in 1974, the piece for live electronics features a composer questioning the possibility of producing music devoid of any concept, a “music without thinking”. In tune with the debates going on in the Western avant-garde at the time, the piece nevertheless ‘overlooked’ the South African context, its violent apartheid regime, and the emergence of the Black Consciousness movement.

Fifty years on, the project returns to this contradiction to create a new version, informed by reflections on the historical and emotional links between sound practices and aspirations for social emancipation. Sound, listening, noise and abstraction are re-examined as historically and spatially situated phenomena, in contrast to the universalism of Eurocentric histories of sound.

Participants
Andrei van Wyk (voice, guitar, electronics)
Likhona Camane (voice, guitar, electronics)
Lynne Daphne Rudolph (voice, viola, electronics)
Gilles Aubry (electronics)

Friday March 14 2025, 7pm, Johannesburg
DM for details: info@earpolitics.net