By Umi Hsu

Sound essay, 30:53

"How To Grow A Movement" is a living thought fermentation on catalytic impulse, relational transformation, and mycelial time with social movement thinkers and doers. Inspired by the science and sound of the sugar fungus, this sound ethnography explores the notion of Critical Yeast, a term coined by peacebuilding practitioner and scholar John Paul Lederach. As an alternative to critical mass, Critical Yeast refers to the catalytic coming together of a group of individuals who are not like-minded or like-situated, and can transform in a context of conflict. Based on conversations and participant-observations of baking and fermentation experiments, this sound essay ascertains the who and how related to social movements and interspecies relationships. With location recordings, original music, and sound design, this sound work inquires into the quiet transmutability and multigenerational temporality of fermentation. It is an evocation of movement minutiae and wisdom toward a better more-than-human world.

Credits

How To Grow A Movement was written, mixed, and engineered by Umi Hsu. Music composed by Umi Hsu.

It features voices of:
Marcus Benigno
traci kato-kiriyama
Audrey Kuo
Kwanda Scott
Arden Stern
Aaron Tupac
Grace Umali
Jess Wang
Kenneth Yates

Special thanks to Denny Greene, Ashton Philips, April Wei-West, SOAS University of London, and CHASE Consortium.

Biography

Umi Hsu (pronouns: they/them) was born in Taipei and moved to Virginia in the United States at age twelve. Hsu is a trans nonbinary sound artist and ethnomusicologist. Combining experimental performance, field recording, ethnographic writing, audio narrative, oral history, and songwriting, they make sound art and audio experiments to trace the contours of migration, stories, and memory. Having a bicultural and bilingual background, they use sound as a paralinguistic medium to surface meanings, reconstruct memory, and forge connections.

Works Cited