Ultra-red A Journal of Militant Sound Inquiry – Vol. 1 – Naming the Moment

For their thirtieth anniversary, Ultra-red, the international sound art and popular education collective is releasing the first volume of ULTRA-RED: A Journal of Militant Sound Inquiry, investigating movement-based listening practices that take the forms of militant inquiry and political education.

In the words of Ultra-red, “No movement without listening!”

The initial issue of ULTRA-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 ULTRA-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 began as a queer techno duo coming out of AIDS activism. Since starting in 1994, Ultra-red has expanded into an international collective rooted in different popular struggles such as anti-racism and anti-gentrification. In the early 2000s, the collective began experimenting with militant sound inquiry synthesizing diverse forms of organized listening in Left and social movements.

Designed by Ott Kagovere, the journal has 248 pages and includes over a hundred images in black and white and full colour. It can be ordered either directly from our website or through our distributors. We are grateful to the Foundation for Arts Initiative for supporting the printing costs of the first volume.