» download essay [pdf]
The three audio files below accompany the essay and are referenced in the text.
Note on the context of this project: This essay and accompanying audio files unfolds the collective training workshops organized during the process of creation of Résonances manifestes, a comprovised music piece based on a sound score composed of field recordings from various autonomous demonstrations that shook the streets of Montreal in the recent years. The piece can be understood as a sound study on how some musical processes can orient the experimentation of new ways to gather in the event. It is the musical expression of a project of research-creation aiming to understand how sound and music contribute to the (trans)formation of affective communities. The piece, performed by the Devenir-ensemble, have been premiered during the off-season Suoni per il popolo concert series in Montreal, and will be released on Cuchabata records (Montreal).
1. Devenir-ensemble - Trois exercices d'étude sonore militante [runtime: 04:53]
2. Devenir-ensemble - The Wheel of Life (Pauline Oliveros) [runtime: 05:41]
3. Résonances manifestes - 7th Mov. Orientation collective [runtime: 04:07]
Supplement: Devenir-ennsemble "opening" for the Sun Ra Arkestra at the online 2021 edition of Suoni per il popolo in Montreal.
"How to Make Common Ears?" Music Performance Training, Affective Community and the Micropolitics of Perception
by Hubert Gendron-Blais
Hubert Gendron-Blais is a musician, author and researcher working at the confluence of philosophy, music and politics, with a particular attention to the concepts of affect, community and ecology. His work have been published in Organised Sound Ephemera and Inflexions, among others, and in the book Révolutions et contre(-)pouvoir (ed. B. Coutu). He recently obtained a Ph.D. in Humanities from Concordia University (Montreal), and completes a postdoc in Philosophy (research-creation) at McGill University in December 2021. In music, Gendron-Blais is the initiator of the Devenir-ensemble, a musical assemblage working in comprovisation from ambient sounds. He is also taken in a creative process with the experimental band -ce qui nous traverse- (Cuchabata Records), whose last album has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, while pursuing its own sound experimentations in "solo" (some of his pieces have recently figured on compilations by the label Jeunesse Cosmique, Mtl.Drone and the Dark Outside project). Gendron-Blais has performed in festivals, conferences and concert series in various events across Canada, France, Belgium and United States.
