__IF I DO SAY SO MYSELF

Free speech, free markets, even free improvisation. An era of possibility. On the other side of the same coin: act!, fight!, and carpe diem! And jog. On the third side: feelings of apathy. And “c’est la vie” as a way of explaining more or less anything. While the first one produces articulatory and interpretative errors, and the second is an imperative to make the first one seem factual, the third one enables the first two to show themselves as an unreachable ideal while creating a situation of unreachability.

These elements of the neoliberal condition are further complicated when observed through social sonorities. Where sounding is understood as an exhibition of activity, vitality, even power, Dragičević proposes that we analyse sonic phenomena in econo-political terms. This would make an ability to sound a form of capital (and, in some occasions, currency). In the liberal era, sounding is, by definition, available to anyone with a working voice apparatus. This, however, is not the case when it comes to: audibility. The ability to be listened to.

Through a series of poetry-sound compositions and essays, Dragičević turns to audibility as an intersectional class structure with a particular focus on the lack of auditory capital, forming the concept of auditory poverty. And where there is poverty, there is discontent. And where there is discontent, there is potential for emancipation.