“Ellos no están entendiendo nada” [“They are not understanding anything”]: embodied remembering as complex narrative in a Telematic Sonic Improvisation

Abstract

INTIMAL is a physical-virtual system for relational listening, exploring the role of the body as interface that keeps memory of place in migratory contexts. The system is developed to integrate the body movements of performers (and their voices) with an oral archive. The system has been informed and tested by nine Colombian migrant women in Europe in a telematic performance between the cities of Oslo, Barcelona and London. In the performance a “complex narrative” emerged, for both the improvisers and the audiences. In this paper, we describe the conditions of the narrative environment, and the embodied expressions that emerged. We reflect on how this distributed embodied expression—through technological mediated sound and movement interactions—might further aid processes of collective remembering and catharsis, in a context of conflict and gendered migration.