Preemptive Listening
Lead Research Organisation:
Royal College of Art
Department Name: School of Art and Humanities
Abstract
What do warnings for climate change, the pandemic, rising fascism sound like? Does an alarm have to be alarming? How can we address alarm fatigue, both as lived reality and as a metaphor for our current state? 'Preemptive Listening' is a practice-based research project which re-imagines sirens and emergency signals, resulting in a documentary film/exhibition, an audio archive, a symposium, a related issue of the journal Disclaimer, and a co-authored journal article.
The project is both a diagnosis of shifts in emergency signal communication and a series of propositions, speculating new siren sounds. Nested within the crisis of our attention economy, the siren is undergoing a profound transformation, prompted by our ongoing alarm fatigue and noise pollution, as well as the near-obsolescence and inefficiency of public soundsystem broadcasts. Many sirens are relics from WW2 and the cold war, repurposed to communicate the threats of extreme weather, a collective commemorative pause, or resurrected to test disaster preparedness. The siren serves as a worldwide cipher of potential trauma, an emblem of climate catastrophe, a mouthpiece for sonic governance. We are transitioning from loud alarms heard collectively in the public sphere, to vibratory alerts received individually on personal mobile devices. The project is informed by an auraldiverse approach, expanding our understanding of who listens and how. It questions the efficiency of our inherited sirens, and the capaciousness of our conceptual frameworks of emergency - primarily used to signal a singular incident (fire) and an immediate responsive course of action. It will attempt to rewire our listening from the inherited soundscapes associated with the siren, questioning whether our crisis management signalling systems are perhaps part of the crisis. In an age of intersecting political, manmade and ecological disasters - can we envision sounds not only scored to immediacy, but signals set to a longer temporal frame, sounding the alarm for the unimaginable distant future, the thresholds of extinction? A soundtrack of new siren sounds composed by an array of acclaimed experimental musicians will map a speculative future for emergency signals. This will be supplemented by neuroscientific perspectives and insights from activists and cultural historians to open up what we understand as emergencies and how they are communicated, extending physically beyond ear-centred listening and conceptually beyond immediate timeframes.
Bringing together an interdisciplinary range of people, the research project aims to unpack the critical potential of reimagining sirens, and the interview archive will feed into the documentary film, inform the symposium held at the RCA, public events at Kunsternes Hus (Oslo) and the related journal article. These main outcomes will provide a valuable format for increased awareness and better understanding of the changing methods of emergency signal communication, which can feed into enhanced quality of life, and impact public services and policy. The film will extend this urgent discussion by amplifying it beyond the immediate academic and artistic network, further developing links across academia, industry and non-academic audiences. Drawing on the PIs extensive cross-disciplinary practice as an internationally recognised artist working with film and sound, a major goal of this research project is to engage with the enactive power of artistic practice at the intersection of the fields of film, music, sound art, sociology, media studies, and deaf studies, generating an artistic output that is in itself an experiment in listening.
This timely project continuously accrues depth and nuance as our concepts of emergency and crisis management strategies keep shifting, inflected by the asymptomatic, the imperceptible potential disaster that has no warning signs, and does not easily reveal itself as actionable. Emergency signal recalibration is urgent.
The project is both a diagnosis of shifts in emergency signal communication and a series of propositions, speculating new siren sounds. Nested within the crisis of our attention economy, the siren is undergoing a profound transformation, prompted by our ongoing alarm fatigue and noise pollution, as well as the near-obsolescence and inefficiency of public soundsystem broadcasts. Many sirens are relics from WW2 and the cold war, repurposed to communicate the threats of extreme weather, a collective commemorative pause, or resurrected to test disaster preparedness. The siren serves as a worldwide cipher of potential trauma, an emblem of climate catastrophe, a mouthpiece for sonic governance. We are transitioning from loud alarms heard collectively in the public sphere, to vibratory alerts received individually on personal mobile devices. The project is informed by an auraldiverse approach, expanding our understanding of who listens and how. It questions the efficiency of our inherited sirens, and the capaciousness of our conceptual frameworks of emergency - primarily used to signal a singular incident (fire) and an immediate responsive course of action. It will attempt to rewire our listening from the inherited soundscapes associated with the siren, questioning whether our crisis management signalling systems are perhaps part of the crisis. In an age of intersecting political, manmade and ecological disasters - can we envision sounds not only scored to immediacy, but signals set to a longer temporal frame, sounding the alarm for the unimaginable distant future, the thresholds of extinction? A soundtrack of new siren sounds composed by an array of acclaimed experimental musicians will map a speculative future for emergency signals. This will be supplemented by neuroscientific perspectives and insights from activists and cultural historians to open up what we understand as emergencies and how they are communicated, extending physically beyond ear-centred listening and conceptually beyond immediate timeframes.
Bringing together an interdisciplinary range of people, the research project aims to unpack the critical potential of reimagining sirens, and the interview archive will feed into the documentary film, inform the symposium held at the RCA, public events at Kunsternes Hus (Oslo) and the related journal article. These main outcomes will provide a valuable format for increased awareness and better understanding of the changing methods of emergency signal communication, which can feed into enhanced quality of life, and impact public services and policy. The film will extend this urgent discussion by amplifying it beyond the immediate academic and artistic network, further developing links across academia, industry and non-academic audiences. Drawing on the PIs extensive cross-disciplinary practice as an internationally recognised artist working with film and sound, a major goal of this research project is to engage with the enactive power of artistic practice at the intersection of the fields of film, music, sound art, sociology, media studies, and deaf studies, generating an artistic output that is in itself an experiment in listening.
This timely project continuously accrues depth and nuance as our concepts of emergency and crisis management strategies keep shifting, inflected by the asymptomatic, the imperceptible potential disaster that has no warning signs, and does not easily reveal itself as actionable. Emergency signal recalibration is urgent.
Organisations
- Royal College of Art (Lead Research Organisation)
- Tate (Collaboration)
- Invisible Flock (Collaboration)
- UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON (Collaboration)
- 3 Sided Cube (Project Partner)
- Kunstnernes Hus (Project Partner)
- Liquid Architecture/Disclaimer (Project Partner)
- The Noise Abatement Society (Project Partner)
Publications
Cavallo F
(2024)
Preemptive listening: a roundtable discussion about sirens
in Sound Studies
Francesca L Cavallo
(2025)
'Sensing Invisible Threats: Francesca L Cavallo, in conversation with Jennifer Gabrys, Riar Rizaldi and Jana Winderen'
in Preemptive Listening: the Sonic Politics of Emergency. Guest-edited Issue of Disclaimer.
