conscient podcast / balado conscient: Recent Episodes
Claude Schryer
i’ve always been comforted and relaxed by sounds that gradually slow down
TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE
(bell and breath)
Slowing down sounds slow me down
(layering of slowing down soundscape compositions from my simplesoundscapes podcast (2016-2019:
e06 cycles (from first generation, not published)
e42 fidget - ah, let us pay attention for a minute or two to the spinning
e42fidget - red, yellow and blue
e109 lake - slow slower stop
e11 arrival - the modulation of propeller as metaphor)
Do slowing down sounds slow you down?
CREDITS
This episode really does help me slow down. I hope it has a similar effect for you.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Stop Ecocide International.
I improvised a story during a power outage at the cottage about sound without electricity
TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE
(bell and breath)
It's Wednesday, July 12th, 2023. Yesterday, at 4.53 pm, the power went out at my cottage and I wanted to make this episode about our dependence on electricity.
So here I am in an analog world, normally, with electricity, but without power, of course, there are no lights.
In the cabin there's no pump to draw water, though there is a bit of water left in the tank, so I can use a little bit, but it will run out. Of course, there's a lake out front, so that's not a problem.
My phone doesn't work either. It's now out of power.
Importantly, food is being kept cold in the fridge, but of course it's not being refrigerated and in particular, the ice box is slowly getting warm. Without electricity, it does not work and there's no backup to refrigeration other than ice, which is the way that it used to be done.
And there are other things that change, of course : lights in the cabin and the ability to charge batteries and all of that but there are other ways of living. There's lots of wood here and so I built a fire for lunch and it's still burning. Might still be good for dinner.
My point is to take advantage of this opportunity of not having electricity, to think about the things that we might take for granted and that we perhaps don't need.
Do I really need to charge my batteries all the time so that my phone works at my convenience? Are there other things that I could do with less of or not at all.
I invite you to think about that and to listen to the sounds around you without electricity…
I'm enjoying this moment of non-electricity, which changes my perception of time. I do have battery powered clocks, but I can't check my phone. I can't have the radio on to tell me about what's going on in the world so there's this sense of disconnection from that world, but it's also an opportunity to connect to this world.
Of course, the electricity could go back on at any moment. It's almost been 24 hours now and it is very serious for those whose lives depend on the electricity in hospitals, but they have backups.
I guess the ultimate backup is how we used to live so many years ago without electricity : living more by the sun and by our relationship to the land that's not mediated by electricity.
I'll end with my bell again. Wishing you the pleasures of electricity and the pleasures of not having electricity.
Are. You. Powerless?
*
CREDITS
This episode was recorded without any preparation hence is a bit rough around the edges but I liked the flow and fragility in my voice.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology (CASE).
i played back four episodes from this season at the same time and listened to how they interact
TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE
(bell and breath)
Episode 105 stretches time
(e105 ropes)
Episode 101 releases tension
(e101 tension)
Episode 118 follows your shit
(e118 shit)
e116 mourns loss
(e116 loss)
How do you feel now?
*
I love to listen to the interplay of layered soundscapes : how they come in and out of each other like cloud formations, so I mixed 4 of my favorites from this season and you can hear the ci-existence of expanding ropes, plucked strings, flushing toilets and filtered ocean waves.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to ecoartspace.
one morning I heard rhythmic water dripping from a gutter and improvised this poem
(bell and breath)
(Voice synchronized to sound of water drop)
I am a drop of water
I am a drop of rain
I am your body
I am your pain
(Repeated)
Are you a drop of water?
*
CREDITS
Recorded at the back deck of our home in Ottawa on August 13th, 2023.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to Action Sandy Hill.
while doing my qi gong one morning I heard roofers removing tiles and recalled simplesoundscape in 2016…
TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE
(bell + sound of roofers taking off tiles)
While doing my daily qi gong on May 25, 2023 I was listening to roofers removing tiles on a nearby house.
I’ve always been troubled and fascinated by the sound of deconstruction… of things being ripped apart… of the undoing of objects held together with glue, nails or screws.
I sometimes feel the pain of the wood, metals and minerals.
I sometimes feel like a part of me lives within these materials.
I think about where these materials came from - their extraction from the earth - and how we treat them when they are no longer useful to us.
I feel gratitude towards these living beings who provide us with shelter and comfort.
Now I want to take you back to another encounter with deconstruction, in August of 2016, the very first recording of my simplesoundscapes project about mindful listening.
Here is the recording from the very first episode of simplesoundsccapes:
(beginning of simplesoundscapes pilot episode with nails being removed in background)
This pilot episode of simplesoundscapes explores the ecological and philosophical implications of deconstruction. I have a lifelong interest in environmental issues, in particular with acoustic ecology and so when I heard both the violence and the poetry of siding being removed and nails being extracted from a wall on our cottage, I was compelled to record it and to start this podcast series called simplesoundscapes. So this particular recording was captured in mono on an ipad with the ipad on a window sill. It was recorded in August 2016 in Duhamel, Quebec. I invite you to think about the following question:
‘If construction is the art and science of building and deconstruction is its opposite, selective dismantlement, how then can we constructively deconstruct?’
How can you constructively deconstruct?
CREDITS
Thanks to the roofers that I recorded and all the best with the development of green practices in your industry.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
my zen practice taught me that unhurried speech invites us to slow down
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
(bell and breath)
When I was a student at the White Wind Zen Community in Ottawa I had the privilege of listening to recorded teachings by Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi. You can hear some his recording on wwzc.org.
During these teisho, the roshi speaks very slowly, with a lot of silence between words, a bit like what I’m doing now.
Silence between words.
As well as words between silence.
Now I love listening to spoken words at this kind of slow pace.
It invites other sounds to permeate the acoustic space, such as the traffic that is in the background now, a bit of birdsong, muffled sounds.
But we can also notice other things like our breath - it’s pace, depth, odor, weight - so many dimensions that we usually don't pay attention to and minute movements such as cracking of the floor from the weight of the chair, oscillations of light and so many details we normally don’t notice.
I love the way spoken words linger in the air, hugging the clouds and floating down like rain or snow.
I love the way unhurried speech invites us to slow down.
So you might ask : how does the pace of speech relate to the sound of modernity?
