The impetus for hear was about sensing and feeling a necessary interest in a sense that is all about impetus. Sound or noise, and hearing it, calls us to move, listen, speak. I was thinking a lot about sound art over the last year: Institutions like the organisation Liquid Architecture are a local mark of the importance of sound in the contemporary art space. Last year we saw the Australian pavilion at Venice Biennale exhibit a degenerative durational performance noise work by artist Marco Fusinato. There are always new fucking e flux articles about clubbing. Actually, what really excited me about the theme hear is the potential for more critical theory about dancing, music, raving, and clubbing. We did not end up with any contributions of the like, which actually is really positive and a good sign for arts writing.




The contributors explore and investigate a vast territory of listening - from silence, to screaming. I was excited to propose hear as the topic for us to explore through Framework, because students here at cofa have a deeply entrenched affinity for sound. Some of us here have explored critical writing through courses like Sensing the Arts to think about the way sound can work in contemporary artmaking. Some of us at UNSW A&D have studied the sound discipline. Many of us have witnessed our kudos coordinator’s assault on our senses through her noise practice ‘scum’. A lot of us here go to raves with each other where our peers dj. We participate in deep listening to each other as peers in our scholarly practice. We are always talking to each other — talking is an important part of the way we work discursively with each other to hone theses and ethos’s.




Framework, firstly, is a critical arts journal for students at UNSW Art and Design. The deeply researched work of Tathra Difinubun maps race through sound on a global scale through her essay ‘the sound of silence: colonial silencing and its legacy in contemporary indigenous art”, whereas Toni Tait’s field recording becomes a sound map that works hyper locally: specifically, at the Sydney Opera House scrubbing oyster shells for artist Megan Cope. Wen Pei Low’s essay Voicing Choralities examines the work Tape Music of Lin Chih-Wei, and centres the singing and speaking acts as a potential tool for social engagement. Part essay, part closet drama, part playlist, Nicole Cadelina explores the power of music to summon memories, to summon another time, and the affective quality of music to evoke the failing hopes of modernism, in her new piece GHOSTS OF OUR LIVES or songs that make me wanna call mark fisher. I implore you to check out these really intricate and thoughtful contributions in the issue.

As you explore the issue I invite you to pay attention to the ways the contributors have used sound, or explored hearing through critical writing. If you want to get in touch please email framework@arc.unsw.edu.au