Francesca Laura Cavallo
(2023)
Music Futures: The Voice of Warning, RCA Preemptive Listening + UCL Warning Research Centre + STOP Sizewell C
García-Velazco B
(2025)
"'In Conversation' Aura Satz and Beatriz García-Velasco" in Preemptive Listening: The Sonic Politics of Emergency, Guest-edited Issue of Disclaimer
in Disclaimer
| Title | 'A Pluriverse Siren' |
| Description | 'A Pluriverse Siren' re-imagines the siren in order to forge a new understanding of present and long term emergencies. Part of Aura Satz's documentary film Preemptive Listening (2017-ongoing), this chapter of the project features the voice of Erin Matariki Carr, lawyer, scholar and activist, Co-Lead for RIVER (Revitalising Indigenous Virtues for Earth's Regeneration) and Taonga Puoro performance and music by Horomona Horo. The siren serves as a worldwide symbol of potential trauma, an emblem warning of climate catastrophe, a mouthpiece for sonic governance and crisis management. The film invokes an alternative reading of the siren by connecting to Te Ao Maori ancestral knowledge, weaving Taonga Puoro with the sounds of the natural environment at Sanctuary Mountain Maungatautari. These traditional Maori instruments can act as a call to arms, a warning, as well as a form of long distance communication, a signal heralding a birth or the dawn of a new day. The film asks: What might a siren for the non-human or more than human sound like? Can we envision new sounds not only scored to immediacy, but signals sounding the alarm for the distant future, the cries on the cusp of ecological catastrophe? Have we internalized the siren's cry? Through Matariki's words on kinship and close-ups of Horomona's Taonga Puoro practice, the film highlights the importance of listening and reattuning to a pluriverse siren, one that can speak to many interconnected worldviews. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Online interview with Tendai John Mutambu, Erin Matariki Carr and Horomona Horo, shown alongside exhibition installation. Online interview with Tendai John Mutambu for Ocula Magazine. |
| URL | https://www.teuru.org.nz/whats-on/calendar/aura-satz-a-pluriverse-siren/ |
| Title | 'Future Waters, Grief Intervals, Preempting Collapse' (Lecture Performance) |
| Description | This illustrated lecture is composed of elements from Aura Satz's long-term research around sound, catastrophe, solidarity, and temporality. Her current works and feature film in progress reimagine emergency sirens in the age of man-made and ecological disasters. Working alongside several collaborators, from musicians to scientists to community activists, the project envisages the new sounds of emergencies that signal new disasters in times of climate collapse, and productive ways of operationalising them. Presented at European Media Arts Festival (Osnabruck). |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Artist talk and screening, followed by Q&A |
| URL | https://www.emaf.de/en/index/?sort=s&dir=desc#i56617 |
| Title | 'Infringes' group exhibition |
| Description | The Infringes film program brings together film works by international artists Aura Satz, Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Jirí Žák, Martha Atienza, Riar Rizaldi, Rhea Storr, and Sky Hopinka, presenting many of these films for the first time in Thailand. This curated collection of moving images explores the entanglements of myth, memory, and power, confronting the invisible yet pervasive forces that shape cultural and political landscapes. Set against the backdrop of a revived building, a former Thai educational publishing stronghold, the program prompts reflection on how knowledge, authority, and narratives can be intervened or infringed upon. Viewers are invited to engage with the dynamic interplay of past and present, asking how creative infringements can bring about new shared futures. The one-hour-forty-minute program, running on a continuous loop, will be projected on a single screen, at the Bangkok Kunsthalle from 23rd October to 22nd December 2024. Program Statement: Once the nation's major publisher and disseminator of school textbooks, the Thai Watana Panich building now invites a different kind of engagement. Its dusty and black ashened walls, marked by time and history, offer a backdrop for possible exploration and questioning. In this space, Infringes becomes less about the building's past influence and more about what it means to encounter a place that once held institutional power. What happens when art and film enter a space designed to control knowledge? How does the building's history shape, or even resist, the narratives presented in these films? In considering these questions through a series of films that intervenes on inherited stories and accepted truths, Infringes proposes a rethinking of the relationship between power, space, history, and memory. The building itself becomes part of this inquiry, raising questions about how spaces, like narratives, can be repurposed and reimagined. The films selected for this program unsettle the boundaries between past and present, myth and memory. They foreground the complex mechanisms by which the past is controlled to sustain present-day hegemony. The works offer speculative interventions to reclaim agency and narrative autonomy and with the alchemy of vibrant sight and sound, each work offers, as Rhea Storr puts it, a way to "protest joyfully." In that spirit, the films provide a joyful disruption of dominant narratives, fostering potential for collective transformation where erased or suppressed voices and histories can be reclaimed. As an active reimagining of the shared futures that can emerge, let us infringe upon the familiar to open ourselves to new forms of communal knowledge and resistance. - Komtouch Napattaloong, Infringes Curator |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Impact | Greater international visibility and dialogue with international contexts. |
| URL | https://www.khaoyaiart.com/bangkok-kunsthalle/exhibitions/infringes |
| Title | 'Preemptive Listening - Aura Satz with Raven Chacon' |
| Description | In Aura Satz's ongoing project Preemptive Listening, she asks: "How do we hear and understand emergency signals at a time of intersecting environmental and sociopolitical crisis? How can we address alarm fatigue, as both a lived reality and a metaphor for our current state?" Composed of footage shot at sites around the globe where sirens are deployed, Satz works collaboratively with a roster of musicians to speculatively reimagine what a siren is. Through a long-form cinema residency at the Walker, Satz presents and develops a number of events across the next two years that feed into the development, production, and research of her project Preemptive Listening. For the first event of this residency, Satz will present her feature film in progress with a live musical performance by one of her sonic collaborators, 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning Raven Chacon (Diné). A composer, performer, and artist, Chacon often centers his diverse musical output on creating new narratives of Indigenous sovereignty. A conversation between the artists follows the performance. |
| Type Of Art | Performance (Music, Dance, Drama, etc) |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Artist talk |
| URL | https://walkerart.org/calendar/2022/preemptive-listening-by-aura-satz-with-raven-chacon |
| Title | 'Preemptive Listening' feature film |
| Description | Preemptive Listening. 2024. UK/Finland. 89 min. Produced by: LONO Studio - Luke W Moody, Aura Satz Associate Producers: Tendai John Mutambu Co-Producer: Co-producers Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola for Testifilmi Supported by: AHRC, OKRE, With additional support from: AND festival, AVEK, Sonic Acts, Walker Arts Centre, Kunsternes Hus, Tyneside Cinema, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery / Creative New Zealand, EMPAC, CPH:FORUM 2021 In an age of intersecting political, man-made and ecological disasters, 'Preemptive Listening' is an ode to the sirens that are and those that could be. Siren compositions from over 20 contemporary musicians form a resonant voice to ask; Does an alarm have to be alarming? Part of a larger research project that takes the siren as a prompt for exploring the politics of listening and emergency, Preemptive Listening (2024) brings together musicians, activists and thinkers to propose alternatives modes of sounding and recalibrating the signal. The film weaves together original music by Mazen Kerbaj, Raven Chacon, Evelyn Glennie, David Toop, Elaine Mitchener, Camille Norment, Laurie Spiegel, Maja S.K. Ratkje, Anton Lukoszevieze, BJ Nilsen, Ilpo Väisänen, Rhodri Davies, FUJI|||||||||||TA, Sarah Davachi, Christina Kubisch, Moor Mother, Horomona Horo, Debit, and Kode9, alongside the voices of Khalid Abdalla, Daphne Carr, Asantewaa Boykin, Niki jones, Erin Matariki Carr, and Arturo Escobar. Shot using a mix of 16mm film and drone cameras, Preemptive Listening is driven by its soundtrack which activates images of sirens and emergency systems across the world, from Fukushima, Chile, the Netherlands, the US, to Israel and Palestine. Prompting a range of visual and sonic associations, the film considers the siren as an emblematic sound of resistance, oppression and extinction; as a cipher of trauma; as a mouthpiece for sonic governance and crisis management; and as marker of territorial control. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2024 |
