Sonic and Cinema Commons: Editorial

This publishing strand explores, through practice, how the sonic and cinema create spaces to assemble communities and structure ways of being in common. The series includes mix tapes, broadcasts, recordings and explorations of moving image work.

Music, and the sonic more broadly, allow for particular forms of public formation and expression – whether through sound system culture, on dance floors or via forms of broadcasting. Sonic articulation (through formulations of rhythms and sampling) and transmission (through parties, gathering and programming) create specific modalities of collectivity that have been central to diverse forms of community building and counter culture. This strand includes a number of practices who, in different ways, mobilize the affordances of sonic spaces as tools to come together, resist oppressions and exclusions and build solidarities. It draws on programming within the confederation, such as performances and a DJ set that took place within the exhibition and public programme ‘Song for Many Movements’ (MACBA, 2024) or the contribution of Others to the Front which arose out of their participation in the ‘Notes for a Time Apart’ programme (MNCARS, 2023), and partners with different platforms, including Radio Alhara, 24 Hour Palestine and KIOSK Radio, to disseminate material.

The strand also aims to navigate the socialising processes and potential of cinema, beyond the image. The practices we aim to constellate explore the potential of cinema to gather, assemble and produce common spaces – spaces here being understood in architectural, social and political terms. Historically, cinema has been a vital tool across different emancipatory and liberatory struggles. Working through these histories, practices in this strand seek to understand what role it can play in today’s cultural and political conjuncture, moving beyond dominant, often violent forms of representation and their modes of distribution, towards a proposition for the commons. For example in ‘Present Present Present. On grounding the Mediateca and Sonotera spaces in Malafo, Guinea-Bissau’ artist Filipa Cesar narrates her long-term engagement with the films, history and communities of Guinea-Bissau.

The series plays an important role in L’Internationale’s research and publishing, centering music and moving image, rather than a discursive reading of them. In keeping with the editorial approach of L’Internationale Online, contributions are part of a process of collective study across different spaces. That means that contributions here appear in dialogue with screenings, workshops, DJ sets, broadcasts and lectures happening across the confederation and beyond.