The sound of modernity is the opposite of slowness. It’s fast moving and generally saturated, isn’t it?
Constant in overdrive, with technology accelerating our lives, faster and faster every day,
We seem to have lost touch with slowness - there’s my phone reminded me to be fast.
We’ve also lost touch with the notion, the feeling of distance.
So I’m going to slowly walk away from this microphone, while repeating this narration again as an exercise in listening to slowness but also to distance.
Thanks for listening.
(Gets up and walks away)
When I was a student at the White Wind Zen Community in Ottawa I had the privilege of listening to recordings of teachings, by Ven. Anzan Hoshin roshi. You can hear some on wwzc.org.
During these teisho, the roshi speaks very slowly, with a lot of silence between words, like I am speaking now.
Silence between words.
Words between silence.
I love listening to spoken words at a slow pace…
*
For more information on the White Wind Zen Community, see https://wwzc.org/
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to White Wind Zen Community.
an exercise where I invite listeners to stop what they are doing, listen and to enjoy the experience
(unedited improvised narration)
Listening is at the heart of this season of the conscient podcast. Specifically, listening to the sounds of modernity, but also listening to everything, all at once and noticing what is going on, usually a mix of systems collapse and resilient beauty.
So today’s episode is a listening exercise. At the end of this recording I invite you to stop what you are doing for a few minutes and listen to what is around you.
Try not to think or analyse what you hear. Just note what is happening and enjoy the experience. Try to let the sounds enter your body without passing judgment. Just listen. I invite you to stay where you are or move around.
I’ll give you an example from where I am right now. It’s 5.30 am on May 17, 2023. I’m in an apartment in Montreal. I’m hearing a thin tic toc sound at a distance. Behind that I hear a faint birdsong outside the apartment. I also hear my voice reverberating in this room and the sound of my breath. I also hear and feel the sound of my blood passing through my veins. The more I listen the more I hear and feel connected to this space and this moment.
I’m not listening to modernity.
I am modernity.
*
This listening exercise was recorded on my iphone (poor sound quality) at 5.30am on May 16th, 2023 (I made a mistake and said May 17 on the recording) in one take in mp 3 format.
I wrote the script a few minutes before recording it. I did not edit the recording or add the ‘bell and breath’ at the top. I wanted it to be from that moment, ‘as is’, in the spirit of the exercise.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to NAISA, New Adventures in Sound Art.
a quote from robin parmar about speculative fiction that raises some questions
(bell and breath)
I love the sound of leaves dancing on hard surfaces.
(sound of a leaf blowing)
It’s poetic and kinetic and you’ll see in a minute how this sound relates to this episode about speculative fiction.
With his kind permission, I will quote composer Robin Parmar, from a question he asked me at the end of my keynote presentation at the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology conference ‘Listening Pasts - Listening Futures’ on March 23rd, 2023 in Florida via Zoom. Here’s Robin question recorded from my microphone in the room:
The problem with the future is that it's already happened. Hollywood, and increasingly the games industry, have already colonized popular imagination about what the future is and there have been so many post-apocalyptic scenarios played out on the screen. And in almost all of these, there's a heroic band of survivors who have to face their new world in a confrontational way, which just perpetuates the same narrative of what I prefer to call the industrial military entertainment complex. I don't, like you, I don’t give up hope, but I realize it’s a small leaf in the wind, because I'm not sure how we can compete with such a massive force of narrative that in a way has already written the story, or at least the story that people want to hear, because people have to want to hear the story for it to be a successful one.
(sound of a leaf blowing)
Robin mentions a small leaf in the wind as a metaphor for our feeling powerless when faced with creative forces around us shaping our collective imagination in ways we might not be aware of, or even desire…
So I thought about Robin’s question and have come up with some questions of my own:
(in English and in French)
- Has the future already happened in our minds and memory? / L'avenir a-t-il déjà eu lieu dans notre esprit et notre mémoire ?
- Do you feel like your imagination has been colonized? And if so, how would you know? / Avez-vous l'impression que votre imagination a été colonisée ? Et si oui, comment le sauriez-vous ?
- Do you know who your heroic band of survivors might be? And if so, could you identify with them? / Savez-vous qui pourrait être votre groupe héroïque de survivants ? Si oui, pourriez-vous vous identifier à eux ?
- In what ways do you think the industrial military entertainment complex affects us? How does it affect our minds? / De quelle manière pensez-vous que le complexe industriel militaire et de divertissement nous affecte. Comment affecte-il notre esprit ?
I want to thank Robin for his question. Merci pour ta question, Robin.
What kind of stories do you want to hear? / Quel genre d'histoires aimeriez-vous entendre ?
*
For more information on Robert Parmar’s work see http://robinparmar.com/paper-platial-phenomenology.html.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to Howlround Theatre Commons https://howlround.com/.
Here is another bonus episode, this one is called 'Portrait of Robin Mathews'. It is 3 part unpublished radio program I created in 2005 in collaboration with Robin based on an interview I recorded with him in 2004. The program is a layered discussion about the history of political poetry in Canada, the role of the artist in society and family matters, in particular his relationship with me as my father-in-law. This program also includes Robin reading excerpts of his poetry as well as some of my soundscape compositions.
e129 world listening day - what does world listening day mean to you?
(bell and breath)
Every July 18th is World Listening Day. It’s also composer and acoustic ecologist R. Murray Schafer’s birthday. Rest in peace Murray.
Now World Listening Day 2023 proposes three very interesting listening prompts and I'll try to answer their questions in today's episode.
Question 1
What can we learn from the listening practices of all living beings?
What can we learn from the listening practices of all living beings?
It's a very good question and I would start by questioning who is the ‘we’ in this context. I would also question the assumption that other living beings have listening practices as we know them. ‘We’.
This being said, this prompt made me think of a story told to me by composer Robert Normandeau in 1991 for my Marche sonore 1 radio program that I did for Radio-Canada. I quote it in episode 19 reality and I’ll play it back for you now.
(e19 reality)
· It’s a bit like taking a frog, which is a cold-blooded animal, and putting it in a jar of water and heating the water, little by little. The frog will get used to the temperature rising and rising, and it will not notice that the temperature has risen and one day the temperature will be too hot for it and it will die. Therefore, our civilization, in terms of sound, looks a bit like that, that is to say we get used to it, we get used to it, we get used to it and at some point, we are going to have punctured eardrums.