| Impact | Screenings at MoMA Docfortnight; CPH dox (winner of the New Vision award); Tate Modern OpenCity Festival; Karlovy Vary International Film Festival; Dokufest Kosovo; St.Moritz Art Film Festival (winner of the Best Feature film prize); Reykjavík International Film Festival; DMZ International Documentary Film Festival; Docpoint festival Helsinki; Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2025, Tokyo Photographic Museum; Vilnius International Film Festival; InScience film festival Nijmegen; Ambulante Mexico; and more. Reviews and interviews in MoMA magazine, Ocula, Art in America, the Wire magazine, Filmmaker magazine, Frieze, Prospect Magazine and more. |
| URL | https://preemptivelisteningfilm.com/ |
| Title | 'Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy' group exhibition as part of Rewire festival |
| Description | 'Warnings in Waiting', a three screen installation version of Preemptive Listening, was installed in the basement of WEST, The Hague (the former US Embassy) for the duration of the festival (4-6.04.2025), and extended beyond until 27th April 2025. Rewire 2025 marks the fifth edition of Proximity Music, a joint exhibition programme by Rewire and iii, exploring the intersections of music, architecture, technology, ritual, and play through immersive, multisensory installations. "Proximity Music: Echoes of Entropy" - unfolds across multiple sites in The Hague's city centre, featuring newly commissioned and adapted works by both emerging and established artists. Taking as a theme the thin boundary between order and chaos, visitors can expect at Proximity Music resonant sonic environments, kinetic sculptures, and tactile interactions from Aura Satz, Chris Salter & Marije Baalman, Coralie Vogelaar, Ioana Vreme Moser, Natalia (Nika) Sorzano, Navid Navab, and a major new commissioned work by Zimoun. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2025 |
| Impact | Audience reported change in views, opinions or behaviours |
| URL | https://instrumentinventors.org/agenda/proximity-music-echoes-of-entropy/ |
| Title | 'SIREN (some poetics),' a group exhibition and a poetics devoted to technologies of myth and mouth, earth and alarm, gender and language. |
| Description | SIREN (some poetics) is a group exhibition (and a poetics) guest-curated by writer and poet Quinn Latimer, with work by Katja Aufleger, Patricia L. Boyd, Bia Davou, Sky Hopinka, Liliane Lijn, Bernadette Mayer, Rosemary Mayer, Nour Mobarak, Senga Nengudi, Rivane Neuenschwander, Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, Aura Satz, Ser Serpas, Shanzhai Lyric, Jenna Sutela, Iris Touliatou, and Dena Yago Sirens are alarms: they signal harm. In an ancient world, sirens were figured as women (part bird or part fish but all witch) whose seductive song was an invitation to self-harm. Both siren songs, ancient and nascent, remain in the realm of danger, then. Still, if our conceptions of sirens have changed, our notions of control have not. We would still like to save ourselves in every instance, sweet song or not. Yet in the ancient poem that made them infamous, of the sirens who sang to some crew, no body was described just a voice. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Artist Talk with Daphne Carr https://www.amant.org/programs/42-preemptive-listening |
| URL | https://www.amant.org/programs/42-preemptive-listening |
| Title | 'The Future Waters of the Storm Surge' |
| Description | SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022: Leaving Traces, The Future Waters of the Storm Surge by Aura Satz 16 October 2022 - Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands The chapter explores a wall of sirens framed within a storm surge barrier in the Netherlands. Measuring nearly eight kilometres in length, the Oosterscheldekering is a special dam: both a barrier designed to protect from North Sea flooding, and a bridge that connects the Zeeland islands of Schouwen-Duiveland and Noord-Beveland. Embedded within the preventive architecture, the siren is an integral part of a complex web of infrastructures preempting the turbulence of future threats. The siren sound draws an invisible line across an unstable horizon, speaking to the centrifugal chaos of storms to come. The Future Waters of the Storm Surge is a part of Preemptive Listening, a feature-film-in-the-making by Aura Satz, which re-imagines sirens in the age of manmade and ecological disasters. The chapter premiered at Sonic Acts Biennial 2022, inaugurating an evening concert programme curated around Satz' research, with performances by Mazen Kerbaj, Debit, and Sarah Davachi & Nemø Ensemble. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2022 |
| Impact | Artist talk for the symposium, SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022: Leaving Traces, 16 October 2022 - Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Recorded and available online. |
| URL | https://sonicacts.com/archive/aura-satz-recording |
| Title | 'Warnings in Waiting' |
| Description | How do we hear and understand emergency signals at a time of intersecting environmental and sociopolitical crisis? Does an alarm have to be alarming? And can we imagine sirens beyond the human? Composed of footage shot at sites where sirens are deployed, Aura Satz works collaboratively with a roster of musicians to speculatively reimagine what a siren is. The project reimagines sirens in order to forge a new understanding of present and long-term emergency. The siren serves as a worldwide symbol of potential trauma, an emblem warning of climate catastrophe, a mouthpiece for sonic governance and crisis management. Many sirens are relics from WW2 and the cold war, repurposed to communicate the threats of extreme weather, a collective commemorative pause, or resurrected to test disaster preparedness. Drawing on Aura Satz's ongoing documentary film project Preemptive Listening (2017-ongoing), the triangular installation explores the lifecycle of a siren: sirens in situ, placed within landscapes and architectures of threat; sirens in a factory, suspended in a preliminary limbo; and sirens in a state of obsolescence, in a siren 'cemetery' or junkyard. The site-specific installation consists of films shot across America, Lapland and Fukushima that rotate across different soundscapes, with newly composed siren sounds by an array of experimental musicians. The soundtrack features the endlessly escalating sounds of planetary data; animal howls and the grief of extinction; soaring banshee-like warnings; defiant trumpets; intricate harp permutations; the sounds of the earth's core. Warnings in Waiting offers an experiment in listening, exploding the soundtrack within a permutational logic specific to the gallery context, and echoing the modular logic of the siren's code that can be used to communicate diverse messages across war, weather and civil unrest. The exhibition is produced specifically for Kunstnernes Hus and is Aura Satz's first solo show in Scandinavia. Supported by AHRC, OKRE, RCA, Walker Arts Centre, Kunsternes Hus, with support in kind from Kadist. Presented in association with Walker Arts Centre, Tate Modern, and EMPAC. |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Artist talk at Kunsternes Hus, reviewed in Artforum. Ongoing dicussions as a result of the exhibition connected to the Feature film |
| URL | https://kunstnerneshus.no/en/program/exhibitions/aura-satz |
| Title | 'While Smoke Signals' |
| Description | 'While Smoke Signals', a new film commission with live film score by David Toop, followed by Q&A, at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle https://tynesidecinema.co.uk/event/artist-commission-while-smoke-signals-qa-and-live-performance/ Also exhibited at Bangkok Kunsthalle as part of a group show 'Infringes', Curated by Komtouch Napattaloong 23 Oct - 22 Dec 2024 https://www.khaoyaiart.com/bangkok-kunsthalle/exhibitions/infringes |
| Type Of Art | Artistic/Creative Exhibition |
| Year Produced | 2023 |
| Impact | Live music screening, followed by Q&A with David Toop |
| URL | https://tynesidecinema.co.uk/event/artist-commission-while-smoke-signals-qa-and-live-performance/ |
| Description | 1. The main objective of the award was to produce a documentary feature film to unpack the critical potential of reimagining sirens. It has been shown widely across film festivals (winning and shortlisted for numerous awards), art venues, music festivals, and within academic organisations and beyond, increasing awareness of the changing methods of emergency signal communication. The key contribution to new knowledge - an original non-audiocentric definition of the siren as a call to attention, a call to action, encoding a future-oriented instruction - was deployed in order to invite collaborators and new audiences to rethink critically what the siren's purpose is, who it is for, how it shapes a listener's response, and what future we want to salvage. 2. The interview archive informed the script. The film featured newly imagined sirens from 19 musicians, and voiceovers from six contributors who range from people with lived experience of sirens, activists and theorists. The interviews that fed into the wider research included musicians, sound scholars, sociologists, cognitive neuroscientists, audio engineers, auraldiversity theorists and practitioners, people from the d/Deaf community, the noise abatement society, warning research and risk/disaster scholars, government policy advisors, app developers, and historians. An interdisciplinary roundtable on the project, including the project advisory board members and PDRAs, was published in the journal Sound Studies. Our research questions have led to new findings: A. new alarm design can be a solution to the challenges of alarm fatigue; B. this should be conceptualised within a soundscape management approach to solving environmental noise and population health problems, like harm to hearing, mental distress; C. text messages and vibratory alerts are supplementing acoustic sirens for better access and clearer instructions; D. in addition to short term risk management, siren design workshops and debates can inform communities about long-term emergency frameworks of climate catastrophe, or nuclear waste disposal. An important unexpected new research area highlighted the importance of community-based early warnings, and used workshops to explore how new siren co-creation can contribute to greater resilience and improved risk management. 3. The film's related outputs (exhibition, podcast, co-authored journal article, and symposium resulting in an online guest-edited publication) have all led to significant unforeseen partnerships, enabling dissemination across a wide range of audiences and readership. Additional funding awards have supported workshops, knowledge exchange and public engagement activities in collaboration with new research partners, in particular UCL's Warning Research Centre and Tate Modern. Working with disaster and risk scholars/practitioners alongside civil society organisations, we have used the premise of the film's reimagining of sirens to support workshops and discussions on warnings and risk communication, whereby community-based, people-centred early warnings are key to the success of preparedness and risk management. |
