The Cosmic Oval takes the Cosmic House in London as its starting point, using imagined conversations with historical figures to reframe feminist and alternative ways of understanding the universe and how knowledge moves through space.
About This Book
Ella Finer's The Cosmic Oval is not a conventional architectural text — it is a speculative, essayistic work that uses the Cosmic House as a generative site for inquiry. Finer brings together imagined dialogues with historical figures to interrogate who speaks, who is heard, and how bodies acoustically occupy or disrupt space. For readers drawn to the intersections of feminist theory, sound studies, and spatial thinking, this slim volume operates as a kind of philosophical provocation: what might it mean to hear the universe differently, and who has historically been permitted to say?
Key Features
- 99 pages of essayistic and speculative writing drawing on feminist theory and sonic culture
- Published by Silver Press, 2023
What You'll Discover
- How the Cosmic House in London functions as a conceptual lens for rethinking cosmological and feminist thought
- The use of imagined conversations with historical figures as a method for challenging received knowledge and its gatekeepers
- How women's voices and bodies acoustically claim, contest, and transform the spaces they inhabit
- Listening as a practice of deep attention, affiliation, and reciprocity — a framework for alternative modes of cultural and spatial understanding
About the Author
Ella Finer is a writer and researcher of sonic cultures whose work spans writing, composing, and curating, with a sustained interest in how women's voices take up space and how bodies acoustically disrupt or transform spatial occupation. She is working on a book of essays titled Acoustic Commons and the Wild Life of Sound; her correspondence project Silent Whale Letters, co-authored with Vibeke Mascini and edited by Kate Briggs, was published by Sternberg Press in 2023.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 99
- Dimensions: 16.0 x 11.1 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781068240904
- Publisher: Silver Press
- Publication Date: 2023
Perfect For: Readers working at the intersection of feminist theory, sound studies, and spatial practice — architects, researchers, and writers interested in how bodies and voices negotiate the spaces they occupy.