Here Nor There

Elisa Ferrari is an artist, curator, organizer and performer with a practice that focuses on the potential of sound and the politics that inform the act of listening. We discuss her sound walks, residencies, projects, collaborations and other sonic adventures with artist stacey ho. We tease out the abstractness, potential and limits of what it means to ‘listen’— a methodology that can open up empathy and attunement within the city, on unceded land and outside human subjectivities.

Tom Whalen is a local artist and musician who currently performs as Tommy Tone and runs a tape label with Rob Ondzik called Smooth Effects. We sit down to discuss various topics around the popularization of EDM, the notion of performance within electronic music, the effectiveness of humour as a strategy of critique. Tom has prolifically organized, performed in and spearheaded various musical projects in Vancouver and recently in Koenji, Japan we will and the politics informing the DIY sensibilities and communities in Vancouver and Koenji, Japan, where he spent his past year organizing and performing in his new scene

Yu Su is a producer, collector and DJ based in Vancouver but originally from Kaifeng, China. Her music moves freely between the reflection of her cultural heritage and the landscape of the less familiar Pacific Northwest. Her collaborative project You’re Me (with Scott Gailey) further examines this approach and is critically acclaimed as a successful combination of musical composition and environmental studies. We catch up on her musical influences, classical piano training, learning curves, musings on the genre of ambient music and speaking out.

This episode is a conversation with artist, musician and organizer Soledad Muñoz and also an introduction to three of her studio mates, collaborators, friends and other local producers Benita Prado (Prado), Nissrine Sekkat (Nvrsine) and Samira Warsame. Recorded in two parts, on a walk from Mount Pleasant to their Chinatown studio and in the green room of the Western Front, we discuss the energy of WOC bonding and their collective projects that strive to provide visibility, resources, inclusiveness and safety for a more diverse club scene and cultural landscape in Vancouver at large.