An Unwell World? Michelle Atherton speaks at Association of Social Anthropologists conference

Michelle Atherton was invited to contribute to the Association of Social Anthropologists conference at SOAS, London last month. The 2023 ASA conference ‘An Unwell World? Anthropology in a Speculative Mode’ focused on the world we live in today.

Her practice-based presentation explored how undertaking a natural burial for a close relative led to realisations about the difficulty Western secular societies have dealing with death and speculations on our affective relationships with transience, through time spent listening to frequencies from the soil.

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The presentation explored how undertaking a natural burial for a close relative led to realisations about the difficulty Western secular societies have dealing with death, dead bodies and speculations on our affective relationships with transience, through time spent listening to frequencies from the soil.

There are of course different types of deaths and the experience of someone dying is not monolithic. The presentation argued, with Akomolafe, that we need different approaches to dying and thinking about life that do not distance demise, dying, compost, grief and loss[1].

Michelle speculated on how a different set of affective relationships might be triggered through listening to the ground, a space overlooked because it is over-trodden. For centuries, many cultures have interred their dead. Creating an audible connection with frequencies from the soil might open different material relations with the ground and its processes; with the dead, the living and the inert

Part of her conjecture concerned the effective dynamics involved in listening to sounds that are not everyday noises. There are questions about how we perceive sound itself; its ephemeral nature, and ‘state of either emergence or decay’[2].  Her aim is to explore how soil vibrations might initiate more lively ways of engaging with essential transience.

References

[1] Bayo Akomolafe A Certain Kind of Dying Keynote Borrowed Time Symposium 31.10.21

[2] David Toop Ocean of Sound: Ambient sound and listening in the age of communication Serpents Tail: Classic edition 2018 p 12

About the Researcher

Michelle Atherton is an artist, researcher and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art working with images, temporal states and contingency.