SOAS Research Online

Abstract

At an intersection of composition, practice research, and performance autoethnography, this research examines the creative possibilities for the development of corporeal acoustemology: a sonic and auditory knowledge of the body, health, and therefore, illness. Using autoethnographic experience of cancer treatment as a primary focus, key elements of Indian rhythmic theory, medical humanities, and life writing actively coalesce in the pursuit of a new form of transdisciplinary composition called sonic life writing. While life writing is an expanding field, especially in literature and film, its relationship with music is a nascent one within the academy; the possibilities of life writing beyond words are the focus of this practice research in the composition of music and sonic arts. The primary aim of this project is to find ways of bypassing problematic tropes and metaphors of standardised, lexical cancer narratives, inquiring as to how we might tell a story through rhythm, how we might better understand disease through reparative listening, and how music can express complicated relationships of care and connection. In these experiments in sonic life writing, the portfolio draws on themes from psychoanalysis, oncology, expanded radio arts, aesthetics, and ethnomusicology. This project is the first to investigate the transduction of breast cancer experience in performance autoethnographic music and sonic arts. Key findings include the application of Karnatak rhythmic theory in expressing the nature of side effects from chemotherapy, the possibilities for a re-imagining of hospital radio as broadcast of patient experience, and the role of rhythm in exploring bonded relationships of care and the qualities of time experienced during illness.