Solo Performance at Tate Modern’s “Preemptive Listening” Festival

Who sounds the alarm, and in the interest of what? What would a siren for the intertwined human, non-human and more-than-human sound like?

Curated alongside Aura Satz’s Preemptive Listening film premiere and three-day programme, Tate film brings together musicians, artists, historians, sociologists, activists, and more in a symposium to explore the critical potential of reimagining sirens. The three panels will investigate sonic commemoration; sensing; repurposing, and deep time, delving into changing emergency signals and communication methods. Drawing on the film and featuring several of its collaborators, the symposium is an invitation to reimagine the siren’s call, expand what we understand as listening, and what can be a siren. Indeed, the ‘siren’ may even be itself a diagnostic tool through which we might understand power relations and address critical questions of (sonic) governance.

The programme is organised by Tate Film in collaboration with the Preemptive Listening team at the Royal College of Art (Aura Satz with Francesca Laura Cavallo and Irene Revell), part-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).