Nov 11, 2026
Nov 11, 2026
-
-
2:30pm
2:30pm
Workshop
Workshop
Workshop
Doing Sonic Geopoetics
Doing Sonic Geopoetics
11/11/2026 @ 2:30
Doing Sonic Geopoetics
A workshop with Tom Western (UCL Geography)
Sign Up here
Description:
The word geopoetics extends from the word poeisis, meaning to make or to create. ‘Earth-making’, in direct derivation; defined as ‘a practice of radical experimentation in making new worlds’ (Magrane 2015: 94). Geopoetics is to create geographies. This workshop takes these ideas and turns them to sound. We learn geopoetic methods—centring on gathering and rearrangement, juxtaposition and joining—through which we can trace how geographies spill into one another, and the anti-border and anticolonial possibilities contained therein. We will think about how sound does this work: always moving, carrying places into other places (with reference to some of the work Tom’s been part of in Eastern Mediterranean contexts). And we will, as the workshop title suggests, do some doing: collectively making a pop-up sound archive of places within places, and following the implications of this for community, ethnography, representation, and critical media.
Bio:
Tom Western is an Associate Professor in Social and Cultural Geography at UCL. His work centres on creativity and community: how people find ways of being together beyond the violence of borders, ethnonationalisms, and empire; how we can remake histories and geographies in the process. For the last decade, Tom has been doing this mostly in contexts of the Mediterranean—particularly in Athens, Greece—where he's been involved in various forms of collaborative research, community organising, and movement building. Across these activities, Tom's work builds creative geographies that seek to imagine free futures beyond the colonial past and present.
11/11/2026 @ 2:30
Doing Sonic Geopoetics
A workshop with Tom Western (UCL Geography)
Sign Up here
Description:
The word geopoetics extends from the word poeisis, meaning to make or to create. ‘Earth-making’, in direct derivation; defined as ‘a practice of radical experimentation in making new worlds’ (Magrane 2015: 94). Geopoetics is to create geographies. This workshop takes these ideas and turns them to sound. We learn geopoetic methods—centring on gathering and rearrangement, juxtaposition and joining—through which we can trace how geographies spill into one another, and the anti-border and anticolonial possibilities contained therein. We will think about how sound does this work: always moving, carrying places into other places (with reference to some of the work Tom’s been part of in Eastern Mediterranean contexts). And we will, as the workshop title suggests, do some doing: collectively making a pop-up sound archive of places within places, and following the implications of this for community, ethnography, representation, and critical media.
Bio:
Tom Western is an Associate Professor in Social and Cultural Geography at UCL. His work centres on creativity and community: how people find ways of being together beyond the violence of borders, ethnonationalisms, and empire; how we can remake histories and geographies in the process. For the last decade, Tom has been doing this mostly in contexts of the Mediterranean—particularly in Athens, Greece—where he's been involved in various forms of collaborative research, community organising, and movement building. Across these activities, Tom's work builds creative geographies that seek to imagine free futures beyond the colonial past and present.
