Liquid Architecture, Monash Curatorial Practice PhD program and Blak Dot Gallery present a joint lecture by Candice Hopkins and Raven Chacon. Sounding the Margins: Towards a Decolonial Listening is an ongoing set of reflections on Indigenous protest and sonic art, informed by Hopkins' work as a curator (Documenta 14, Toronto Biennale), and Chacon’s work as a composer, noise musician and artist, both solo and as part of the group Postcommodity.

“Where we’re from, the land is considered a mnemonic device. There were certain markers in the land that when you got to those markers, you were meant to sing, and embedded in the song is all the knowledge you need to know about that part of the landscape.”
– Candice Hopkins

Candice Hopkins is a curator, writer, and researcher interested in history, art, and indigeneity, and their intersections. Originally from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation. She was senior curator for the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art, and worked on the curatorial teams for the Canadian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, and documenta 14. Her writings on history, art, and vernacular architecture have been published by MIT Press, BlackDog Publishing, Revolver Press, New York University, the Fillip Review and the National Museum of the American Indian, among others. Hopkins has lectured widely including at the Witte de With, Tate Modern, Dakar Biennale, Tate Britain and the University of British Columbia.

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. His work ranges from chamber music to experimental noise to large scale installations, produced solo and with the Indigenous art collective Postcommodity. At California Institute of the Arts Chacon studied with James Tenney, Morton Subotnick, Michael Pisaro and Wadada Leo Smith developing a compositional language steeped in both the modernist avant-garde and indigenous cosmologies and subjectivities. He has written for ensembles, musicians and non-musicians, and for social and educational situations, and toured the world as a noise artist. As an educator, Chacon has served as composer-in-residence for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project, where he taught string-quartet composition to hundreds of American Indian high-school students on reservations in the American Southwest.