two years ago I attended a big
conference in the US on international
politics I was in a panel dealing with
war and emotions and for my panel
presentation I had a crazy idea
in my hand luggage I carried a small
sound system and a microphone and my
plan was instead of giving the usual
talk I would sing two of my songs one
about the disappearance of ordinary
people in wartime Chechnya and another
about a deaf boy escaping the war zone
but he didn’t go quite the way I planned
because somewhere in the middle of the
second song I noticed people standing by
the panel room doorway they had come
there because I was being too loud
disturbing the other panels I was
already feeling anxious to be singing in
a conference but now my performance was
being disturbed and I had to make a
decision really fast either to stop
singing or to continue but I had come
all the way from Finland and I would not
be silenced so I made a joke in between
and I continued to the end but I don’t
think it was just a combination of the
decibel levels and the thin walls which
made my singing inappropriate for some I
believe it was the challenge I posed to
traditional academic ways of being and
doing the emotionless motionless serious
scholar for bodies to be categorized and
stabilized they need to be stilled and
singing instills the researchers body it
reads it and redefines it I now call
this approach of mine new systems
musical resistance and for me resistance
means doing it different in my work I
have
singing and songwriting an actual
practice of research and I thought this
can touch and move people the songs I
have written draw from my research on
the wars in Chechnya they are a means to
emotional engagement and the means to
encounter a world you might not normally
see muses dance is a form of
storytelling which makes passion and
sensibility central to producing insight
and Musa stones is based on the fact
that we are musical beings human beings
have a special musical memory and the
capacity to perceive music and it’s
nuances
moreover musical experience is emotional
it’s physical its muscular everyone can
experience music even the most
profoundly deaf can sense various sorts
of noises and vibrations music is
powerful because it’s effective its
carnal knowledge it’s expressing things
which cannot be said music is powerful
because it gets right down to your soul
so no wonder music has been used for
political ordering and disordering for
propaganda for national revival for
boosting the morale of military troops
and hope of civilians in wartime and
resistance music like art in general is
a force totalitarian regimes have both
taken advantage of and being afraid of
banning and censoring music war is also
a sonic experience which is why I was so
intrigued by the Deaf boy I made the
song about he couldn’t hear the bombings
and that made him less afraid
I also learned from a Chechen man I
interviewed the Chechen dance and music
are forms of resistance they give life
under sense of freedom but when I began
my research on the wars in Chechnya I
faced a dilemma academic writing is
ill-suited for the intensity and
intimacy of the stories from a war zone
academic writing is emotionless but war
is all about emotions then how to write
about emotion without emotion it didn’t
make sense to me in my frustration I
found a different shape intuitively
music started happening in me I was
transformed as a researcher and as a
human being I began thinking through
sound feeling through music and
researching with emotion
I became mindful of the inner metronome
and I realized this is not even a new
methodology we are doing it already
thinking through the flesh sensing the
world corporally the body knows and the
body remembers this is why the
resistance its resistance to the
binaries of the mind and body knowledge
and emotion which still persist singing
challenges the rationalist disembodied
model of knowing music speaks and
communicates directly to the body giving
and exchanging something lasting and
profound but I wasn’t a trained musician
in fact still three years ago I hated my
voice and that took me to a vocal coach
I thought I could learn to speak with a
more confident voice but my singing
teacher asked me to sing let’s try she
said and I tried and I found my voice I
carried a lot of shame but I walked
through it from shame to singing from
shame songwriting I’m from from shame
the Performing
singing is an act of vulnerability the
singer is vulnerable but the listener is
vulnerable as well and vulnerability I
believe is a space where something new
can emerge it’s a space of resistance
and compassion the story about the
conference I shared earlier in this talk
I want to return to something meaningful
which happened right before I took the
stage an exchange of vulnerability I was
so nervous shaking I’m shaking a bit now
as well I was about to potentially make
a fool out of myself by singing in a
conference but my vulnerability
triggered something
a female scholar was seated next to me
she was one of the panel speakers and we
hadn’t met before and she asked me why
are you so nervous and I said I’m going
to sing she looked at me and said you
know what I’m going to change my
presentation to support me and she went
for a personal story instead of the talk
she had planned but that’s not all while
we waited for our turn she grabbed my
hand and held it that act of kindness
the physicality of the act the touching
of skin and the transmission of warmth
holding the hand of a stranger in the
