A conversation and listening session on community building and spaces for collaborative listening and social action. Golnoosh Heshmati invites Cristina Cochior, pantea, and Yamen Mekdad to share their ways of working around gathering and utilising digital infrastructures for sharing knowledge, rethinking everyday technology, and addressing the moment's urgency through listening and sounding. Each speaker introduces new possibilities for listening and noticing the inaudible and silenced through their involvement in various projects, collectives, and communities, including Cristina Cochior’s projects part of the Rotterdam-based everyday technology collective Varia, pantea co-facilitating Khamoosh, a transdisciplinary community dedicated to preserving and archiving Iranian sonic heritage, and Yamen Mekdad, co-founder of Syrian Cassette Archives, an initiative to preserve, share and research sounds and stories from Syria’s abundant cassette era (1970s–2000s).

The conversation will conclude with a collective listening session guided by Yamen Mekdad, engaging the participants with the archive of sound and music within and beyond Syria.

Cristina Cochior (RO) is a researcher and designer, whose work focuses on knowledge organisation systems, situated software, experimental publishing, community-run digital spaces, trans*feminist approaches to technology, and digital infrastructure in relation to alternative modes of organisation. Cochior is a member of the Rotterdam-based everyday technology collective Varia. Recent collaborations include A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers, Digital Solidarity Networks, and Vernaculars Come to Matter. Cochior is currently a PhD candidate at the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW and is part of the project Infrastructural Rehearsals.

pantea is an artist and researcher from Iran engaging with narratives of ecological and more-than-human connection. Her work has incorporated creative writing, walking, performance, film, radio, and music. They co-facilitate Khamoosh, a transdisciplinary community dedicated to preserving and archiving Iranian sonic heritage, and co-direct Associació So in collaboration with Soundcamp Cooperative. They are a member of the Radio Web MACBA working group, and are one half of the audiovisual design group Studio Informal. pantea is learning about socially engaged practice and community-based work by exploring possibilities brought about by listening. She is passionate about wetlands and plants, and is currently studying a practice-based PhD in music at City, University of London.

Yamen Mekdad is an artist, researcher, community organiser, and DJ based in London. His practice is an experimentation in radical collaboration with a focus on the relationship between sound, geography, and the human condition. His interests in field recording, archiving, radio, and grassroots organising led him to co-found the collectives Dandana, Sawt of the Earth, Makkam, and Sadaa Sound Syndicate. He is a frequent contributor to a number of radio stations, including SOAS, NTS, and AlHara. Mekdad is also curator and producer of Syrian Cassette Archives and the Syrian Arts and Culture Festival (SACF). He is currently working towards releasing Shapeshifting, an essay-film on the underground music scene in Syria and the Syrian diaspora in Europe.

Golnoosh Heshmati is an artist, researcher, and curator based between Rotterdam and Tehran. Her practice, mainly combining artistic and curatorial approaches, focuses on creating new dialogues within the partial, fragmented personal everyday life archives. Her work incorporates listening as a timely open-ended practice while working with text, sound, and ceramics. She is the co-founder of Rabt, a nomadic space dedicated to connecting communities through collective engagement centred around sonic practices. She is also a member of Khamoosh, a participatory transdisciplinary research community that mediates conservation and restoration by exploring the sonic heritage of Iran.