{"id":11944,"date":"2023-05-09T15:26:22","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T14:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/c3riimpact\/?p=11944"},"modified":"2023-05-09T15:28:00","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T14:28:00","slug":"an-unwell-world-michelle-atherton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/c3riimpact\/an-unwell-world-michelle-atherton\/","title":{"rendered":"An Unwell World? Michelle Atherton speaks at Association of Social Anthropologists conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michelle Atherton was invited to contribute to the Association of Social Anthropologists conference at SOAS, London last month.\u00a0The 2023 ASA conference \u2018An Unwell World? Anthropology in a Speculative Mode\u2019 focused on the world we live in today.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> affective relationships with transience, through time spent listening to frequencies from the soil.<\/p>\n

——————-<\/p>\n

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<\/em> affective relationships with transience, through time spent listening to frequencies from the soil.<\/p>\n

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]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

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 \u2018state of either emergence or decay\u2019[2]<\/a>.\u00a0 Her aim is to explore how soil vibrations might initiate more lively ways of engaging with essential transience.<\/p>\n

References<\/h3>\n

[1]<\/a> Bayo Akomolafe A Certain Kind of Dying<\/em> Keynote Borrowed Time Symposium 31.10.21<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> David Toop Ocean of Sound: Ambient sound and listening in the age of communication<\/em> Serpents Tail: Classic edition 2018 p 12<\/p>\n

About the Researcher<\/h2>\n

Michelle Atherton is an artist, researcher and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art working with images, temporal states and contingency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Atherton was invited to contribute to the Association of Social Anthropologists conference at SOAS, London last month.\u00a0The 2023 ASA conference \u2018An Unwell World? Anthropology in a Speculative Mode\u2019 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3578,"featured_media":11945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[337,2058,264],"class_list":["post-11944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-conference","tag-low-frequencies","tag-michelle-atherton"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/c3riimpact\/files\/2023\/05\/MA-Low-Frequencies-ASA-2023.png?fit=1776%2C1048&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8oFHo-36E","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11950,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/c3riimpact\/ecstatic-rot-michelle-atherton-residency\/","url_meta":{"origin":11944,"position":0},"title":"Ecstatic Rot: Michelle Atherton begins residency at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve","author":"Kirsty Christer","date":"30\/04\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Michelle Atherton has begun her new practice-based research residency Ecstatic Rot at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, East London, investigating our relationships with transience, decomposition and recomposition as more-than-human activities. She is interested in finding experimental ways to explore ephemera: the loss and flows of materialities, including cycles of transformation across\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "News"","block_context":{"text":"News","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/c3riimpact\/category\/news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Image: Ecstatic Rot: Probes with Soils Michelle Atherton 2022","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/c3riimpact\/files\/2023\/05\/Probes-with-Soil-MA-2022-crop.jpeg?fit=889%2C290&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/c3riimpact\/files\/2023\/05\/Probes-with-Soil-MA-2022-crop.jpeg?fit=889%2C290&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/c3riimpact\/files\/2023\/05\/Probes-with-Soil-MA-2022-crop.jpeg?fit=889%2C290&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/c3riimpact\/files\/2023\/05\/Probes-with-Soil-MA-2022-crop.jpeg?fit=889%2C290&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11955,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/c3riimpact\/reveil-2023-michelle-artherton-broadcast\/","url_meta":{"origin":11944,"position":1},"title":"Reveil 2023: Michelle Artherton broadcasts from Eden Valley Burial Ground","author":"Kirsty Christer","date":"09\/05\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Michelle Atherton was invited to participate in Reveil 2023, a live 24hr global broadcast for World Dawn Chorus Day which took place 6-7 May. 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