Nothing, But Hope: A Conversation

This chapter brings together a group of thinkers and artists through a conversation on hope and its resonant frequencies, perceptual disorganizations, temporal insecurities, and collective negations. Taking the form of an edited conversation, the chapter offers dialogic reflections between the authors, all of whom collaborated on a musical project in the summer of 2023 under the banner of the No Outsides Band. Offered as an extension of the previous musical jamming that was done, this conversation reflects on the ways in which sound (and unsound) research might offer a site to experiment with sonic re/deterritorializations that enable, in very material ways, different forms of relationality and alternative ethico-aesthetic paradigms. Through various discussions, ranging from sound’s cosmic vibrations and how it might resonate with psychoanalytic drives to the limits of identitarian short-cuts and ocularcentrism, this chapter explores how hope might be reframed as a kind of emergent practice, albeit one that is made of and for nothing.