| Exploitation Route | Going forward we are continuing our collaboration with UCL's Warning Research Centre, in particular their annual conference which brings together STS Academics, professionals and NGOs such as government agencies at all levels; the private sector; the United Nations, the Red Cross/Crescent and other international organisations, to consolidate ways in which the film's premise can connect and support enduring partnerships between risk and disaster scholars and civil society and community initiatives. Our workshops to date have been effective in structuring dialogues with practitioners, communities, and academics regarding how communities can express their views on the specific risks they face and the preparedness strategies they require. Through an artistic engagement with sirens as a tangible emblem of risks, warnings, and resilience, we can facilitate exchanges which in the longer run can inform policy discussions. We are also in the process of exploring the project's outcomes to structure events with the Energy Demand Research Centre (EDRC) and the national simulation exercise SIMEX. All of these can be carried forward beyond our initiatives by academics and non-academics alike, and we are aiming to create a prototype for community-centred siren design workshops which will have wider applications across multiple contexts. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Creative Economy Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software) Government Democracy and Justice Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
| URL | https://doi.org/10.1080/20551940.2024.2348243 |
| Description | Beyond academia, the international documentary film festival circuits have opened up to different types of audiences and practitioners, creating impact by putting the project in direct dialogue with socio-political issues, human rights and climate catastrophe challenges. Alongside the screenings there have been myriad engagement activities (talks, presentations, media interviews, master-classes) and the film tour has facilitated site-specific discussions worldwide, to encompass diverse potential threats and emergency contexts. This has included war zones and conflicted borders (Kosovo, South Korea); earthquakes and volcanoes (Japan, Iceland, Mexico, Turkey); climate disasters (UK, USA, Netherlands, Belgium, Cyprus); and the deep time challenges of nuclear waste disposal (Japan, Finland, USA, UK). Screenings have stimulated debate and fed into interdisciplinary discussions around emergency signalling, crisis management, and wider questions of warning research's relationship to governance and citizen-led deliberative democracy, which can in the long run improve the effectiveness of public services and policy. In our collaborative work with the WRC (UCL) and civil society organisations to date we explored how reimagining sirens with specific user groups can change their understanding of the siren's socio-political role, and its cultural, psychobiological and environmental impact. We used co-creation as a workshop method to give workshop participants agency in shaping a new way of thinking about sirens, to provide communities with a space in which to articulate the specific risks they are facing (e.g. environmental, occupational, personal, acoustic), how these are understood, communicated, and managed. This in turn can lead to better decision-making processes and access to resources in the face of disasters, in and beyond their communities. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2023 |
| Sector | Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Other |
| Impact Types | Cultural Societal |
| Description | 'A Pluriverse Siren,' part of larger research project 'Preemptive Listening', featuring Erin Matariki Carr, lawyer, scholar and activist, Co-Lead for RIVER, and Taonga Puoro performance by Horomona Horo. Presented as a solo exhibition at Teuru Gallery. |
| Amount | $26,405 (NZD) |
| Funding ID | 028729 |
| Organisation | Creative New Zealand |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | New Zealand |
| Start | 09/2022 |
| End | 06/2023 |
| Description | 'Preemptive Listening' collaboration (screening, talks, performances, and symposium across three days in 2024, resulting in a guest-edited issue of Disclaimer.org.au in 2025) |
| Amount | £14,085 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Tate |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 05/2023 |
| End | 04/2025 |
| Description | 'The Voice of Warning', workshop and event funded as part of Music Futures Grant |
| Amount | £1,200 (GBP) |
| Organisation | University College London |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 03/2023 |
| End | 09/2023 |
| Description | EMPAC artist residency (travel, venues, post-production costs, per diem & accommodation) |
| Amount | $32,535 (USD) |
| Organisation | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United States |
| Start | 11/2023 |
| End | 12/2023 |
| Description | End/Future artist commission |
| Amount | £5,000 (GBP) |
| Organisation | Tyneside Cinema |
| Sector | Private |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 08/2022 |
| End | 03/2023 |
| Description | RCA AHRC Impact Acceleration Account |
| Amount | £9,827 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | AH/X00337X/1 |
| Organisation | Royal College of Art |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2024 |
| End | 05/2025 |
| Description | 'Preemptive Listening' three days at Tate Modern, with Tate film |
| Organisation | Tate |
| Department | Tate Modern, London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | The project drew on a seven year research project which culminated in 'Preemptive Listening', the feature film by Aura Satz. Tate Film presented a three-day programme of screenings, performances, and round table discussions exploring sonic practices and how they relate to sirens and emergency signals. Co-curated by Aura Satz, Irene Revell, Francesca Laura Cavallo, Beatriz García-Velasco, Valentine Umansky, 'Preemptive Listening' brought together Satz's new documentary feature film, a series of musician and artist-led performances and talks, and a symposium. The RCA/AHRC team contributed artistic and curatorial expertise, intellectual input, and funding towards travel / accommodation expenses, and artist/speaker fees. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Tate film curators contributed curatorial expertise, intellectual input, facilitated organising and hosting the events, technical support, equipment, facilities, BSL interpreters, documentation, and funding towards the overall event. Furthermore Tate film collaborated on the resulting publication project, the guest-edited Issue of Disclaimer.org.au, co-edited by Aura Satz, Irene Revell, Francesca Laura Cavallo, Beatriz García-Velasco, Valentine Umansky, and provided contributor fees. |
| Impact | "Preemptive Listening: The Sonic Politics of Emergency, A dossier extending from the film by Aura Satz." Guest-edited Issue of Disclaimer.org.au, co-edited by Aura Satz, Irene Revell, Francesca Laura Cavallo, Beatriz García-Velasco, Valentine Umansky. Associate editor Joel Stern. https://disclaimer.org.au/contents/preemptive-listening/ |
| Start Year | 2024 |
| Description | Pre-sirens workshop: Alarm Calls from the more than human, in collaboration with Invisible Flock's ongoing research with Land Body Ecologies, and UCL's Warning Research Centre, |
| Organisation | Invisible Flock |
| Sector | Private |
| PI Contribution | The RCA/AHRC team contributed artistic and curatorial expertise, intellectual input, funding towards speaker fees and refreshments, supported by the RCA AHRC Impact Acceleration Account. Also screened 'A Pluriverse Siren' and gave presentations. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Invisible Flock members brought curatorial expertise, intellectual input, facilitated organising and hosting the event at the Hub in the Wellcome Collection, with relevant technical support, equipment and facilities. They also presented their own research and facilitated a listening workshop. |
