We Sound Each Other (2025)

This work was made for the ‘Contested Desires Constructive Dialogues’ project and is interested in postcolonial ideological legacies and the ways in which people are able to articulate and navigate their relationships to continually contested spaces of belonging. 

During his residency in Budapest, Paul made field recordings and recorded ethnographic interviews with people at the Mira Intercultural Community group. The work incorporates political speeches with AI sound generation to create some of the material for composition. These sounds are used in combination with the interviews and field recordings to create a sonic essay which form the main body of the sound in this work. There is also spoken word pieces that reflecting on his work with the group, their collected memories of migration and the hidden histories found in Budapest. 

Elements of these sonic works are collaged together with new material captured in collaboration with Sangini, a Black and minorities women led community arts project in South Shields. 

Together they create a nine channel audio work that hopes to capture the tension between opposing dialogues of division and solidarity. 

In a world riven by the legacies of colonialism this multichannel work represents the ongoing yet shifting 'low rumble of collective memory’ that allows for inequalities to be maintained and exploited. 

Thank you to members of Sangini in South Shields and the Mira Intercultural Community group in Budapest for their collaboration in the sonic works. 

This sound work focuses on participatory practices, shifting hegemonic narratives around minoritised peoples and migration. He is interested in challenging given notions of the legacies of colonialism, and its institutional processes of memorialisation, which can be reductive and ignore the more tangible impacts of inter-community relations and people’s lived experiences.

The connected sound works can be heard here.

Photo credit: Amelia Read