Cantar juntos en medio de fragmentación y diálogos sordos: Un proceso de investigación-vida-creación

Abstract

Sometimes, when we sing together, something happens that we singers intuitively describe as magical and difficult to explain. In this project, we look into the most subtle aspects of what happens between us when we sing and the clues that this can provide for collective life. We discovered that by just talking about collective singing, the conversation doesn’t flow. In contrast, if we sing together before conversing, the ideas link together fluently, and in the sensitive experience of singing there is a production of knowledge. In this sense, we have created what Fals-Borda called sensing/thinking methodological routes -or singing/thinking- that we call verbal and non-verbal singing/conversations. It has also been a process of sensitive knowledge creation that we call research-life-creation, an active recognition of the importance of merging everyday life and academia. Through singing/conversing, we have found that, by what’s magical, we mean the feeling of being deeply connected, momentarily and occasionally, as in a single collective body, without giving up our individuality. This experience is permeated by a complex cultural context, but, even so, it is understood as purely pleasant and produces a sense of healing and liberation. The way by which we produce this connection, or interstice as we have decided to call it, is by listening subtly and deeply. This provides important clues in a cultural and social context marked by unhearing dialogues and the fragmentation of collective life. The intensive listening that is needed for singing together, can be transferred to other spheres of life in a sort of resonant agency that echoes Brandon LaBelle's sonic agency. Beyond the traditional notion of social bonds as a social relation between subjects, we present a bonding notion that opens up the possibility of connecting through our collective subjectivity. In a theoretical dialogue with Suely Rolnik, we identify in our singing together a micropolitical agency confronting the aspects of the disenchanted modernity that have reduced our subjectivity to something merely individual. We do not say that everyone should become a singer, but by identifying and connecting revitalising and re-assembling micro-practices in different spheres of life and the arts, we can imagine and work for a more vital world to live in.