Darkmatter Reflections #4 – Sonic Reverbs

DARKMATTER introduces Sarnt Utamachote’s film Sonic Reverbs.

When our loved ones live far away, how does that affect the way we identify ourselves and relate to others? We find ourselves in cyberspace, clubs, online communication apps and public spaces. How do we create a vocabulary to relate to each other that is caring and sustainable?

We’re going to watch short documentary Sonic Reverbs by Sarnt Utamachote, a film about queer music and ways of listening. Followed by a discussion with the filmmaker and co-founder of arts & academics collective DarkMatter Akin Hubbard, closing off the night with some poetry on diaspora and care. 

Sonic Reverbs
What does it mean to listen while being vulnerable? Four Berlin-based migrant queer musicians surprised their close friends and relatives with a special song, which then triggered a moment of deep appreciation between them. This film documents that process of them opening up, becoming vulnerable and letting go – with conversations about their marginalized kinship, trust, fluidity and fragility of life. Together they find comfort and "reverberations" (physical phenomenon) of their sounds in each other.

Sarnt Utamachote (ษาณฑ์ อุตมโชติ) is a Southeast Asian nonbinary filmmaker and curator based in Berlin. Their curatorial and artistic practices aim to draw the bridge between archives of social movements, diasporic/queer community-building and their healing potentials. They co-founded collective “un.thai.tled” (of Thai-German diasporic critical creatives), through which they curated critical cultural events with focus on Southeast Asian diaspora, cinema, BIPOC communities in Berlin.

Edward Akintola (Akin) Hubbard is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of DARKMATTER Collective. He is a Harvard anthropologist, artist and curator whose scholarly and artistic interests are in popular culture and cultural globalization; artistic ecologies; creolization and Afro-creole expressive forms; gothic and carnivalesque aesthetics; and erotic and narcotic sensualisms.