Canto Engelhard

Canto V Engelhard is a writer, artist and researcher. Their practice unfolds from collaboration and resonance. Originally from Lima, they write about Andean ancestral technologies, creative remembrance and water stewardship. They work soundscapes from performance with participatory sound designs towards poetic and socioenvironmental justice. They teach community workshops around recording and listening and have taught undergraduate classes at Columbia University, where they are a PhD candidate. Their musical project, Canto Villano, is guided by water (yakumama) as master, weaving sonorities that honor the histories of territories with stone percussion, song and pututo.

Their dissertation in an ethnohistorical study of the Lima-Huarochirí region that centers the ancestral technology of water sowing and harvesting. They argue, through various disciplinary perspectives, for the interconnectedness between the technical and cosmo-perceptual dimensions of technology. Working methodologically with ethnography, acoustemology, historical analysis and critical theory; their research dialogues with the fields of history, archeology, cultural anthropology, political ecology, cultural studies, musicology, and sound studies.

Engelhard’s writing has been published by the Periódicus Journal at the Federal University of Bahia, Radical Sounds Latin America in Berlin, the Centro de Sonido in Lima, and in catalogues by the Guggenheim in New York, the MASP in São Paulo, the Museo de Arte de Lima, among others. They have forthcoming essays in publications with Kikuyo Editorial and Duke University Press. They did the sound recording and design for the Peruvian Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, and have exhibited sound installations in Xapiri Ground and Augusta Espacio in Cusco, the Museo de Arte de Lima, Centro Cultural España and 80m2 Livia Benavides Gallery in Lima, RGR Gallery in Mexico City and Works on Water in New York. They are in the curatorial team of Musicology Now, a publication of the American Musicological Society.