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Juan Castrillón

Scholar, media maker, performer, mentor and conceptualist.

Multimodal cultural anthropologist and ethnomusicologist with regional expertise in Türkiye and the Northwest Amazon in Colombia. His research interests include theories of listening, media archives, contemporary healing arts, mimesis, and modalities of inscription. His work dialogues with contemporary debates about decoloniality, visual and sound/music cultures, and indigenous analytics of the person, space, magic, and technology. His multimodal work has been published in academic journals; exhibited at film festivals, art galleries, and academic conferences internationally; and distributed among local communities in indigenous languages.

He served as board member of the Society for Anthropology of Lowland South America (SALSA), and he is an active member of the Center for Research and Collaboration in the Indigenous Americas (CRACIA), the Substantial Motion Research Network (SMRN), and an alumnus of the Collective for Advancing Multimodal Research Arts (CAMRA at Penn).  He was also the Inaugural Gilbert Seldes Multimodal Postdoctoral Fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Apart from his academic career, he is a performer of Turkish Sufi Music, facilitator of a music therapy protocol, and pursues Arabic calligraphy and Ney reed-flute training under Turkish instructors.

Interests

Breath, listening, talismans, ethnographic artifacts, filmmaking, ney, ta'wil.

Highlights

My creative and artistic practice fosters world-shifting, and the production of micro-atmospheric instantiations of light and affect. My scholarly work analyzes audile and sonic worlds in Anatolia and the northwest Amazon in Colombia.

Publications and Exhibitions

Academic Publications

  • Juan Castrillon, “Yuruparí’s Disappearance: Women’s Laughter and Organology Without Musical Instruments in Vaupés.” (Forthcoming 2020)
  • Juan Castrillon and Jonathan D. Hill, “Narrativity in Sound: A Sound-Centered Approach to Indigenous Amazonian Ways of Managing Relations of Alterity.” El Oído Pensante 5/2 (2017).
     
  • Juan Castrillon, “Spatial Transformation of Music Practice in Istanbul: Repositioning of Subjectivities.”Porte Academik 10/2 (2014): 131-143. 
     
  • Juan Castrillon, “Training Kamish: Acoustic Ethnographies of Islam and Challenges of Sound in the Construction of Subjectivities.” Colombian Review of Anthropology 48/2 (2012): 115-138.
     

Audiovisual Works

  • “REHAVi (Timekeepers)” –– (2016) Director, editor, producer and cinematographer. Short narrative film about Sufism and music in Turkey. 29:40 min, Spanish, Turkish with English subtitles. The film was premiered at the Musicology Department of Medeniyet University in Istanbul, and at the International House of Philadelphia in 2017. Funded by the UPENN Music Department and Camra at Penn. [Trailer] https://vimeo.com/210058037.
  • “STABZ”–– (2016) Director, editor, producer and cinematographer. Video that accompanies the sonic installation entitled “Sound of consciousness and noise abatement at Van Pelt Library.” (https://vimeo.com/164540799).
  • “SHORT HISTORY OF TURKISH MUSIC”–– (2007) Scrip writer and performer. Essay film produced by University of Antioquia TV in collaboration with the Department of Arts of the Antioquia University and the Musicology Department of the Istanbul Technical University, 2007. The film has a length of fifty minutes and it is spoken in Turkish languages with Spanish subtitles. (https://vimeo.com/192804765)
  • “HOJA DE PALMA”–– (2006)Presenter and performer. Didactic concert for University of Antioquia TV produced by the Department of Arts of the Antioquia University. The program has a length of sixty minutes and it is spoken in Turkish languages with Spanish subtitles. (https://vimeo.com/192804235)

Podcasts

  • “Tataroko”–– (2016) twelve bilingual (Spanish-Cubeo) radio podcasts about Tukanoan music broadcasted at the Northwestern Amazon between January-May. (https://middleear.net/tataroko/)
     

Composition and music releases