A reflection on the ways sound and listening participate in co-domestication processes between people and their environment in Moulay Bouchta, Morocco. In collaboration with the Moroccan artist Abdeljalil Saouli, Gilles Aubry initiates a series of experiments in stone sounding, which leads to a decolonial dialogue on sonic materialism and posthumanism.

Stones are ubiquitous in the landscape of Moulay Bouchta and serve as the primary building material in vernacular houses. Local building practices are themselves part of bidirectional processes of domestication, in which stones have a certain agency.

Abdeljalil Saouli recognizes a particular affect in stones, which also characterizes their sound as a distinct category of stonesound. Listening and sounding is primarily a modality of entering into a relationship with the world through his art practice and daily life. Through conscious appropriation of local sound practices and knowledge, combined with modern scientific concepts, his aesthetic practice is an expression of «sonic pluralism», as Gilles Aubry develops this concept in the introduction to his book Sawt, Bodies, Species.

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Abdeljalil Saouli, born in Fez in 1984, graduated from the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tetouan (INBA) in 2012. He became known as part of a new generation of artists in Morocco and participated in several individual and group exhibitions in the country and abroad. Follow him on Instagram.