Now the early 1990’s were a time of great environmental awakening and action, in particular the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. There was a sense that this was our last chance to change directions, to undo some of the wrongs of pollution. Ironically, things got much worse after 1992.
Sadly, this window is now closed and we find ourselves in very hot water not feeling or responding to the heat, the smoke and other signals we are receiving and so we’re slowly boiling to death…
(Bell)
Question 2
How can we deterritorialize listening practices?
How can we deterritorialize listening practices?
Dererrirorialize. De… terror. Deterritorialize. It’s a hard word to say.
The notion of territory makes me think of stolen lands by colonial settlers, like myself, living in indigenous lands, unceded lands, such as the Algonquin-Anishinaabe nation, otherwise known as Ottawa.
One form of deterritorialization is the land back movement.
According to journalist and Canada Council for the Arts chair Jesse Wente (also see e107 harm) land back is :
- about the decision-making power. It’s about self-determination for our Peoples here that should include some access to the territories and resources in a more equitable fashion, and for us to have control over how that actually looks.
What does land back sound like?
Just last week I published an episode about decolonized listening 128 revisited. Here’s an an excerpt from that episode :
- On June 23, 2023 I had the pleasure, and the privilege, of attending ‘Listening to Lhq’a:lets’ (I hope I’m pronouncing that right), otherwise known as the city of Vancouver, at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Learning at the University of British Coumbia, which is situated l on the unceded and ancestral territory of the Musqueam Nation. A group of artists, all women, spoke about their week-long residency, organized by indigenous sound scholar and UBC professor Dr. Dylan Robinson. They shared a wide range of sensory engagements through listening to Lhq’a:lets: how our bodies listen through the haptics of vibration, about hearing and feeling the voices of our non-human relations, about how we can perceive the built environment with new perspectives – the air, waterways and earth that surround us. They spoke about their encounters with the trans-mountain pipeline, their dialogues with animals and birds, their encounters with haunting vibrations and their thoughts about the past, present and future sounds of this region. What they did not talk about was themselves, their accomplishments or the type of technology they used to extract and manipulate the sounds. None of that. There was also no reverence for say R. Murray Schafer or the World Soundscape Project, nor any nostalgia about the good old days when, say, the term ‘soundscape’ was invented. There was no disrespect either. They were listening from a different position. So I heard stories, poems, anecdotes, images, silences and prophecies… It was uplifting.
(simplesoundscapes e03 bones)
(Bell)
Question 3
When should we listen more?
When should we listen more?
I guess it depends on what kind of listening, doesn’t it?
More listening with a colonial lens or colonial education is not helpful.
Perhaps we could listen more to ourselves through listening to other living beings?
Maybe we could listen more to the land and give back?
Warm thanks to my colleagues at the World Listening Days for your thoughtful prompts and ongoing commitment to listening, by everyone, everywhere.
What does world listening day mean to you?
*
For more information on World Listening Day and to participate, this year or next, see https://worldlisteningday.org/
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to World Listening Day 2023.
(bell and breath)
(movement 1 of vancouver soundscape revisited, eagle)
You’re listening to the first movement, eagle, of my 1996 soundscape composition, vancouver soundscape revisited.
I describe the piece in the program note as :
- an impressionistic portrait of the musicality and poetry of past, present and future soundscapes of Vancouver composed using archival sounds dating from the World Soundscape Project in the early 1970’s and from recordings of Vancouver made in the early 1990’s by Bob MacNevin on behalf of the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University (SFU). My method was to select a few hundred sounds from the collection, which I edited and catalogued by spectrum, category, function, pitch, and context. I then experimented with various combinations and modifications of the material until interesting sonic alchemies were found…’
For example, you can now hear the ubiquitous sound of rain in Vancouver, a distant train whistle, bird song, the rumble of the harbour and… the 9 o'clock gun.
Let me tell you a short story.
On June 23, 2023 I had the pleasure, and the privilege, of attending ‘Listening to Lhq’a:lets’ (I hope I’m pronouncing it right), otherwise known as the city of Vancouver, at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Learning at the University of British Coumbia, which is situated l on the unceded and ancestral territory of the Musqueam Nation.
A group of artists, all women, spoke about their week-long residency, organized by indigenous sound scholar and UBC professor Dr. Dylan Robinson. They shared a wide range of sensory engagements through listening to Lhq’a:lets: how our bodies listen through the haptics of vibration, about hearing and feeling the voices of our non-human relations, about how we can perceive the built environment with new perspectives - the air, waterways and earth that surround us.
They spoke about their encounters with the trans-mountain pipeline, their dialogues with animals and birds, their encounters with haunting vibrations and their thoughts about the past, present and future sounds of this region.
What they did not talk about was themselves, their accomplishments or the type of technology they used to extract and manipulate the sounds. None of that. There was also no reverence for say R. Murray Schafer or the World Soundscape Project, nor any nostalgia about the good old days when, say, the term ‘soundscape’ was invented. There was no disrespect either. They were listening from a different position.
So I heard stories, poems, anecdotes, images, silences and prophecies… It was uplifting.
(excerpt from movement 2, fire)
So when I listened back to my soundscape composition, I realized that my revisitation was mostly a, let’s call it, a reshuffling of the colonial deck chairs.
Yes I cleverly combined horns, whistles, sirens, industrial and natural sounds as a commentary on the beauty and madness of contemporary urban life but my revisitation was from a very narrow point of view.
I now realise that this music, my music, is inherently complicit with colonialism and that my creative gestures are actually further cycles of exploitation.
In retrospect it might have been more useful for me to figure out how to repair the damage done to past, present and future soundscapes of Lhq’a:lets.
What does decolonized listening sound like to you?
*
This event was part of the three-part Friday evening series, Artists Within the Anthropocene. Presented in partnership with the Belkin Art Gallery. Listening to Lhq’a:lets / Vancouver is also part of a week-long artist residency organized with The Score: Performing, Listening and Decolonization UBC Research Excellence Cluster, in partnership with the UBC School of Music and Evergreen. The six participating artists were Bonnie Devine, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Dolleen Manning, Lisa Myers, Astrida Neimanis, Lisa Ravensbergen and Rita Wong.
