Writer and sound artist Nina Dragičević will be holding a talk and related workshop at Errant Bodies studio on October 1 & 2, 2021. She will focus on the sound of power, addressing how bureaucracy performs as a mechanism for the construction, and continuous perseverance of, domination. In what ways does bureaucracy function as an explicit representation and affirmation of power and its ideology? Through her talk and workshop she will consider how bureaucracy is present in everyday life through abstract omnipresence (power itself) + material artifacts (such as forms and clerks), a silent yet screaming force directed at a subordinate population. Following David Graeber’s golden rule of liberalism – the more government claims to be reducing bureaucratic procedures, the more bureaucratic procedures it produces – bureaucracy is seemingly applied universally, yet it primarily coordinates inequality. And this – the domination-drive of bureaucracy and its drive for the formalization of inequality – constructs its specific sonority as well as its specific sonic policies. We shall listen to them and try to articulate the sound of bureaucracy as a mechanism of power through a critical and radical feminist perspective.

The event is developed in the context of The Listening Academy, a research academy on questions of sonic culture, listening, and social and civic resistances and practices.

Day 1: Public presentation / October 1, 19:30 – 21:30

Day 2: Closed workshop & group discussion: In pursuit of listening to world-systems / October 2, 13:30 – 16:30

Nina Dragičević is a writer and a sound artist, with a PhD in Sociology. Her doctoral thesis, The Sonority of Bureaucracy in Everyday Life, is to be published as a book in 2021. She is the author of five other books, among them Slavne neznane: zvočne umetnice v konstrukciji družbe (Famous Unknowns: Women and Lesbian sonic artists in the construction of society) and Med njima je glasba: glasba v konstrukciji lezbične scene (The Music Between Them: Music in the construction of lesbian communities). She is also the author of two albums –  Parallellax (Kamizdat Records) and Ma’am, there is no such thing in reality (Kamizdat Records) – and has exhibited several sound installations and radio dramas. In 2017 she founded the Topographies of Sound Festival in Ljubljana.

Dragičević is the 2020 recipient of the Župančič Award for outstanding artistic achievements. In 2019, her book Ljubav reče greva (Love says go) was shortlisted for the Jenko Award, Veronika Award, and Kritiško sito Award, as well as included in the critics’ choice for 10 Books from Slovenia. In 2018, she won The Knight of Poetry competition (both the Jury Award and the People’s Choice award). The same year she was presented the Outstanding Achievement Award of the University of Ljubljana. In 2018, she was shortlisted for the European award Palma Ars Acustica.