| Impact | A workshop exploring animal and environmental alert calls (such as the sounds of fish, cicadas and elephants) that preempt, precede or overlap with our current emergency warnings and sirens. A collaboration between the Preemptive Listening project, Invisible Flock's ongoing research with Land Body Ecologies, and UCL's Warning Research Centre, this intensive programme brought together an interdisciplinary range of researchers and practitioners across biology, design, art, sound/music and disaster resilience studies. Audiences were invited to re-imagining the siren through listening sessions, recalibration and composition as a way to counter our current alarm fatigue, overwarning and solastalgia. David George Haskell, author of Sounds Wild and Broken (2023), joined us to discuss alert calls in the animal world. Biologist Nishant Srinivasaiah shared his work about elephant relationships with sound and solastalgia in Bannerghatta, and sound scholar from Fukushima Koji Nagahata guided us through his archive of the post-disaster soundscape since 2011.The programme will also involve a listening workshop led by Invisible Flock, a screening of Aura Satz's short film 'A Pluriverse Siren' and a toning and overtoning chanting session facilitated by sound therapist Naomy Raven. |
| Start Year | 2024 |
| Description | The Voice of Warning, funded by the UCL Warning Research Centre and OKRE |
| Organisation | University College London |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The Voice of Warning is a new collaboration between the UCL Warning Research Centre (WRC) and the Preemptive Listening research project at the Royal College of Art (RCA, funded by OKRE and AHRC). It brings together artists, scientists, and advocacy groups to explore alternative methods for warning the deep future through the prism of the siren. What does it mean to be the voice that warns? How can we warn across different time scales and space scales? In collaboration with artist Aura Satz and researcher/curator Francesca Laura Cavallo, UCL's Warning Research Centre will host two workshops exploring the aural dimension of warnings and the soundscapes they occupy (and create) through the prism of the siren. The workshops will focus on the controversial Sizewell C proposed development of a nuclear power station in Suffolk, where we will work in partnership with Stop Sizewell C. The Voice of Warning aims to mobilise artists and the channels of artistic production (in particular, sound and listening practices) to articulate concerns and stimulate innovative participatory warning methods responding to energy transition decisions and the new risky infrastructures attached to them. About the workshops Workshop 1 is planned for the end of May 2023 in Sizewell. It will focus on a walk, followed by deep listening and sounding exercises, leading to co-creating a new 'siren sound' (and interpretation). Using 'abstract' sounds (both listened to and produced by participants), the project will experiment with citizens-lead methods for warning about the deep future. Workshop 2 at UCL will hold a space for reflection on what it means to be the voice that warns by discussing the listening and sounding exercises in Sizewell in relation to broader discourses about warnings and risk communication. It will involve UCL WRC affiliate researchers alongside invited artists, nuclear policy advisors and activists to test and further develop our research methodologies with an interdisciplinary team of experts and practitioners. |
| Collaborator Contribution | Our collaboration with Carina Fearnley from the Warning Research centre enabled us to think more explicitly around risk-mapping as an integral part of the warning workshop. The second chapter of the collaboration with the Warning Research Centre was hosted at UCL, and included members from our AHRC advisory board Judy Edworthy, Paul Dorfman, Lisa Lavia, as well as invited respondents Carmen Solanas from the Crisis and Disaster Management course (School of the Environment, Geography and Geosciences at Portsmouth University). |
| Impact | Publication for the Early Warnings for All. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/sites/sts/files/report_rca_stop_sizewell_c_ucl_wrc_draft.2.docx.pdf |
| Start Year | 2023 |
| Description | "Preemptive Listening" screening on a loop, presented by St.Moritz Art Film Festival X Engadine Art Talks (E.A.T.) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Screened on a loop as the winner of the 2024 St.Moritz Art Film Festival (SMAFF), connected to Engadine Art Talk in Switzerland (https://engadin-art-talks.ch/en), 24 -26 January 2025. Engadin Art Talks (E.A.T.) is a forum of art, architecture, design, literature, and innovation that regularly takes place in Zuoz in the Swiss Engadin valley. With a year-round public programme, E.A.T. aims to connect the arts with its neighbouring disciplines through insightful presentations, panel discussions, and participatory happenings that respond to urgent themes of our world. The forum's intention is to find novel perspectives on relevant topics that define our present and shape our future. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| URL | https://smaff.org/preemptive-listening-by-aura-satz-2/ |
| Description | 'A Pluriverse Siren,' online zoom interview with Tendai John Mutambu, Erin Matariki Carr and Horomona Horo |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Online zoom interview with Tendai John Mutambu, Erin Matariki Carr and Horomona Horo, shown alongside exhibition installation for the duration of the exhibition, and also hosted online on the Gallery's video channel. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.teuru.org.nz/whats-on/calendar/aura-satz-a-pluriverse-siren/ |
| Description | 'Aura Satz Invites Us to Reimagine the Siren' In Conversation with Tendai John Mutambu, Ocula Magazine, 22 February 2024 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Extensive interview which circulated online as well as through Ocula's bi-weekly international newsletter mail out. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/aura-satz-invites-us-to-reimagine-the-siren/ |
| Description | 'From Emergency to Emergence: Aura Satz's Preemptive Listening', interview by Sophie Cavoulacos, MoMA magazine, 21 Feb 2024 |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Media (as a channel to the public) |
| Results and Impact | Online interview in advance of world premiere at MoMA in Feb 2024. Included exclusive excerpts from the film's soundtrack, hosted on Museum of Modern Art's soundcloud account. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/1036 |
| Description | 'Listening Sensations' talk with Evelyn Glennie, part of 'Preemptive Listening,' a three-day programme of events hosted at Tate Modern |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Curated alongside London-based artist and filmmaker Aura Satz, Tate Film presents a three-day programme of screenings, performances, and round table discussions exploring sonic practices and how they relate to sirens and emergency signals. Does an alarm have to be alarming? How can we address alarm fatigue, both as lived reality and as a metaphor for our current state? Preemptive Listening at Tate brought together Aura Satz's new documentary feature film, a series of musician and artist-led performances and talks, and a symposium. Percussionist and composer Evelyn Glennie joined artist Aura Satz at the Starr cinema, Tate Modern, in a conversation around their distinct sonic practices and collaboration in the 'Preemptive Listening' project. Subsequently published as a transcript with audio excerpts in the online sound journal Disclaimer.org.au in 2025. The overall programme was organised by Tate Film (Valentine Umansky, Beatriz Garcia-Velazco) in collaboration with the Preemptive Listening team at the Royal College of Art (Aura Satz with Francesca Laura Cavallo and Irene Revell), part-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Participants across the 3 days included: Evelyn Glennie, Aura Satz, David Toop, Elaine Mitchener, Hillel Schwartz, Khalid Abdalla, Mazen Kerbaj, Margarida Mendes, Camille Norment, Jason Waite (Don't Follow the Wind Collective), Xenia Benivolski, Carina Fearnley, Jana Winderen, Jennifer Gabrys, Riar Rizaldi, Arturo Escobar, Francesca Laura Cavallo, Raven Chacon, Irene Revell. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/preemptive-listening-day-two |
| Description | 'Preemptive Listening' Screening and talk at Tate Modern, as part of Open City festival, and a self-standing three-day programme of events hosted at Tate |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The UK premiere of Aura Satz's film Preemptive Listening 2024, followed by a conversation with the artist. Presented as part of Open City Documentary Festival. Curated alongside London-based artist and filmmaker Aura Satz, Tate Film presented a three-day programme of screenings, performances, and round table discussions exploring sonic practices and how they relate to sirens and emergency signals. Does an alarm have to be alarming? How can we address alarm fatigue, both as lived reality and as a metaphor for our current state? Preemptive Listening brought together Aura Satz's new documentary feature film, a series of musician and artist-led performances and talks, and a symposium. The overall programme was organised by Tate Film (Valentine Umansky, Beatriz Garcia-Velazco) in collaboration with the Preemptive Listening team at the Royal College of Art (Aura Satz with Francesca Laura Cavallo and Irene Revell), part-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Participants across the 3 days included: Evelyn Glennie, Aura Satz, David Toop, Elaine Mitchener, Hillel Schwartz, Khalid Abdalla, Mazen Kerbaj, Margarida Mendes, Camille Norment, Jason Waite (Don't Follow the Wind Collective), Xenia Benivolski, Carina Fearnley, Jana Winderen, Jennifer Gabrys, Riar Rizaldi, Arturo Escobar, Francesca Laura Cavallo, Raven Chacon, Irene Revell. Open City Documentary Festival creates an open space in London to nurture and champion the art of non-fiction cinema. Based at the UCL Centre for Public Anthropology, they deliver training programmes, an annual documentary festival, the bi-annual Non-Fiction journal and events throughout the year that aim to challenge and expand the idea of documentary in all its forms. Open City Documentary Festival takes place in venues across London, presenting a diverse programme of international contemporary and retrospective non-fiction moving image, audio and cross media, as well as filmmaker Q&As, panels, talks and workshops. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/preemptive-listening-day-one |
