2026 Theses Doctoral

New Sonic Endisms: An Analysis of Sound Making Practices Through Entangled Temporalities and Endings

Soumah, Corie Rose

This dissertation investigates aspects of Western endisms pertaining to sonic works of electroacoustic and multi-media genres. By discussing the role of sound in reimagining and engaging with ecological, decolonial, and eschatological issues, I offer a nuanced perspective on how artistic practices can address and reflect cultural and environmental challenges by revealing the intrinsic cultural, economic, political, and temporal weight of endisms discourses in Western society. I develop an analytical framework through the notion of entangled temporalities, attending to the inherent movements of breakages, slippages, and spirals found in temporal events. Within this framework, sound is positioned as a mean of destabilizing linearity, reshaping the imaginary, and recontextualizing the role of agency, matter, and relationality.

I explore these implications first through an overview of the works The Force of Things (Ash Fure and Adam Fure) and The Unknown Future Rolls Toward Us (Adam Basanta), examining how multi-sensorial sonic works focused on mapping ecological collapse into the present can foster poetics of connection and care. This is followed by an analysis of my own work States of Intermeshing: vii. what is past is prologue that interrogates the colonial and racialized dimensions embedded in Western endisms. The piece reclaims the potentiality of endisms as sites of decolonial freedom. Together, these case studies explore the complex fabric of endings as dynamic and multi-faceted cultural, sonic, ontological, and historical processes.