“…the table was set, and we were never dead”: On the Persistence of Colonial Listening in Germany

Abstract

A Series of Gaps Rather Than a Presence (2019) is a sound piece that critically inquires upon the persistence of modern/colonial listening practices in the recording and assessment of language, and more specifically of accent. The work is part of a long-term artistic and academic research project oriented at the use of so-called “accent recognition software” (sometimes “dialect recognition”) by the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, hereafter BAMF) in asylum seeking processes of undocumented migrants since late 2017 ( Drucksache 19/190 ). The introduction of automated evaluation, as of this writing exclusive to Germany, replaces other, similarly questionable sociolinguistic methods for determining the origins of people without papers—a common procedure for asylum processes both in the European Union and the UK. 1 The use of software