| Description | 'Preemptive Listening' by Aura Satz with Raven Chacon. Performance followed by in conversation with Pablo de Ocampo, Aura Satz and Raven Chacon |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In Aura Satz's ongoing project Preemptive Listening, she asks: "How do we hear and understand emergency signals at a time of intersecting environmental and sociopolitical crisis? How can we address alarm fatigue, as both a lived reality and a metaphor for our current state?" Composed of footage shot at sites around the globe where sirens are deployed, Satz works collaboratively with a roster of musicians to speculatively reimagine what a siren is. Through a long-form cinema residency at the Walker, Satz presents and develops a number of events across the next two years that feed into the development, production, and research of her project Preemptive Listening. For the first event of this residency, Satz will present her feature film in progress with a live musical performance by one of her sonic collaborators, 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning Raven Chacon (Diné). A composer, performer, and artist, Chacon often centers his diverse musical output on creating new narratives of Indigenous sovereignty. A conversation between the artists follows the performance. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://walkerart.org/calendar/2022/preemptive-listening-by-aura-satz-with-raven-chacon |
| Description | 'Preemptive Listening, Aura Satz in conversation with Daphne Carr" (recording subsequently hosted online on the AMANT website) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In this conversation artist Aura Satz and writer Daphne Carr consider the revolutionary potential of the siren, and how we may engage in a practice of "preemptive listening." "The siren is firstly a call to attention, secondly a call to action, and lastly, it faces forward. It hovers in the split-second before future ruins. The siren calls forth unravelling scars, some near and visible, others remote, imperceptible, buried in the deep future, unimaginable beyond this lifetime. Living across multiple scales of threat, how to disentangle immediate danger from long-term distant danger? But more importantly, how to recalibrate the siren away from the sound of trauma? Towards a sound that allows us to imagine otherwise, towards a future that is not mired in catastrophe." (from Aura Satz's "Preemptive Listening" included in the exhibition catalog) This event is organized in the framework of SIREN (some poetics), a group exhibition and a poetics devoted to technologies of myth and mouth, earth and alarm, gender and language. Aura Satz's work encompasses film, sound, performance and sculpture. Works are made in conversation and use dialogue as both method and subject matter. She has made a body of work centered on various sound technologies in order to explore language, notation systems, code and encryption, and ways in which these might resist standardization, generating new soundscapes, and in turn new forms of listening and attending to the other. Aura teaches Sound and Moving Image in the Fine Art department at the Royal College of Art in London. Preemptive Listening (Part 1) is included in SIREN (Some poetics). For this experimental documentary feature film, Aura has been awarded an AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellowship in support of the 'Preemptive Listening'. The project is also supported by a long-form cinema residency at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), Kunsternes Hus (Oslo), as well as various other partners. Daphne Carr is a Youngstown, Ohio area activist, writer, editor, educator, and scholar who focuses on sound and social justice. She is completing a dissertation on the history of sound as violence in police sound technologies used in public order policing in the FAS music department of New York University, where she co-organized the Precarious Sounds, Sounding Sanctuary Conference as well as a successful series of workshops on unconscious bias training, upstander intervention, and academic upstander intervention. She is a widely published journalist and cultural critic, author of Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine (Continuum), and essayist in a number of anthologies, including Out of the Vinyl Deeps: Ellen Willis on Rock Music. She has curated exhibits on music and culture including PLUR: The rise of electronic dance music in America at the Museum at Bethel Woods and Free Cult |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://www.amant.org/programs/42-preemptive-listening |
| Description | 'The Future Waters of the Storm Surge' (subsequently recorded and hosted on Sonic Acts youtube channel) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | SONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 2022: Leaving Traces The Future Waters of the Storm Surge by Aura Satz 16 October 2022 - Likeminds, Amsterdam, The Netherlands From the perspective of the Oosterscheldekering - a protective barrier that connects the Zeeland islands and is designed to protect the Netherlands from flooding from the North Sea - water is a threat, a potential source of disaster, an alarming sound. By exploring such sites visually and sonically, filmmaker Aura Satz is reimagining emergency sirens in an age of intersecting human-made and ecological disasters. Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 took place at various locations in Amsterdam, interweaving an exhibition, sound performances and discourse programme, accompanied by artist presentations, workshops, excursions and more. As a part of the Biennial programme, the Leaving Traces symposium opened up a forum in which to become attentive to pollution's invisible, yet harmful touch. Actively rethinking our relation to the climate and our planetary legacies, an array of artists, researchers, curators, and scholars spoke of the many faces of toxicity - from fossil fuels to plastic, from nuclear energy to chemical pollutants. The gathering staged real stories and events of exposure, thinking about 'leaving traces' not just as the material act of spreading toxicity, but as art's potential to reach out and act as a disruptive force in the world. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| URL | https://sonicacts.com/archive/aura-satz-recording |
| Description | 'The Voice of Warning: Sizewell C and Hearing Warnings,' talk as part of Creating Effective Warnings for All symposium, hosted by UCL Warning Research Centre |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | What does it mean to be the voice that warns? How can we reimagine sirens and emergency signals to warn across different space and time scales? Connecting artistic practice to civil society and deliberative democracy, this chapter will be an opportunity to discuss and further develop an ongoing collaboration between the Royal College of Art, UCL WRC and affected communities in Sizewell: the site chosen for the controversial EDF nuclear power station in the UK. Thinking about warning methods through the prism of sirens and taking artist Aura Satz's film Preemptive Listening as a starting point for an interrogation of how we listen to emergency signals, this chapter discussed the possibilities that art and participatory creative practices can offer in the creation of more inclusive (or citizen-led) warning methods and preparedness strategies. Dr Aura Satz (Royal College of Art) Alison Downes (Stop Sizewell C) Dr Francesca Laura Cavallo (Royal College of Art) |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/warning-research-centre/creating-effective-warnings-all/creating-effective... |
| Description | 'Warnings in Waiting', Aura Satz in conversation with Anne Hilde Neset |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | On the occasion of the opening of 'Warnings in Waiting,' there will be a conversation about the exhibition between the artist Aura Satz and the director of the Henie Onstad Art Centre, Anne Hilde Neset. About the exhibition Warnings in Waiting is a three-screen film and sound installation for the lower exhibition hall. The project re-imagines sirens in order to forge a new understanding of present and long term emergency. The siren serves as a worldwide symbol of potential trauma, an emblem warning of climate catastrophe, a mouthpiece for sonic governance and crisis management. Drawing on Aura Satz's ongoing documentary film project Preemptive Listening (2017-ongoing), three segments of the feature film explore the lifecycle of a siren, with a soundtrack composed by an array of experimental musicians. Warnings in Waiting is on view between 9 June and 6 August 2023. It is the artist's first solo exhibition in Scandinavia. The project is a collaboration with the Walker Institute of Art, Minneapolis, and Tate Modern, London. In conversation Aura Satz (b. 1974, Barcelona) is a London-based artist who works with film, sound, performance and sculpture. Her works explore a distributed, expanded and shared notion of voice, and are made in conversation, using dialogue as both method and subject matter. Satz has made a body of work centred on various sound technologies in order to explore notation systems, code and encryption, and ways in which these might resist standardisation, generating new soundscapes, and in turn new forms of listening and attending to the other. She has performed, exhibited and screened her work worldwide. Anne Hilde Neset initiated Satz' exhibition Warnings in Waiting. She was the director of Kunstnernes Hus until December 2022 and is now the director of the Henie Onstad Art Center. She has worked as a writer and editor at the London-based music magazine The Wire, a founder of several music festivals in the UK and Norway. She is one of the founders of the curatorial agency Electra. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://kunstnerneshus.no/en/program/events/aura-satz-apning |
