Against Capture: Toward a Practice of Deep Attunement

• In Event: Decolonial Theories, Pedagogies, Research Practices

Abstract

This paper offers an intervention to the emancipatory discourse of art-based methods. I explore how colonial relations to land have shaped our relationship to/with land which sets precedent for extractive practices in art-based research, specifically in practices of recording. I discuss how the abstraction of race from place/land devoid of critiques of racial capitalism and settler colonialism renders violence inflicted on/to land more naturalized. I draw parallels between this form of “art-based” encounter with land to a practice of capture. I offer the concept of deep attunement to grapple with the absent or the made-invisible/inaudible in recordings and consider the un/worlding possibilities against colonial violence, while also tending to its presence that continues to reconfigure the everyday of the subaltern.

Author

• Kevin Ah-Sen, McGill University
  Presenting Author