Nottingham Contemporary

This is the place.

I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair

streams black, the merman in his armored body.

We circle silently

about the wreck

we dive into the hold.

I am she: I am he

- Adrienne Rich, Diving into the Wreck, 1973

...Queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it, and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.

- bell hooks, a conversation with bell hooks, 2014

Sonic Intimacies and Queer Resonances is a programme that explores soundings that forge new intimacies and possible pathways to greater mutual living. Taking place over the AUTUMN 2023 season (September 2023 - January 2024), it features performances, conversations, screenings, and workshops, with contributions by AURA, Deborah-Joyce Holman, Maria Leonard, Jenkin Van Zyl, Queer Art Projects, Sophie Seita, Isadora Neves Marques, Francis Whorrall-Campbell, Hannah Catherine Jones, Mantawoman, Beth Kettel, amongst others.

Sonic Intimacies and Queer Resonances explores sonics' transformational qualities and materialises as a series of encounters, as an ensemble of notes and voices, a score to imagine new possibilities of thinking the multidirectional and multilinear pasts and futures. It looks into the embodied and affective connections that arise from encounters across sound waves, an intimacy predicted not by physical proximity but by the commitment to articulating the dynamics of how bodies and voices interact and relate. Bringing together practices that build and tie together politics of representation and sparked a method of listening that centres queer sonic intimacies across time and space.