THE TALE AND THE TONGUE. Radical Listening

«Radical Listening» is the sixth episode that follows a conversation with Ericka Florez. When describing Ericka's work, several terms appear: curator, artist, performer, writer, researcher, early childhood educator... A word that would be important to add to this list is the notion of «in-betweenness»: the ability to be in two places at the same time but without being fully in either one of them.Ericka’s project «Un hechizo en el espacio» [A spell in the space] gave the opportunity to start in a concrete and very important place for her: the city of Cali in Colombia. As Ericka herself writes, «in Cali there is something that is about to arrive but never arrives». There is a suspension of expectations and social promises which is joined by the suspension of time during the exuberant hours of dancing and partying. In her danceable lecture «Sobredosis de amor» [Love Overdose], Ericka Florez analyses the narrative structure of «salsa rosa» and its links with drug dealing.Dancing stayed with us during our conversation, being defined by Ericka as «radical listening». Independent of the types of music that provoke the movement of bodies in so many places in the world, bodies that dance are always bodies that listen in a radical way. The body is also a medium that allows us to listen to the environment and to keep moving after times and moments of loss and disorientation. Once again borrowing Ericka's words, «when one feels lost in the sound and doesn't know how to move, it is the collective body that sustains us».

Om Podcasten

Promise No Promises is a podcasts series produced by the Center for Gender and Equality, a research project of the Institute Art Gender Nature FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel, conceived as a think tank tasked to assess, develop, and propose new social languages and methods to understand the role of gender in the arts, culture, science, and technology, as well as in all knowledge areas that are interconnected with the field of culture today. The podcast series originates from a series of symposia initiated in October 2018 in Basel and moderated by Chus Martínez and Quinn Latimer. Part of the Gender’s Center for Excellency, the symposia and the podcasts are the public side of this research project aimed to develop different teaching tools, materials and ideas to challenge the curricula, while creating a sphere where to meet, discuss, and foster a new imagination of what is still possible in our fields.