Fellow-Feeling: Listening Positionality in Jordan Scott and Jason Starnes' Lanterns at Guantanamo, Led by Deanna Fong, 3 March 2021

Deanna Fong

Jason Camlot

Jason Camlot

Zoom

Montréal, Québec

This listening practice was guided by Deanna Fong. This session prompted participants to reflect on the notion of "listening positionality," as described in Dylan Robinson's book Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies: the ways that our perception and, more specifically, faculties of audition are shaped by our social situation within the structures of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and cultural background. The collective listening in this session focused on two recordings: the first, a sound piece by Jordan Scott and Jason Starnes from the Lanterns at Guantanàmo project, which sequences ambient and environmental sound captured during Scott's 2015 tour of the Guantanàmo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba; the second, Fong's recorded response to that piece, commissioned for Robinson's recent project on listening positionality, in which Fong describes what she hears in the recording and consider her own orientation towards it as an auditor. Participants were invited to reflect on their own positionality in listening to these two recordings, describing what they hear, and discovering where our perceptual modes intersect and diverge.