Experimental luthiery in Latin America: A postcolonial and acoustemological approach


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Turan Ö.

ORGANISED SOUND, cilt.31, sa.1, ss.1-13, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, AHCI, SSCI, Scopus)

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 31 Sayı: 1
  • Basım Tarihi: 2026
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1017/s1355771825100940
  • Dergi Adı: ORGANISED SOUND
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Music Index, Music Periodicals Database, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, DIALNET
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-13
  • Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
  • Anadolu Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

This study investigates experimental luthiery and sound art practices in Latin America through the lenses of postcolonial theory and acoustemology. Within this framework, the musical instrument is conceptualised as a sound-producing object and an active site of cultural representation, historical memory and resistance. These practices, diverging from conventional luthiery traditions, embrace collective, conceptual and material-based modes of production, establishing alternative knowledge systems through sound. Drawing on the works of artists, such as Walter Smetak, Marco Antônio Guimarães, Joaquín Orellana, Wilson Sukorski and Tania Candiani, this study explores how sound mediates relationships with space, the body, memory and technology. Conceptual instrument design is thereby positioned as an aesthetic-political tool developed in parallel with transformations in auditory regimes and responding to epistemic inequalities. This study also focuses on modes of production shaped by technological exclusion, gender and postcolonial identity formation. Experimental luthiery in Latin America is presented as a field of artistic expression and a multilayered epistemic site for the generation of alternative knowledge systems, political subjectivities and spatial justice strategies.