Thinking Music Mediation with Donna Haraway

Abstract

This article explores the transformative potential of music mediation as an ethical and relational practice, drawing on Donna Haraway’s concepts of “thinking-with” and “mak-ing-with” as well as sympoiesis and response-ability. In addressing the urgent need for new ways of living on a damaged planet, it emphasizes the role of music in fostering rela-tionships across human and non-human worlds. Music mediation in “interesting times”, framed as a process of becoming-with with ‘others’, invites us to change the stories and stay with the trouble. Music mediation based on care and response-ability can become an engaged speculative practice of listening and answering with others, a way of relating which continuously composes and decomposes ‘us’ and ‘others’. Drawing on examples like Vanessa Tomlinson’s composition Sonic Dreams and the activist orchestra Le-benslaute, this article demonstrates how musicking’s transformative potential can make a difference on a damaged planet.