With thanks to the six artists who represented their work on June 23 and to Dylan Robinson for his ongoing enquiries.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to Full Circle.
Note: the podcast recording was improvised based on this script and therefore has additional material.
This 127th episode of the conscient podcast marks the halfway point of season 4, which, as you might recall, is called Sounding Modernity and explores what modernity might sound like, how it affects us and what we can do about it..
Maybe…
A heads up that this episode is 57 minutes in duration because it is part of the ‘afield’ series of framework radio in Estonia.
The season began on January 1 with e101 tension:
(Beginning of e101)
I was thinking about the tensions in our lives and the art of finding balance points… So I went for a sound walk in Vancouver and came upon a piece of fishing line. I brought it home, strung it up and recorded myself plucking it…
(cross fade to the end of e101)
Listeners might recall that each episode this season ends with a question:
How do you feel now?
‘How do you feel now’ is actually at the heart of this project. How do one perceive the sounds of our modern world? What does it feel like to absorb these sounds into our bodies? How can we change the way we listen? How can we move away from the madness of modernity? And if, tragically, we are unable to step away, at the very least, how can we help prepare future generations for what is coming?
How can art help?
How can listening help?
Are we helpless?
(Silence then ocean sounds)
I’ve received some interesting responses and reactions to the first 26 episodes and 6 blogs of the project so far, in various forms and channels, for example, this poem from artist and educator Carolina Duque (also known as Azul), submitted on January 3, 2023, about her experience with e101 tension :
I walked down the sea line of San Andrés Island, in the Caribbean, as I listened.
Listened
Felt the ten
sion
tens
Ion
I grew up on this island. I notice the shoreline getting smaller.
I notice the corals turning grey. I notice the buildings growing taller. The overlapping reggaeton and vallenato music from competing speakers.
I notice everything getting louder.
I notice the
Tens – ion.
I notice the menus saying fish is scarce.
I notice
In my lungs the tension. In my eyes the tension.
In my waves, in my feet.
The tension.
(Ocean sound fade out)
My response :
I was reading Jenny Odell’s ‘How To Do Nothing’ book today and came upon this sentence that relates to your response. I quote: ‘I hold up bioregionalism as a model for how we might begin to think again about place’ (end of quote), which to me means that we need to be stewards of the land, wherever we are, in collaboration with all living beings.
I documented almost all of the feedback I received from listeners in my monthly conscient blog on conscient.ca. I am grateful for these gifts of knowledge and insight.
(e102 aesthetics)
Most episodes in this podcast are about the relationship between art and the ecological crisis. For example, in e102 aesthetics:
The problem with beauty is that it can distract us from reality. Sit with me, please, take a moment. Sit and listen…
I’ve also integrated soundscape compositions in and around the narrative, for example, from e103 heat:
(end of e103)
This thing is smart. Everything talks to each other. I would just leave it on auto and let it choose what it wants to do. What does decarbonization sound like to you?
How do we decarbonize our lifestyles? One way is to rethink the way we use energy in day to day life, for example, in e110 - drain, I talk about water :
(beginning of e110)
It goes down the drain (again) and into the sewer system to be processed and dumped into the Ottawa river, then it evaporates into the sky and it rains back into our lakes and rivers, bringing with it with many pollutants, and then is pumped into our homes, in our bodies and heated until…
A friend, artist Maria Gomez, shared this response to e110 on March 6:
Only the water doesn’t stay in the Ottawa region, as it travels south in the moist of the clouds all the way to the Patagonia glaciers, and in ocean currents to Asia and its skies and then it travels up the Arctic… the water I bathe in contains my cells that are distributed around the world, and particles from the world touch me in the water.
I responded:
It’s true that water travels in us, through us and beyond. The sound of water can be either pleasant or a signal of danger but either way we need to listen and understand the language of water…
Some episodes call upon quotes from previous episode such as photographer Joan Sullivan in e96 from season 3 which I used in e106 fire :
(near the end of e106)
And it suddenly dawned on me that I, my hands, weren’t shaking up because of the cold, but because of an anger, you know, this deep, profound anger about our collective indifference in the face of climate breakdown. Wait, we're just carrying on with our lives as if you know, la la la and nothing, nothing bad happening. So there was this sense of rage. I mean, like, honestly, it's surprising how strong it'd be in a violent rage just sort of coming outta me. I wanted to scream, and I just, you know, took my camera and just moved it violently, right? Left up, down the, and almost, I suppose, it was almost like I was drowning in the water. You know, my arms are just doing everything. And I was holding down the shutter the whole time, you know, 20, 30, 40 photos at a time. And I did it over. And oh, I was just, I was just, I was just beside myself. And you know, you at some point, you just stop and you're staring out at the river. And I just felt helpless. I just didn't know what to do…
I hear you dear Joan. I also do not know what to do.
I also called upon climate activist and politician Anjali Appadurai from e23 in season 2 in e114 :
(middle section of e114 privilege)
Privilege can go back as far as you wanted to go back, right? And of course it’s so nuanced. It’s not every white guy has this much privilege, but you do have a privilege that goes back hundreds of years and I think one aspect of privilege, one that a lot of people leave out, is this economic aspect, right, of class and resources. And that is not often talked about in the climate conversation, but it’s a huge piece of it. Because when we talk about the extinction of our species, this extinction doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in a spectrum. Who are the last ones standing? Those with the most resources and who are the first ones to go? It’s those with the least, the most disenfranchised. So I don’t think you can talk about climate without talking about privilege ultimately. And I think it’s on each of us to unpack that for ourselves and to bring that into the conversation.
(field recording of natural soundscape from Florida)
The most ambitious episode so far has been e112 listening, which I presented as my keynote speech at the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) conference Listening Pasts - Listening Futures, in Florida. It actually runs for over 10 minutes so I broke my own rule here of having only 5 minute episodes but I decided to go with the flow when an episode needed more time. Why not? Here the final sequence from e112:
(from the end of e112)
Conclusion 5 : connect our efforts
Todd Dufresne, e19: ‘Whoever survives these experiences will have a renewed appreciation for nature, for the external world, and for the necessity of collectivism in the face of mass extinction.’
