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In recent years, more and more contemporary sound artists have merged aesthetic concerns with politicized content to use sound, music, or silence as vehicles for nuanced takes on issues of identity, representation, and geo-political realities. As one example, Jefferson Pinder’s 2006 video installation Juke explores assumptions of identity by filming African American performers lip-syncing to popular songs often associated with white culture. Viewers would not know the songs being performed until putting on the headphones associated with each video, and thus the element of surprise helps produce a reaction. More recently, Ragnar Kjartansson’s 2018 long-duration performance Romantic Songs of the Patriarchy featured thirty-one women musicians performing pared-down arrangements of well-loved pop songs throughout the Women’s Building in San Francisco in order to highlight the misogyny of the songs’ lyrics. In both of these cases, beauty melds with trauma to incite audience reactions. This session seeks papers that examine ways that sound and music in contemporary art invites and distorts concepts of political resistance. Papers may additionally look to the methods with which artists use sound to pressure concepts of identity; how the use of or presentation of the body enhances the use of sound in politicized art; and how artists use technology as an aid in exploring identity and resistance with sound. Papers may present individual case studies, reflect on artists’ own practices, or theorize how artists engage with particular issues of both local and global scope.