My research explores how sound, technology, and migration intersect with histories of gender, power, and performance in the Americas. At the heart of my work is a commitment to horizontal knowledge-building and the flexibility of practices between research, creative practice, and performance. My current book project, on Alida Vázquez Ayala, centers on the pioneering Mexican composer and reimagines the archive as a living, sonic space shaped by listening, mentorship, and transnational feminist networks. Through feminist historiography, decolonial sound studies, and creative performance, I examine how artists like Vázquez activated informal and non-institutional archives of care, producing alternative genealogies of modernity. My methodology blends archival research, oral history, performance, and collaborative practice; approaches rooted in my broader interest in sound as both a research method and a community-based act of connection.
Mi investigación explora cómo el sonido, la tecnología y la migración se entrecruzan con las historias de género, estructuras jerárquicas y performance en las Américas. En el centro de mi trabajo hay un compromiso con la construcción horizontal del conocimiento y con la flexibilidad de las prácticas entre la investigación, la creación artística y la interpretación. Mi proyecto de libro actual, centrado en Alida Vázquez Ayala, aborda la obra de esta compositora mexicana pionera en la música electrónica y reimagina el archivo como un espacio vivo y sonoro, modelado por la escucha, el acompañamiento y las redes feministas transnacionales. A través de la historiografía feminista, los estudios decoloniales del sonido y la performance creativa, examino cómo artistas como Vázquez activaron archivos de cuidado informales y no institucionales, generando genealogías alternativas de la modernidad. Mi metodología combina investigación archivística, historia oral, performance y práctica colaborativa; enfoques que se arraigan en mi interés más amplio por el sonido como método de investigación y como acto comunitario de conexión.
Publish work / Publicaciones
Book chapters / Capítulos de libro:
- Dodero P, Díaz de Cossio T, Hyrkas J. Reassembling Russek’s Summermood: Revitalizing Mexico’s Electroacoustic Legacy Through Modern Performance. Edited by Rodrigo Sigal. Cambridge University Press (In press)
- Díaz de Cossio T. A Creative Path in Electronics: The contributions of Alida Vázquez. The Lost Voices of Electronic Music, Routledge (In progress)
- Díaz de Cossio, T. Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal - Volume 2, 2021. Listening for Alida Vazquez: A life in electronic. Music Between Migration, Race, and Gender. Edited by Alejandra Luciana Cardenas. Germany, 2021
- Díaz de Cossio T, Roth P. Musicians' Migratory Patterns: American Mexican Border Lands, Ensenada, and Experimentalist Musical Practice: Narrations in Place and Time. Edited by Mauricio Rodriguez. Publication New York: Routledge, 2020
- Díaz de Cossio, T. Exploring Non-Institutional Archival Practices: A Case Study of the Alida Vázquez and Esperanza Pulido Friendship (in progress)
Commissioned texts / Textos comisionados:
- Díaz de Cossio T, Roth P. An overview of the curatorial practices in Ensenada, Baja California. Glissando #43, Poland, October 2023
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Border-Listening/Escucha-Liminal - Vol 2, 2021: Listening for Alida Vázquez: A life in Electronic Music Between Migration, Race and Gender Edited by Alejandra Luciana Cárdenas Publication Radical Sounds Latin America in Berlin, Germany. This article examines the life and work of the composer, teacher, and pianist Alida Vázquez Ayala (1923-2015) and explores how Vázquez navigated race, gender, and transnational networks in her work between Mexico and New York, and the Columbia Princeton Electronic Music Center (CPEMC). |
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Musicians' Migratory Patterns: American-Mexican Border Lands, Ensenada and Experimentalist Musical Practice: Narrations in Place and Time
Edited by Mauricio Rodriguez Publication New York : Routledge, 2020 Paul N Roth and Teresa Díaz de Cossio offer a collaborative dialogue on experimentalist musical practice in Díaz’s hometown of Ensenada, Baja California (pop. 300,000). First, they detail a lineage of the scene’s developments as drawn from ethnographic work undertaken in 2019, beginning with pianist/composer/educator Ernesto Rosas in the last quarter of the 20th century and moving through the multiple generations of musicians and aesthetic frames he sets in motion. Second, they discuss Díaz’s personal experience within these musical activities, including particulars of the scene’s most recent large-scale iteration—the 2nd Festival de Música Nueva Ensenada, August 2019—of which she was primary organizer. Ensenada’s historical and geographical sense of place (including, but not limited to, its isolation from central Mexico yet proximity to Tijuana, San Diego, and Los Angeles) is foundational for the unique ways these practices have emerged and prospered. This illuminates compelling instances of musical cultures inflected and enacted locally as they migrate around the world. |
Voz Dormida: Conference
Celebrating the Life and Work of Mexican-American composer: Alida Vázquez Ayala
Mexican American composer Alida Vázquez Ayala (1930–2016) was an essential figure in the narratives of women pioneers in electronic music and a feminist who actively worked towards achieving spaces of equity for women composers. Still, her life story and work are virtually unknown. This conference intends to celebrate Vázquez’s legacy by hosting key figures in her life – friends, mentors, colleagues, and family, many of whom will meet for the first time in this event— and by offering performances of her work for the first time in decades. The concert will feature David Aguila, Kyle Adam Blair, Ryan Beard, Alvaro G. Díaz Rodriguez, Mariana Flores Bucio, Alexander Ishov, Ellen Hindson, Myra Hinrichs, Batya MacAdam-Somer, David Savage, Grace Talaski, Min-Seok Peter Ko, and Ilana Waniuk. This conference will be a space to critically engage with fundamental topics related to women in the arts during the 20th Century, to feminism, in particular Chicana/Latina feminism, and others such as migration and identity, situated in between the context Vázquez grew up in, in Mexico, and the context she spent most of her life in, in New York City.
CONFERENCE EVENTS:
Round Table Discussion
Friday, May 5th, 2023 at 2:00 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater
Concert & Pre-Concert Conversation
Friday, May 5th, 2023 at 5:00 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Concert Hall
Keynote Address
"I disappear with the darkness and electronic light”: Reflections on Listening from the Archive
by Ellie M. Hisama, PhD
Saturday, May 6th, 2023 at 11:00 a.m.
Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater
Graduate Student Research Workshop by Ellie M. Hisama
Saturday, May 6th, 2023 at 2:00 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater
CONFERENCE EVENTS:
Round Table Discussion
Friday, May 5th, 2023 at 2:00 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater
Concert & Pre-Concert Conversation
Friday, May 5th, 2023 at 5:00 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Concert Hall
Keynote Address
"I disappear with the darkness and electronic light”: Reflections on Listening from the Archive
by Ellie M. Hisama, PhD
Saturday, May 6th, 2023 at 11:00 a.m.
Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater
Graduate Student Research Workshop by Ellie M. Hisama
Saturday, May 6th, 2023 at 2:00 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater
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