Asad Rehman, Green Dreamer podcast (e378) : ‘Our goal is to keep our ideas and policies alive for when the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable’.
George Monbiot, tweet November 13, 2021 : ‘We have no choice but to raise the scale of civil disobedience until we have built the greatest mass movement in history.’
My question to you is ‘how can listening help’?
During the performance I walked out of the room at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach around the building asking that same question :
How can listening help?
(Recording from live performance of my keynote)
Each episode of this season has a different aesthetic, a different style, depending on my inspiration, mood and what I am learning or unlearning on any given week.
For example, some episodes feature unedited field recordings, such as the subway in Montreal in e120 metro where I invite you, the listener, to sit with the sound and let it speak to you, as if the sound were a living entity, which, I think, it is.
(beginning of e120)
Sometimes we just have to stop and listen. Without passing judgement. Just listen…. Sometimes we just have to stop and listen.
Another example is the sound of freezing rain on a canopy of hard snow in a frozen forest in e122 quiet:
(middle of e122)
I suspect this one might seem a bit boring for some listeners because not much happens, but I enjoy listening to quiet spaces and tuning into more subtle sonic patterns and layers of sound and silence.
(end of e122)
When I launched Sounding Modernity in December 2022 I wrote that my intention was to :
Address some of the causes of this massive and violent overreach of planetary boundaries but also to explore how we can preserve some of modernity’s benefits, without the destruction.
In retrospect I realise this was a very ambitious goal but also pretentious and sometimes naive. I soon realized that failure was not only inevitable but necessary in order to experience boundaries and limitations.
Here’s a quote from the Gift of Failure teaching by the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective in my February blog :
We chose the word “gesture” for the title of our collective to underscore the fact that decolonization is impossible when our livelihoods are underwritten by colonial violence and unsustainability. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, our health systems and social security, and the technologies that allow us to write about this are all subsidized by expropriation, dispossession, destitution, genocides and ecocides. There is no way around it: we cannot bypass it, the only way is through.
How we fail is important. It is actually in the moments when we fail that the deepest learning becomes possible and that is usually where we stumble upon something unexpected and extremely useful. Failing generatively requires both intellectual and relational rigour.
One of my favorite failures is e121 rumble where I impersonate a superhero, Dr Decibel, in Stanley Park in Vancouver. It’s pretty hokey and raw but I like the way it explores storytelling and fantasy.
This is Dr. Decibel. Your sonic superhero on the unseated ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations otherwise known as… Well, I think you know where I am. (plane passing by). You have a problem here people. The low frequencies are excessive : traffic, industry, ventilation. Layers and layers of rumble and I hate rumble. Rumbleeeee is not something that I enjoy, so I’m going to use my superpowers today to reduce the amount of rumble in your city. Ruuuuumble… (imitation of rumbling sounds)
(middle section of e118)
Another failed episode was e118 toilet about shit. My intention here was to comment upon composting, both literally and figuratively. Vanessa Andreotti talks eloquently about shit in her book Hospicing Modernity but instead of addressing the issue head on, I took the easy way out and produced an episode with the statement ‘where does your shit go’ accompanied by four recordings of toilets flushing, which does not directly address the issue, but it’s a start. And, to be honest, I was attracted by the rich sound of the toilet refilling and the silence that follows when it is full, waiting to flush, again and again, precious water in a wasteful cycle of flushing away our issues…
(beginning of e118 toilet)
(bell and breath) where does your shit go? (toilet flush 1)
On April 25 my dear father in law Robin Mathews passed away of pancreatic cancer. His illness was on mind throughout the first half of the project. I had the privilege of recording him reading his last poem, deeper into the forest, in February 2023, at his home in Vancouver, in one take. I published it 2 days before his passing in both audio and video format. Here is how e117 deeper into the forest ends:
(end of e117)
You know the voices
And you know they cannot shape words
that will break the surface over your head.
Lights flash in the skies above,
Dart through the water.
But words do not form.
The surface above you,
Which you cannot break through.
Closes….
In the darkness that moves toward you
As if a living creature
The voices fade away … or seem to fade away,
And you know the surface above your head
Will not break.
The voices beyond the surface
Will grow distant and imperfect
And you, quite alone, will move deeper into the forest.
(sound of forest from Kitchener, Ontario)
I received this comment from listener Cathie Poynter, a former student and friend of Robin’s, on May 8 about this episode:
This is so wonderful to hear, see, feel and read. Beautifully done, the poem, the paintings, the voice, all of the sounds. It is like reaching from beyond, to tell us where, and how to move through further into the depth of the forest: of reality, life, and death. I think it is very profound. It gives me hope that we all must go on this journey. He has captured the experience I feel of time and eternity.
I also wrote a one person play during this time called e111 traps, which explores some of the traps in our live :
(beginning of e111)
(bell, breath and occasional balloon sounds)
Me : Have you ever had the feeling that you were being observed?
Observer : I’m observing you.
Me: Who are you and what are you observing?
Observer: Ah, well, I’m a part of you and I’m observing the traps that you tend to fall into.
Me: Traps?
Observer : Do you remember the Facing Human Wrongs course you took during the summer of 2022?
Me: Ya.
Observer: The one about navigating paradoxes and complexities of social and global change and all those trappings along the way?
Me: Ya, I remember. Easier said than done, though.
Observer: Ya
Me: So. What are you observing?
Observer : Well, what can I say? I notice that you’ve fallen into a trap called ‘exit fixation’ which is where people feel a strong urge to walk out on an existing commitment. For example, when someone realises that the path they are on is full of paradoxes, contradictions, and complicities. Often their first response is to find an immediate exit in hopes of a more fulfilling and/or more innocent alternative or maybe even an ideal community with whom to continue this work.
Me: Like an escape?
