Contingent Sounds – Miss Read

Contingent Sounds

Contingent Sounds is an independent publishing platform based in Berlin that facilitates artistic research and practices in the field of sound. Our work centers on the sociopolitical dimensions of listening and explores experimental approaches to writing, theory, design, and publishing.

We collaborate with sound artists and writers who engage anti-hegemonic perspectives or demonstrate strong sociopolitical and ecological commitments. Our editorial work is dedicated exclusively to authors who write from the perspective of the Global South.

Our editorial program began in 2020 with the launch of the first edition of our series Border-Listening / Escucha-Liminal, now in its third volume. In 2026 and 2027, we are planning to publish a series of books by artists whose work treats listening as a transformative and situated practice of world-making.

Vocal Listening
Agustín Genoud, Vocal Listening, Contingent Sounds, 2026, © Agustín Genoud

Vocal Listening is a book that investigates the voice as a field of relations rather than a mere human instrument, tracing how vocal practice reorganises perception, space, and subjectivity across multiple “insides” and “outsides.” Drawing on singing, Deep Listening, experimental music, and sound technology, it weaves exercises, essays, and works developed over a decade to propose the voice as a site of memory, spectrality, and world-making that traverses biological, political, and computational domains.

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Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal – Volume 3
Adrián Sallo Sallo, Alejandra Ríos Ruiz, BELLACOMSOM, Ekaterina Golovko, Karen Werner, Mariana Carvalho, Mariano Rosales, Nico Daleman, Nicole L’Huillier, Paola Torres Nuñez del Prado, Wilwer Vilca, Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal – Volume 3, Contingent Sounds, 2024, © Adrián Sallo Sallo, Alejandra Ríos Ruiz, BELLACOMSOM, Ekaterina Golovko, Karen Werner, Mariana Carvalho, Mariano Rosales, Nico Daleman, Nicole L’Huillier, Paola Torres Nuñez del Prado, Wilwer Vilca

Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal Vol.3 explores sound and the socio-political dimensions of listening. The publication brings together essays, practices, conversations and artworks from artists, researchers, and activists who are actively engaged in practicing and thinking about sound and listening as an anti-hegemonic gesture. The themes that they dissect and historicize span diverse geographies and contexts, from environmental and military violence to communal agency, indigenous technologies, colonial archives, radio practices, cultural cannibalism, and more-than-human ontologies. Here, borders—both physical and metaphorical—are the sites where the authors position themselves and where knowledge is contested. At the core of these texts are questions of methodology and positionality, but also a concern for action and form—performing, dialoguing and instigating as ways of research.

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Switched On: The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women
Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Lílian Campesato, Susan Campos Fonseca, Susana Sánchez Carballo, Constanza Castagnet, Cristina Collazos, Daniela Fugellie, Isabelia Herrera, Nicole L’Huillier, Alma Laprida, Marcela Perrone, Marcela Lucatelli, Ana María Romano G., Adaivis Marrón Pérez, Jacqueline Nova, Sofía Scheps, Madelline Sevilla, Natasha Tiniacos, Paola Torres Núñez del Prado, Gabi Yaya., Switched On: The Dawn of Electronic Sound by Latin American Women, Contingent Sounds, 2024, © Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Lílian Campesato, Susan Campos Fonseca, Susana Sánchez Carballo, Constanza Castagnet, Cristina Collazos, Daniela Fugellie, Isabelia Herrera, Nicole L’Huillier, Alma Laprida, Marcela Perrone, Marcela Lucatelli, Ana María Romano G., Adaivis Marrón Pérez, Jacqueline Nova, Sofía Scheps, Madelline Sevilla, Natasha Tiniacos, Paola Torres Núñez del Prado, Gabi Yaya.

Switched On is the first book dedicated exclusively to the female protagonists of Latin American electronic music. The book has been edited by independent curator, researcher and label head of Buh Records, Luis Alvarado, and experimental musician, multimedia artist and researcher Alejandra Cardenas (also known as Ale Hop). Composers and sound artists featured in this historical account include:
Alicia Urreta, Beatriz Ferreyra, Elsa Justel, Eulalia Bernard, Graciela Castillo, Hilda Dianda, Ileana Pérez Velázquez, Irina Escalante Chernova, Iris Sagüesa, Jacqueline Nova, Jocy de Oliveira, Leni Alexander, Margarita Paksa, Marietta Veulens, Mónica O’Reilly Viamontes, Nelly Moretto, Oksana Linde, Patricia Belli, Renée Pietrafesa Bonnet, Rocío Sanz Quirós, Teresa Burga, Vania Dantas Leite, among others.

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