middle of a conference panel in front of
everyone has helped me to become even
bolder because when my hand was being
held I was being told I got you and
you’ll do great
the hand told me that the hand kept
feeding me the message of confidence I
touched and I was touched by and that
led to a connection art creates
connections and new systems is a
collective effort together with the
musicians together with the listener
finally well not finally there’s one
more point musicians is not only meant
for the academic audience it’s a way to
reach out from that exclusive circle so
I have performed in various public
events for example in protest in London
against one of the world’s biggest arms
fairs displaying guns and drones and
tanks and so forth and they’re a bypass
er shouted to us academics activists get
a job and we laughed
this was their job this was my job I
knew I had found my way of speaking out
and now finally I want to encourage you
in paying attention to the inside
inherent in the body the body
transmitting emotions through such acts
as holding a hand
I want to implant the idea that there’s
always the possibility to think
different and to do different
I believe you can find capacities you
didn’t know existed when you take the
risk and explore different shapes and
forms you can practice new systems by
the radical act of slowing down and
stopping to listen to yourself and to
listen to others curiously musicians
comes from silence in this noisy world
and then find your own path and follow
that path regardless what others think
and say search from your soul and write
with your body and this song is called
lie
[Music]
rise from PD sharing stories of bleep
lifes of people handcuffed to the trees
the spirits fled for mercy in there now
and they regret but rejoicing to the bow
when lays they will have the chance when
they still have the chance but you know
they played music very loud and I know
how they play to the knife how they play
to the nine
it’s a lie you say I don’t it’s a lie to
say a wall they this a lie to say I
don’t they it’s a lie to say a wall it’s
a lie to say I don’t they so lie to say
a wall needs to lie to say I don’t need
to lie to say a wall
it’s alive the Saturday when four to the
painful beside them from beneath art of
those of the nipple and real people held
hands they painted the wards they cried
out loud they cried out loud
it’s a lie to say I don’t it’s a life to
say I won’t need to lie they say I don’t
it’s a lie to say I won’t it’s a lie to
say I’ve done this a lie to say a wall
it’s a lie to say I don’t need to lie to
say a warning one last time don’t be in
the air catch them stories read them
aloud know Hold’em do know them do
Thank You team Ocala
[Applause]
conference in the US on international
politics I was in a panel dealing with
war and emotions and for my panel
presentation I had a crazy idea
in my hand luggage I carried a small
sound system and a microphone and my
plan was instead of giving the usual
talk I would sing two of my songs one
about the disappearance of ordinary
people in wartime Chechnya and another
about a deaf boy escaping the war zone
but he didn’t go quite the way I planned
because somewhere in the middle of the
second song I noticed people standing by
the panel room doorway they had come
there because I was being too loud
disturbing the other panels I was
already feeling anxious to be singing in
a conference but now my performance was
being disturbed and I had to make a
decision really fast either to stop
singing or to continue but I had come
all the way from Finland and I would not
be silenced so I made a joke in between
and I continued to the end but I don’t
think it was just a combination of the
decibel levels and the thin walls which
made my singing inappropriate for some I
believe it was the challenge I posed to
traditional academic ways of being and
doing the emotionless motionless serious
scholar for bodies to be categorized and
stabilized they need to be stilled and
singing instills the researchers body it
reads it and redefines it I now call
this approach of mine new systems
musical resistance and for me resistance
means doing it different in my work I
have
singing and songwriting an actual
practice of research and I thought this
can touch and move people the songs I
have written draw from my research on
the wars in Chechnya they are a means to
emotional engagement and the means to
encounter a world you might not normally
see muses dance is a form of
storytelling which makes passion and
sensibility central to producing insight
and Musa stones is based on the fact
that we are musical beings human beings
have a special musical memory and the
capacity to perceive music and it’s
nuances
moreover musical experience is emotional
it’s physical its muscular everyone can
experience music even the most
profoundly deaf can sense various sorts
of noises and vibrations music is
powerful because it’s effective its
carnal knowledge it’s expressing things
which cannot be said music is powerful
because it gets right down to your soul
so no wonder music has been used for
political ordering and disordering for
propaganda for national revival for
boosting the morale of military troops
and hope of civilians in wartime and
resistance music like art in general is
a force totalitarian regimes have both
taken advantage of and being afraid of
banning and censoring music war is also
a sonic experience which is why I was so
intrigued by the Deaf boy I made the