| Description | 'While Smoke Signals', talk with David Toop at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 'While Smoke Signals', a new film commission with live film score by David Toop, followed by Q&A, at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://tynesidecinema.co.uk/event/artist-commission-while-smoke-signals-qa-and-live-performance/ |
| Description | Composing a soundtrack to emergency in 'Preemptive Listening': A conversation between Laurie Spiegel and Aura Satz, Online talk for the School of Sound |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel and artist film-maker Aura Satz discuss 'Preemptive Listening,' the collaborative process whereby the score and sound came into existence prior to the film, as well as their previous collaborations and respective practices. In particular the talk will focus on the two crucial segments of the film scored by Spiegel, one using the astronomical sounds of planets; the other drawing on the threat of extinction that includes audio recordings of manatees, cicadas, and a dog. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| URL | https://www.schoolofsound.co.uk/event/composing-a-soundtrack-to-emergency-in-preemptive-listening-a-... |
| Description | Pre-sirens workshop: Alarm Calls from the more than human |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | A workshop exploring animal and environmental alert calls (such as the sounds of fish, cicadas and elephants) that preempt, precede or overlap with our current emergency warnings and sirens. A collaboration between the Preemptive Listening project, Invisible Flock's ongoing research with Land Body Ecologies, and UCL's Warning Research Centre, this intensive programme brought together an interdisciplinary range of researchers and practitioners across biology, design, art, sound/music and disaster resilience studies. Audiences were invited to re-imagining the siren through listening sessions, recalibration and composition as a way to counter our current alarm fatigue, overwarning and solastalgia. David George Haskell, author of Sounds Wild and Broken (2023), joined us to discuss alert calls in the animal world. Biologist Nishant Srinivasaiah shared his work about elephant relationships with sound and solastalgia in Bannerghatta, and sound scholar from Fukushima Koji Nagahata guided us through his archive of the post-disaster soundscape since 2011.The programme will also involve a listening workshop led by Invisible Flock, a screening of Aura Satz's short film 'A Pluriverse Siren' and a toning and overtoning chanting session facilitated by sound therapist Naomy Raven. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pre-sirens-workshop-alarm-calls-from-the-more-than-human-tickets-1020... |
| Description | Preemptive Listening Symposium hosted at Tate Modern |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Preemptive Listening all day symposium culminating in a performance by Raven Chacon. Who sounds the alarm, and in the interest of what? What would a siren for the intertwined human, non-human and more-than-human sound like? Curated alongside Aura Satz's Preemptive Listening film premiere and three-day programme, Tate film brings together musicians, artists, historians, sociologists, activists, and more in a symposium to explore the critical potential of reimagining sirens. The three panels will investigate sonic commemoration; sensing; repurposing, and deep time, delving into changing emergency signals and communication methods. Drawing on the film and featuring several of its collaborators, the symposium is an invitation to reimagine the siren's call, expand what we understand as listening, and what can be a siren. Indeed, the 'siren' may even be itself a diagnostic tool through which we might understand power relations and address critical questions of (sonic) governance. The programme is organised by Tate Film (Valentine Umansky, Beatriz Garcia-Velazco) in collaboration with the Preemptive Listening team at the Royal College of Art (Aura Satz with Francesca Laura Cavallo and Irene Revell), part-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). 1. Alarming/Sonic Commemoration Panel: Participants: Hillel Schwartz, Khalid Abdalla, Mazen Kerbaj, Chair: Margarida Mendes. 2: Repurposing/Deep Time Siren panel: Participants: Camille Norment, Jason Waite (Don't Follow the Wind Collective), Xenia Benivolski. Chair: Carina Fearnley. 3: Sensing/Vibration/Hearing panel: Participants: Jana Winderen, Jennifer Gabrys, Riar Rizaldi; Arturo Escobar (Zoom). Chair: Francesca Laura Cavallo. 4: Performance by Raven Chacon followed by a talk with Irene Revell. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/preemptive-listening-day-three |
| Description | Screening and Impact talk, as part of RIFF Reykjavík International Film Festival. Shortlisted for A Different Tomorrow Competition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Screened in the context of RIFF Reykjavík International Film Festival, 'A Different Tomorrow' award, focussed on environmental and humanitarian topics. The festival takes place over eleven days every autumn. Documentaries are increasingly prominent in the festival program, and feature films that particularly address human rights, quality of life, and environmental issues are given substantial space. An 'Impact' talk with local scholars and practitioners took place after one of the screenings. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://riff.is/en/onnur-framtid/ |
| Description | Screening and talk "What was siren for us?" with sound artist GAZAEBAL, as part of DMZ International Documentary Film Festival. Shortlisted for Frontier award. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 'Preemptive Listening' had its Asian premiere at DMZ festival, where it screened as part of the Frontier Competition. Screenings were accompanied by a talk "What was siren for us?" with local South Korean sound artist GAZAEBAL. 'DMZ expanded' also included a three-screen installation work connected to the film, playing throughout the festival duration. DMZ International Documentary Film Festival is a South Korean film festival for documentary films jointly presented by Gyeonggi Province, Paju and Goyang. Launched in 2009, it is held annually for seven days in September/October less than twenty kilometres from the Korean Demilitarised Zone, and showcases films dealing with "peace, coexistence and reconciliation." |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://dmzdocs.com/eng/addon/00000001/program_view.asp?m_idx=102995&QueryYear=2024&c_idx=254&QueryT... |
| Description | Screening and talk as part of Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2025, Tokyo Photographic Museum |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Screening and talk as part of Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2025, Tokyo Photographic Museum. Aiming to re-examine the increasingly diversified means by which moving images are created and appreciated, the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions has been dedicated to moving images not as an exclusive category, but with an eye to the various alternative views it embraces. In the years since its inception, as the festival has featured moving images from Japan and abroad while presenting a new theme with each edition that asks anew "What is a 'moving image'?", the circumstances surrounding moving images have changed dramatically, while the frameworks and technologies that define moving images have diversified. The 2025 edition was themed "Docs: Images and Records." Held on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions 2025 will focus on the transformation of these media. By examining a wide range of works through the lens of images and words, the festival will pursue a reconsideration of documents and documentary. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| URL | https://www.yebizo.com/en/program/1475 |
| Description | Screening and talk at Bozar, Bruxelles |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Screened 14-18 Jan 2025 as part of Art & Film cinema programme. On 14 January there was a post-screening conversation with director Aura Satz led by Stoffel Debuysere, as part of the Echoes of Dissent project (KASK & Conservatorium / School of Arts Ghent). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| URL | https://www.bozar.be/en/calendar/preemptive-listening-aura-satz |
| Description | Screening and talk at CPH Dox, Copenhagen. Winner of New:Vision award. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Screened as part of CPH:DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, one of the biggest documentary film festivals in the world. CPH:DOX doesn't just show documentary films - they anchor them in social context through debates, artist talks, events and masterclasses. In the hope of creating real social transformation, CPH:DOX establishes a space for reflection, dialogue and opinion across our society, making sure that the films and their themes stay with the viewers long after the films have ended. CPH:DOX also caters for the established film and media industry, as well as new artists. In addition to the film screening and general public talk, Aura Satz also presented two talks for DOX:ACADEMY students. CPH:DOX welcomes students from film schools, art academies and universities all over the world to take part in the DOX:ACADEMY. The platform offers tailored guidance throughout the extensive festival programme of films, conferences, intensive courses, social events, and much more, dedicated to ambitious students who wish to fully engage in the festival. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://cphdox.dk/film/preemptive-listening/ |
