On Stones, Ethical Failures, and Epistemological Wormholes: A Conversation between Suzanne Kite, Jennifer Biddle and Florencia Marchetti

This three-way conversation reflects on practice-based research and the thinking-making of artist, composer, and academic Suzanne Kite (Oglála Lakȟóta), in the context of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) transnational research project on sensory new media. Departing from Kite’s award-winning collaborative article ‘Making Kin with Machines,’ the sculpture Ínyan Iyé (Telling Rock) and its different iterations, the dialogue explores questions related to ethical and epistemological engagements with humans and non-human beings, including family members, machines, stars, and stones. What does Kite’s Oglála Lakȟóta inspired ‘listening without ears’ mean and do? What can this kind of listening teach us about the relationships between humans and technologies? What critique of otherwise assumed universal or neutral ethics of machine-based learning and digital models of knowledge come from her listening to and creating with non-human beings? How do these practices speak to current debates on Indigenous Data Sovereignty? The article speculates on transformations in sensory and embodied primacies of ontologies of perception in Kite’s thinking-making practice, offering clues as to how differential capacities for engaging with AI, digital knowledge, and machines in hyper-localised modalities might emerge.