song about he couldn’t hear the bombings
and that made him less afraid
I also learned from a Chechen man I
interviewed the Chechen dance and music
are forms of resistance they give life
under sense of freedom but when I began
my research on the wars in Chechnya I
faced a dilemma academic writing is
ill-suited for the intensity and
intimacy of the stories from a war zone
academic writing is emotionless but war
is all about emotions then how to write
about emotion without emotion it didn’t
make sense to me in my frustration I
found a different shape intuitively
music started happening in me I was
transformed as a researcher and as a
human being I began thinking through
sound feeling through music and
researching with emotion
I became mindful of the inner metronome
and I realized this is not even a new
methodology we are doing it already
thinking through the flesh sensing the
world corporally the body knows and the
body remembers this is why the
resistance its resistance to the
binaries of the mind and body knowledge
and emotion which still persist singing
challenges the rationalist disembodied
model of knowing music speaks and
communicates directly to the body giving
and exchanging something lasting and
profound but I wasn’t a trained musician
in fact still three years ago I hated my
voice and that took me to a vocal coach
I thought I could learn to speak with a
more confident voice but my singing
teacher asked me to sing let’s try she
said and I tried and I found my voice I
carried a lot of shame but I walked
through it from shame to singing from
shame songwriting I’m from from shame
the Performing
singing is an act of vulnerability the
singer is vulnerable but the listener is
vulnerable as well and vulnerability I
believe is a space where something new
can emerge it’s a space of resistance
and compassion the story about the
conference I shared earlier in this talk
I want to return to something meaningful
which happened right before I took the
stage an exchange of vulnerability I was
so nervous shaking I’m shaking a bit now
as well I was about to potentially make
a fool out of myself by singing in a
conference but my vulnerability
triggered something
a female scholar was seated next to me
she was one of the panel speakers and we
hadn’t met before and she asked me why
are you so nervous and I said I’m going
to sing she looked at me and said you
know what I’m going to change my
presentation to support me and she went
for a personal story instead of the talk
she had planned but that’s not all while
we waited for our turn she grabbed my
hand and held it that act of kindness
the physicality of the act the touching
of skin and the transmission of warmth
holding the hand of a stranger in the
middle of a conference panel in front of
everyone has helped me to become even
bolder because when my hand was being
held I was being told I got you and
you’ll do great
the hand told me that the hand kept
feeding me the message of confidence I
touched and I was touched by and that
led to a connection art creates
connections and new systems is a
collective effort together with the
musicians together with the listener
finally well not finally there’s one
more point musicians is not only meant
for the academic audience it’s a way to
reach out from that exclusive circle so
I have performed in various public
events for example in protest in London
against one of the world’s biggest arms
fairs displaying guns and drones and
tanks and so forth and they’re a bypass
er shouted to us academics activists get
a job and we laughed
this was their job this was my job I
knew I had found my way of speaking out
and now finally I want to encourage you
in paying attention to the inside
inherent in the body the body
transmitting emotions through such acts
as holding a hand
I want to implant the idea that there’s
always the possibility to think
different and to do different
I believe you can find capacities you
didn’t know existed when you take the
risk and explore different shapes and
forms you can practice new systems by
the radical act of slowing down and
stopping to listen to yourself and to
listen to others curiously musicians
comes from silence in this noisy world
and then find your own path and follow
that path regardless what others think
and say search from your soul and write
with your body and this song is called
lie
[Music]
rise from PD sharing stories of bleep
lifes of people handcuffed to the trees
the spirits fled for mercy in there now
and they regret but rejoicing to the bow
when lays they will have the chance when
they still have the chance but you know
they played music very loud and I know
how they play to the knife how they play
to the nine
it’s a lie you say I don’t it’s a lie to
say a wall they this a lie to say I
don’t they it’s a lie to say a wall it’s
a lie to say I don’t they so lie to say
a wall needs to lie to say I don’t need
to lie to say a wall
it’s alive the Saturday when four to the
painful beside them from beneath art of
those of the nipple and real people held
hands they painted the wards they cried
out loud they cried out loud
it’s a lie to say I don’t it’s a life to
say I won’t need to lie they say I don’t
it’s a lie to say I won’t it’s a lie to
say I’ve done this a lie to say a wall
it’s a lie to say I don’t need to lie to
say a warning one last time don’t be in
the air catch them stories read them
aloud know Hold’em do know them do
Thank You team Ocala
[Applause]
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