This Saturday, November 8, Andrea Chamorro will present “Dancing Ears in the Andes: On Listening with the Heart” at the World Anthropological Union (WAU) Congress, which is taking place this week in Guatemala. In her presentation, she will delve into the notions of hearing and listening that emerge from the festive and ritual experiences of urban and rural Aymara dancers and pilgrims.

In her abstract, the CMUS researcher states the following: “Understanding that the body constitutes a unifying category of human existence, I review the socio-symbolic representations of the body and corporeality proposed by ethnohistorical and ethnographic research in the Andes, in order to reflect on synesthesia or sensory couplings associated with the interaction of ‘hearing’ and ‘seeing’ during festive-ritual experiences. Specifically, in light of extensive anthropological fieldwork on the Andean Carnival ‘Inti Ch’amampi, With the Strength of the Sun’ held in the city of Arica, as well as recent ethnographic approaches to ritual pilgrimages in the Andean mountain range (Chile), I focus on the notions of hearing and listening that emerge from the festive-ritual experiences of urban and rural Aymara dancers and pilgrims. These insights have allowed me to explore dances and walks as multisensory universes whose lived or embodied dimension has favored the identification of emotions and/or conditions that, associated with the development of particular notions of themselves, centralizes the place of the blood and the heart as perceptual centers of an aural relationship with the world.

World Anthropological Union (WAU) Congress
Presentation by Andrea Chamorro: “Dancing Ears in the Andes: On Listening with the Heart”
Saturday, November 8, 1:00–3:00 p.m.
See the program here