Contemporary Sonic Histories of Germany and South Korea
PhD project
In my research in Germany and South Korea, I comparatively examine how people following the end of the Cold War have utilized sound to build an understanding of self and Other in nations in which the trauma of division reverberates culturally, politically and socially in the contemporary. I argue that people have been increasingly engaging with sound (“sounding”) in the processes of mourning and memorializing the past and in making sense of the political situations in which they currently live.
I am interested in how spaces such as borderlands, memorials and sites of protest are created, reimagined and given their historical/political significance through and as sound(scapes). I particularly follow sound artists and public history settings based in Berlin and Seoul that seek to address contemporary German or South Korean history, trauma, and politics through sensory immersion. I ask how the work of “sounding out” historically and politically significant spaces can lead to more empathetic engagements with a past or a political Other that may contribute to the healing of divisional trauma.
Nina Goodman is PhD Candidate at The University of Chicago in the Department of Music, Devision of the Arts & Humanities. At the ZZF Potsdam she is continuing her research on her project and is a Visiting Fellow in Department III: Media and Information Society.