Observer: Ya, something like that
I’ve also had the privilege of receiving insightful feedback from listeners about the conscient podcast as a whole, such as this email on May 16 from a friend who asked to remain anonymous:
So grateful to have been able to listen and stay close to your work. It’s wonderful to witness, feel and sense into the different layers and movements over the course of the episode and throughout the arc of the season so far. It’s almost as if the story of Sounding Modernity is being stitched by the sounds, walks and episodes and shape-shifting it into this surprising creature (sometimes scary, sometimes funny, sometimes visible, sometimes fictional…). I wonder how else the story of Sounding Modernity will further weave itself (both in/out of control) as you continue to loosen even more of your grips on it, slowly and gently. I like how humor mixes with pain and poetry mixes with interviews, and ocean mixes with toilet shitty waters. The playful and surprising diversity is fun. It’s even clear that you are both struggling and having so much fun, which adds honesty and trust in wanting to go with you on the inquiry. As you approach the middle of your journey, what might be needed at this time to invite further and what might be ready to be released into new soils? May more sounds reveal/be revealed.
I responded:
Your point about how Sounding Modernity might unfold in/out of control is a good one as I approach the midpoint in the project on July 1. I’m coming to terms with its failings, surprises and unanticipated unlearnings. The isolation in particular has been bewildering. I think I have already ‘lost my grip on it’, in a good way. I have essentially given up on it being a ‘exploration of the sounds of modernity’ - which was quite pretentious anyway - but rather, as you suggest, has become a portrait of my struggles and discoveries through the sounds of modernity.
Let me expand a bit on that idea of isolation. I hoped this project might engage the arts community in dialogue with me and each other about these existential issues, which is why each episode ends with a question. It’s meant to be a prompt or an invitation but not a rhetorical enquiry. My expectation was that it might interest artists and others who are in a similar frame of mind as I am, you know, dealing with eco anxiety and eco grief and so on.
For example, on June 7, Jean-Marc Lamoureux wrote about episode e123 maps:
When it comes to unknown possibilities for humanity, it is important to acknowledge that our knowledge and understanding of the world are limited. There are areas in science, technology, philosophy, and exploration that remain largely uncharted. New discoveries, innovations, and breakthroughs are possible in these domains and could unveil unforeseen possibilities. It is also important to note that the future is uncertain, and it is challenging to accurately predict what will unfold. Technological advancements, social and political changes, as well as unforeseen events, can all shape the future of humanity in unexpected ways. To address the uncertainty of the future and the challenges of the ecological crisis, it is crucial to foster an open, inclusive, and collaborative approach. Encouraging research, innovation, and exploration across relevant fields, as well as promoting sustainability, environmental conservation, and social justice, are essential. We must also recognize that the future of humanity is closely intertwined with our relationship with the Earth and the other living beings that inhabit it. Taking care of our planet and living in harmony with nature are vital. … Thank you for your attention and for engaging in deep reflection on these important questions.
I responded:
I agree that we need to keep a positive attitude and that there is much we do not know. I quote writer Rebecca Solnit in episode 19, who said ‘hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act’. My point in e123 was to share my stress (and distress?) about where we are at and where we might be going. … What concerns me most is our deep disconnection with nature, which has been in the works for centuries and is killing us all. … So, Jean-Marc, I don’t think innovation will help if it is built on a self-destructive model. … Certainly doomism does not help, but neither does naïve hope. …
So, it’s July 1st 2023 and I’m at the halfway point in this project. 26 episodes done with 25 to go.
What’s next?
Well, to be honest, and I admitted as much in e123 maps, I really don’t know.
(e123 maps section of scrunching piece of paper)
So these are the five elements on my map: mitigation, adaptation, tipping point line, survival and recovery, but the problem is that I’m wrong. The map is wrong. The truth is that I don’t know. There are endless possibilities and dimensions that I’m not yet able to conceive or understand and yet sometimes, somehow, I can feel them. So I’m done with drawing maps and speculating with thoughts and ideas. Instead, I’m going to listen to the intelligence of my body, to the intelligence of non-human beings around me, to other forms of knowledge and beings that are emerging, and see where that takes me.
I thought of erasing it all and returning the funds to the Canada Council and becoming a monk or a hermit.
I expressed this sadness and grief at the end of my June blog as follows:
I was reminded today of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective’s SMDA Compass teaching about how to walk a tightrope between desperate hope and reckless hopelessness. It’s a fine line … but these days I've fallen into a deep cavern of hopelessness but not (yet) recklessly.
Speaking of erasure, I notice recently that Catherine Ingram, the brilliant buddhist scholar and philosopher who has deeply influenced my learning journey, wrote on her website, in reference to her seminal essay, Facing Extinction, that:
I wrote the long-form essay ‘Facing Extinction’ in early 2019. Over these past years I have occasionally been able to update the information and perspectives contained therein. However, I am finding that the speed with which the data is changing and the pressing issues that we are immediately facing, such as the exponential rise of artificial intelligence and transhumanism, have made some of this essay obsolete. I have thus decided to remove it.
Her statement reminded of this prescient quote from Facing Extinction that I used in episode 19 :
(middle of e19 reality)
Love, what else is there to do now? Here we are, some of the last humans who will experience this beautiful planet since Homo sapiens began their journey some 200,000 years ago. Now, in facing extinction of our species, you may wonder if there is any point in going on.
Catherine, you’re right that love is what we must do, and be. It might be all we can do, and be.
So where do we go from here?
Is there any point going on?
(long silence)
What do you think?
More importantly…
(end of e101 tension)
How do you feel now?
After quite a bit of thought, I decided to finish what I started, every Sunday, through to episode 153 on December 31st and see what happens.
What can I learn and unlearn?
What can I slow down or undo?
I’m actually quite excited about part 2 of this project. In particular I want to explore the idea of inviting listeners differently and releasing materials into new soils.
Thankfully, I don’t have to do this work alone. I have the privilege of working with a number of great collaborators, including content advisors Azul Carolina Duque and Flora Aldridge, translator Carole Beaulieu, communications advisor Jessica Ruano, web designer Ayesha Barmania and countless friends and colleagues who provide feedback and support. Thank you for your input and trust.
I’ll leave you with an excerpt from an episode in development.
Thanks for listening and take care.
(crows in city with rumble + various nature field recordings)
*
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to Living Dharma.
(soundscapes of east vancouver at c. 5am)
I can’t sleep tonight.
What about you?
I love nighttime soundscapes.
They’re so bareboned, minimal, like the rumble that you hear now, mostly from Vancouver harbour, but also the industrial area here in east vancouver.
So I'm up, recording, listening, figuring out what keeps me up at night, this night, other nights, when I listen and try to understand...