| Description | Screening and talk at Doc Fortnight, MoMA, NY |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Screened as part of Doc Fortnight, Doc Fortnight 2024, MoMA's Festival of International Nonfiction Film and Media, Feb 22-Mar 6, 2024. MoMA's annual celebration of nonfiction cinema showcases the most innovative, vital voices in documentary and hybrid filmmaking. In its 23rd year, Doc Fortnight's wide-ranging slate continues to bring New York City audiences award-winning debuts, film-festival highlights from around the world, and adventurous new films by moving-image artists. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/9396 |
| Description | Screening and talk at Docpoint, Documentary Film Festival, Helsinki |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Founded in 2001, DocPoint is one of the largest documentary festivals in the Nordic countries. In Finland, it is the only festival solely dedicated to nonfiction films. Once a year it brings more than a hundred of the best and most talked-about creative documentary films from all over the world and Finland to the screens of Helsinki. DocPoint aims to broaden the understanding of its audiences as to what's happening in the world, to discuss and engage with the state of humanity and the environment - and to feature the varied ways of telling stories and interpreting the world through nonfiction filmmaking. In addition to the festival screenings and talk, Satz gave two talks at Aalto university, allowing for more in depth discussions and workshops. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| URL | https://docpointfestival.fi/en/event-en/preemptive-listening-2/ |
| Description | Screening and talk at Dokufest film festival. Shortlisted for International Feature Dox award |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Film festival screening and talk at Dokufest, International Documentary and Short Film Festival, the largest film festival in Kosovo. Shortlisted for INTERNATIONAL FEATURE DOX. DokuFest is the largest film festival in Kosovo. In 2002, DokuFest was established with the vision of reinvigorating cinema and enriching the cultural landscape of Prizren. Over the years, it has evolved into the premier documentary and short film festival in Southeast Europe. Notably, since 2019, DokuFest has earned the esteemed status of being a BAFTA qualifying festival for short films, and in 2022, it was designated as a nominating festival for the prestigious European Film Academy. The festival spans nine days filled with captivating events, including documentary photo exhibitions, engaging debates, informative master classes, and vibrant music performances. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://dokufest.com/en/festival/2024/international-feature-dox/preemptive-listening |
| Description | Screening and talk at Karlovy Vary International film festival |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 'Preemptive Listening' screened as part of the Imagina section, for films with an unconventional approach to narration and style; distinctive and radical visions of film language. The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is the largest film festival in the Czech Republic and the most prestigious such festival in Central and Eastern Europe. It is one of the oldest A-list film festivals (i.e., non-specialized festivals with a competition for feature-length fiction films), a category it shares with the festivals in Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, San Sebastian, Montreal, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Among filmmakers, buyers, distributors, sales agents, and journalists, KVIFF is considered the most important event in all of Central and Eastern Europe. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.kviff.com/en/programme/film/69/43600-preemptive-listening |
| Description | Screening and talk at Porto/Post/Doc film and media festival. Shortlisted for the International Competition |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | The 11th edition of Porto/Post/Doc: Film & Media Festival revolves around fundamental questions about Europe and its democratic values. Can we still believe in them? Who is defending them? We are witnessing a regression of freedoms, ideas and democracy amidst endless cycles of war and invasion. How can we process this partial information and imagine a future Europe where political equations seem to lead to violence against the disadvantaged? The festival also includes several competitions: International, Spoken Cinema, New Cinema, Working Class Heroes and Transmission, all reflecting contemporary perspectives on memory and society through a political and artistic lens. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.portopostdoc.com/home-en/festival/2024/view?id=1640 |
| Description | Screening and talk at Videoex Festival, Zurich |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Videoex is Switzerland's largest festival dedicated to experimental film and video. Over the course of ten days, Videoex shows films and videos beyond conventional narrative cinema: experimental, visually surprising, conceptually unexpected or controversially political films and videos on the threshold between visual art and film. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://videoex.ch/videoex/festival-2024/programm-2024/special-aura-satz-preemptive-listening |
| Description | Screening as part of InScience Film Festival. shortlisted for InLab Competition, Nijmegen |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 'Preemptive Listening' was selected as part of InScience Film Festival and shortlisted for InLab Competition. InScience International Science Film Festival Nijmegen is one of the biggest science film festivals in Europe. The program most importantly consists of an overview of the best science films of the year. InScience offers a broad program, with talks, film debates, Q&A's, meetings, and expositions on the cutting edge of science and art. During InScience, Nijmegen is changed into a meeting place for filmmakers, scientists and the audience for exchanging new insights. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| URL | https://www.insciencefestival.nl/en/vertoning/preemptive-listening/ |
| Description | Screening as part of the 17th The Science New Wave Festival, NY. Shortlisted for the Science New Wave Luminary Awards, |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 'Preemptive Listening' was selected in competition for the Science New Wave Luminary Awards, as part of the 17th The Science New Wave Festival, NY. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://www.imaginesciencefilms.org/snw17/schedule#preemptive |
| Description | Speaking Sirens |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Speaking Sirens podcast, with interviews and excerpts is accompanying the exhibition. Hosted by Aura Satz and Irene Revell. 'Speaking Sirens' is a podcast for Aura Satz's 'Warnings in Waiting' exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (09.06.23 - 06.08.23). It is part of Satz's larger 'Preemptive Listening' film and research project on emergency listening and alternative siren sounds. 'Speaking Sirens' includes excerpts of specially-commissioned compositions from Debit, Evelyn Glennie, Laurie Spiegel and David Toop, and spoken word interviews by Daphne Carr, Evelyn Glennie and Hillel Schwartz, hosted by artist and film maker Aura Satz with researcher and curator Irene Revell. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/speaking-sirens/id1690173915?i=1000615262263 |
| Description | The Voice of Warning |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | OKRE and UCL- funded research and engagement workshop with the UCL Warning Research Centre and the anti-nuclear organisation Stop Sizewell C. The Voice of Warning, with Francesca Laura Cavallo. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| URL | https://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/music-futures/funded-projects/funded-projects-20... |
| Description | The Voice of Warning Part 2 : Site walk, field recording and sound design workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | In June 2023, a heterogeneous group of researchers, artists and residents walked the coastal site allocated to the UK's next biggest nuclear power plant, Sizewell C and recorded the area's unique soundscape before the building site began transforming it irreversibly. They also held talks and experimented with the possibility of a Siren for Sizewell as both a metaphor and a possibility to invite people-led warning methods into the area's preparedness strategy. The project was a collaboration between the Preemptive Listening Team at the Royal College of Arts, the UCL Warning Research Centre and Stop Sizewell C. After more than a year, we will return to Sizewell for a second iteration to explore what has changed and what can be changed in the area's soundscape. Join us for a field recording walk followed by a sound design workshop to explore Sizewell's past, present, and future soundscapes. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
| URL | https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-voice-of-warning-2025-tickets-1105504356289?aff=oddtdtcreator |