Sounding The Feminist Body

© Image; Album Cover Designed by Linda O Keeffe, 2018

In 2018 Linda O Keeffe received funding from Arts Council England and Lancaster University to spend 7 weeks in Brazil with Prof Isabel Nogueira and Dr Rebecca Collins (Edinburgh College of Art) to explore merging the work of WISWOS with the gender research unit EGM at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre. While there we developed a number of collaborative projects working with women across the spectrum of sound from performance, education, composing, sound engineering and mentoring and explored topics such as gender sound and space, performing gender, education and girls, pedagogy and feminism. Isabel and Linda gave talks and performed concerts at a number of venues and universities including Federal University of São Paulo Conversa com Linda O Keeffe (IRE / UK) e Isabel Nogueira (BRA), Audio Rebel Concert Room in Rio de Janeiro, and the Federal University of Amazonia and Porto Alegre.

Additionally O Keeffe and Nogueira were developing a practice called Sounding the Feminist Body. The goal was to create new approaches to exploring the history of women's participation in the sound arts in Brazil, develop new practice based techniques, resulting in the development of a new body of work, and an innovative methodology for community outreach projects. A number of the events and projects we created are listed on our events section, and on Linda's website, including links to the two albums we created. We also presented a paper at the Associação Nacional de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação em Música (ANPPOM) conference in Manaus, which can be found here. We are currently developing an edited book proposal for Routledge. The Body in Sound, Music and Performance.

We would like to thank all the women and organisations who supported us in Brazil, without them this project could not have happened. And an especial thanks to the students of EGM who were absolutely invaluable in helping use organise workshops, run events and translate for us.