Sometimes I feel like I can hear inaudible sounds, like the polar ice caps melting…
(homeless person walking by with wagon)
But of course what I'm hearing here is the life around me. A homeless person just walked by with their wagon of survival materials and that's what happens at night. Life unfolds and people try to survive.
Some are dormant and some are very active, like the raccoons who are doing their work.
But back to the ice melting, that's what I find bewildering is this state between awakeness and sleep. A kind of dream state where I'm not sure what exactly I'm hearing and my imagination kind of takes over, so, I do sometimes feel like I'm listening to things like the ice melting up north in the arctic or feeling the trees around me growing.
What is the sound of a tree growing? What are those kinds of things.
They don't always wake me, but they sometimes keep me up at night in wonder and I worry about this fragile world…
Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023, 5.12am.
What keeps you up at night?
*
The soundscape for this episode was recorded at 5.07 am in Vancouver on May 3, 2023.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the The Only Animal theatre company.
(bell)
I take stock of climate news by reading the headlines of the excellent daily newspaper, national observer, for example, on Tuesday April 25th, 2023 these were the headlines :
‘We might have a coverup problem’: MPs grill Alberta Energy Regulator CEO over oil sands tailings leaks
(sound of dripping and filtering from simplesoundscapes e34 goutte)
‘Meet the man turning mushrooms into meat’
(quiet field with crickets)
‘How the pandemic challenged libertarianism’
(crowd at protest)
‘Tide-powered clean energy could help West Coast communities ditch diesel’
(beach in Cuba and truck in Ottawa)
‘Hands off the Greenbelt rally turns up heat on Ford government’
(Anti-Ford government greenbelt policy rally in Ottawa)
‘A wake-up call to oilsands industry to ensure that all necessary measures are in place to prevent future wildlife tragedies’
(loon at lake in Papineau-Labelle reserve and coyotes in Mono, Ontario)
‘Shocking new federal research reveals Alberta oilsands may be vastly underestimating greenhouse gas emissions’
(hiss of gas meter in Ottawa, pavement machine in Ottawa, drone of ferry in Vancouver)
‘What How to Blow up a Pipeline won’t teach you’
(Lynn Canyon forest, North Vancouver)
How do you respond to climate news?
*
This episode involves my reading the headlines of the National Observer newspaper on Tuesday April 25th, 2023 accompanied by field recording from my collection.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the National Observer news service.
I decided to go for a walk this morning here in Kitchener, Ontario. A soundwalk.. Just because it's something to do; to be connected to a place.
This is a settlement of course : a city.
What I try to do is listen to sounds past, present, and future at the same time. How does one do that?
It’s mostly about feeling our way through what was here, and what I assume was forested lands. What is here now is mostly asphalt, brick houses and a few trees. In the future, one could hope that it would come back to a more natural state, in one way or another, but it might also just become what the planet is becoming, which is devastated by climate change and living with the consequences of tipping points that we will have passed.
So listening in that sense is important to our everyday lives because it can inform us to understand the past, experience the present and anticipate the future.
So what's happening here now? It's a very windy day. It's almost too much for this recorder. I’m just walking on the street, noticing as much as I can and feeling the wind on my skin, of course. You can hear that there are birds.
It’s February 26th, 2023, and there are all kinds of little things going on, rattling…
The trees speak to us in their language and I am walking with you, listening. That's what a soundwalk is.
Of course, the sound of cars are inevitable in the city and it's nice when they're spaced out like that because they can be quite beautiful, when they're not too numerous. Though the relationship of gas powered vehicles to the environment is an ongoing concern. I'm always on that edge between appreciating the beauty of something and realizing its origins such as the impact of the manufacturing and use of these devices. I try not to pass judgment. I try simply to be in this moment and when it occurs, then I just let that information inform my being in the world.
My question is : how do you soundwalk?
*
This episode was recorded on February 26, 2023 in Kitchener Ontario.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Anishnabeg Outreach in Kitchener.
(Bell and breath)
I sometimes try to map out, on a piece of blank paper like this, where I think humanity is at with the ecological crisis…
This helps me, among other things, to come to terms with reality.
I decided to share this exercise with you, listeners of the conscient podcast, in case you have similar thoughts.
I’ll start on the left with mitigation, which is the act of reducing the severity, or painfulness, of an activity. In this case, we are mitigating our own self-destruction.
The second part of my map is adaptation which is the modification of our behaviour that makes us more resilient. In other words, adapting to disasters and catastrophe as the new normal. Adapting to new circumstances.
Now the third part of my map is called a tipping point line, which is the point when unstoppable changes take place. A kind of tipping into a point of no return. Some say we’re already there, others that we’re very close. But either way the tipping point is a critical moment and it’s one we need to be aware of.
Next is survival which is about continuing to live in spite of extremely difficult circumstances. It makes me think of the film Thelma and Louise, some of you might know, the very last scene, when their car drives off a cliff. I think humanity is like that, in free fall and that some of us might survive.
The last element of my map is recovery which is a bit more positive, but the recovery happens after the catastrophe and the disasters that are coming. Recovery is that return to a normal and healthy state, where we recover knowledge and skills that are required, or draw upon new knowledge in order to live in harmony with all living beings on earth. It’s ironic and tragic that we actually could do this now but we chose not to.
So these are the five elements on my map: mitigation, adaptation, tipping point line, survival and recovery, but the problem is that I’m wrong. The map is wrong.
The truth is that I don’t know.
There are endless possibilities and dimensions that I’m not yet able to conceive or understand and yet sometimes, somehow, I can feel them.
So I’m done with drawing maps and speculating with thoughts and ideas. Instead, I’m going to listen to the intelligence of my body, to the intelligence of non-human beings around me, to other forms of knowledge and beings that are emerging, and see where that takes me.
Thanks for listening.
Oh and my question is…
What possibilities do you not yet know?
*
This episode is a bit raw. I wrote the text in one draft and then recorded it right away before editing it too much.
I leave it up to the you to determine where their own point of recovery might be: before or after the tipping point line…
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Deep Adaptation Forum.
(bell and breath)
(Sounds of forest in winter with icicles)
Sometimes we just have to stop and listen.
Without passing judgement.
Just listen….
Sometimes we just have to stop and listen
*
Recorded at our cottage in Duhamel, Québec on December 30th, 2022.
