À l'occasion de son trentième anniversaire, le collectif international d'art sonore et d'éducation populaire Ulta-red publie le premier volume de son journal militant.
In the words of Ultra-red, "No movement without listening!"
The initial issue of Ulta-red examines "conjunctural analysis," or "naming the moment," as a practice of collective inquiry. The issue begins with conversations with three popular educators in North America who, in the 1990s, developed a body of literature meant to guide radical groups through an inquiry into what Stuart Hall once called, the history of the present.
It includes a discussion with Toronto-based activist Chris Cavanaugh who participated in numerous conjunctural analysis efforts in political movements across Canada. In 2000, Cavanaugh helped start the Catalyst Project as a center for working-class and leftist education.
The next interview features Mary Zerkel, a Chicago-based organizer and artist who produced the seminal text, Coyuntural Analysis: Critical Thinking for Meaningful Action in 1997. Zerkel talks about the relationship between her organizing work in local anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggles as well as her involvement in numerous political art collectives in Chicago.
The journal also features an extended conversation with Gustavo Castro Soto in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. Castro Soto is known internationally as the last person to have been with Honduran indigenous activist Berta Cáceres when she was assassinated by paramilitaries in 2016. Recently known for his anti-extractivist efforts in Central America, Castro Soto was part of a team in the late 1990s that produced a ten-volume series of booklets guiding people through the history and political praxis of conjunctural analysis, Metodología de Análisis de Coyuntura.
The Ulta-red journal connects local struggles across contexts, publishing dispatches from ongoing militant investigations in London, Los Angeles, and in prisons in the U.S. South. The journal also introduces reflections on the problems of militant sound inquiry through poetry, book responses, letters, and visual art.
The journal is edited by Dont Rhine in collaboration with David Albright and Christina Sanchez Juarez. It includes contributions by Tony Carfello, Janna Graham, Museo de la Palabra y la Imagen, Chris Jones, Karla, Elliot Perkins, Daniela Lieja Quintanar, and Robert Sember.
Ultra-red est un collectif international d'art sonore et d'éducation populaire composé de douze membres basés à Los Angeles, New York, Berlin et dans divers lieux au Royaume-Uni. Fondé en 1994 comme un duo techno queer par deux militants de la lutte contre le sida, Ultra-red s'est élargi au fil des ans pour inclure des artistes, des chercheurs et des personnalités issues de différents mouvements sociaux, notamment les luttes migratoires, la lutte contre le racisme, contre la gentrification, le développement communautaire participatif et les politiques relatives au sida. Depuis le début des années 2000, le collectif expérimente une recherche sonore militante synthétisant diverses formes d'écoute organisée dans les mouvements de gauche et les mouvements sociaux.
