Sonic Activism, Archives, and Worldmaking

Beyond invited talks, the Summer School created space for participants to present their own work in themed sessions such as “Sonic Activism”, “Politics of the Dancefloor”, “Bodies in Motion and Space”, and “Queering Central and Eastern Europe”. Many scholars presented their ethnographic fieldwork, which repeatedly documented queer lives as an act of resistance in the face of oppressive regimes as well as the diverse and creative ways found to express themselves artistically, provide communal care and engage in political and educational work, detailing projects from Latin America to Eastern Europe, Western and Southeast Asia. The research presented also spanned media analysis, archival work, artistic research, historical and sociological approaches. The need to organize outside of (academic) institutions was discussed for safety reasons such as Gender Studies reading groups meeting at local cafés after being banned from Iranian universities, as well as to resist white hegemonic structures, where the reproduction of hierarchies and the silencing of marginalised groups impedes collaborative work.

Participants highlighted how irony and playfulness—e.g. the queering of heteronormative musical genres and codes—can dissolve norms and build heterotopic or utopian worlds in nightlife, on stage and in online spaces. From preserving silenced narratives through oral histories to resisting erasure through auto-archiving, history and memory work played a vital role in this conversation. This was made explicit by one participant whose project transformed into archival work after the venues under study shut down. Layers of queer belonging and loneliness, the pressure of disclosure and the need for escapism were addressed as dimensions between survival and worldbuilding. Several participants advocated for ballroom and drag culture as significant forms of worldmaking, where growth and recognition of ballroom artists emerge through competition and queer kinship.

The Summer School was as much about discussing findings as it was about raising and refining questions. Research ethics and methodology were recurring topics: How can reciprocity and care guide scholarly work? What role can researchers play in sustaining communities, thus contributing rather than extracting through their work? What form of writing might convey the density and ambiguity of our observations?