Thanks to the forest and the frozen rain for this wonderful soundscape.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to equiterre
(bell)
(humming to urban drones)
This is Dr. Decibel. Your sonic superhero on the unseated ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations otherwise known as… Well, I think you know where I am.
(plane passing by)
You have a problem here people. The low frequencies are excessive : traffic, industry, ventilation. Layers and layers of rumble and I hate rumble.
Rumbleeeee is not something that I enjoy, so I’m going to use my superpowers today to reduce the amount of rumble in your city.
Ruuuuumble… (imitation of rumbling sounds)
And I'm gonna do that with my superpowers.
Now, it's hard to remove low frequencies from an environment where they're everywhere, but I can do it and I'll show you. You should be able to hear it. The tricky thing for me is that it takes a lot of energy to do that. So here we go.
Mmmmmmmm (grunting)
Can you hear a difference?
Let me try again
Mmmmmmmm (grunting)
one more time, with all my might
Rumble. remove yourselves. return. this. environment. to it’s. natural. state.
(fade out of low frequencies)
I don't feel so well. I might have absorbed too many low frequencies…
*
In this episode I improvised a speech by a superhero, dr, decibel, who wants to remove some of the rumble in the city of Vancouver so that other sounds can emerge.
This improvisation was recorded on March 7, 2023 at Stanley Park, Vancouver.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Wolf WIllow Institute for Systems Learning.
(bell and breath)
(sounds of a subway car throughout)
Sometimes we just have to stop and listen.
Without passing judgement.
Just listen….
Sometimes we just have to stop and listen.
*
Recorded on February 2, 2023 at 1.43pm between the Georges-Vanier, Lucien-L’Allier, Bonaventure and Square Victoria stops of the Montreal metro.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Montreal City Mission.
In this episode I invite you to listen to a construction site, unaltered and raw.
How does the sound of construction affect you?
*
This episode was recorded at the corner of Frances St and Salsbury Drive, Vancouver on March 6, 2023 at 10.10am.
Thanks to the construction workers for use of their sounds.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Pancreatic Cancer Canada.
(bell and breath)
where does your shit go?
(toilet flush 1)
where does your shit go?
(toilet flush 2)
where does your shit go?
(toilet flush 3)
where does your shit go?
(toilet flush 4)
where does your shit go?
*
These four toilet flushes were recorded in Peterborough, Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario
Thanks to the sanitary workers around the world who literally clean up our shit.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to Ecology Ottawa.
Transcription of bonus episode
Robin
That's a funny poem.
Claude
What's it about, do you think? What do you remember it being about? Do you recognize it as your own? ?
Robin
I do recognize it, but I don't know where it came from.
Claude
Well, you wrote it just a few weeks ago on January 1st. You talked something about the grimms myths, that deeper into the woods is a reference to that. Does that ring a bell?
Robin
Yeah. Grimm's fairy tales, I think has the line and they went deeper into the forest.
Claude
Right. So that might have been an inspiration.
Robin
Might have. Without even connecting to it.
Claude
Well, what I'll try to do is to illustrate it a bit with sound.
Robin
Oh, neat.
Claude
Yeah with some wind sounds and some of the, the sort of distant voices. It's a beautiful poem. Thank you.
Robin
Oh, good. I’m so pleased. Where did these things come from, eh?
Claude
Yeah, from the poet. It's a bit of haunting poem because it has these illusions to going under water and distant voices
Robin
And being alone
Claude
Maybe that's the way you were feeling on that day.
Robin
Don't ask me
Claude
I mean, poetry is like that, right? It just comes out and you're not sure exactly what you're feeling but the words are there
Robin
And the idea that the surface is up there somewhere and you're under it, you know?
Claude
We've had a lot of conversations over the years about poetry and political poetry. I don't know if you remember, but we did a number of interviews and you read a lot of your poems as well. I
Robin
You've got them, have you?
Claude
Yeah, I have them. You know, so maybe I'll publish some of them if that's okay with you and make them available.
Robin
Yeah.
Claude
You sent us postcards over the years you used to paint on a postcard and then write a little note and send them in the mail and so we have a whole bunch of them at home of your paintings.
Robin
Yeah. I remember. I don't know why I stopped doing that. It's kind of fun to get original postcards.
Claude
And we collected them. Maybe you ran outta landscape..
Robin
Or paint.
Claude
Or paint or postcards…
(bell)
(Deeper Into the Forest (2023) poem by Robin Mathews, narrated by Robin Mathews with sound design from field recordings by me)
Deeper Into the Forest
Lights flash in the skies above.
Voices sound….
As if coming over a hill,
As if connected to bodies
Out of reach,
(perhaps, even, the products of imagination)
Except… you know the voices,
You recognize (or think you recognize)
The lights.
You know the message
Even before it is uttered.
The pathway you walk upon is narrow, rough.
It leads deeper into the forest….
It leads down a steep hillside
To water … to the water's edge
And down into the water … down …
Into it and under it
Where another forest grows
Of a richness you do not expect to see.
You do not expect to walk
Under the branches of that forest -
Branches above your head
Moving
As if guided by unseen currents
Of wind … or of water ….
Overhead … there is something like a surface
You can never reach;
And above that surface there are voices -
Or a simulacrum of voices -
As if coming from over a hill, distant, unclear…
Or as if connected tenuously to bodies
Out of reach.
You know the voices
And you know they cannot shape words
That will break the surface over your head.
Lights flash in the skies above,
Dart through the water.
But words do not form.
The surface above you
(which you cannot break through)
Closes…
And the voices, as if caught in a settling wind,
Diminish … and then cease.
In the darkness that moves toward you
As if it were a living creature
The voices fade away … or seem to fade away…
And you know the surface above your head
Will not break.
The voices beyond the surface
Will grow distant and imperfect
And you, quite alone, will move deeper into the forest
Where sounds occur … almost as if voices
Are reaching for communication,
As if coming from over a hill, distant, unclear,
As if connected tenuously to bodies
Out of reach.
You know the voices
And you know they cannot shape words
that will break the surface over your head.
Lights flash in the skies above,
Dart through the water.
But words do not form.
The surface above you,
Which you cannot break through.
Closes….
In the darkness that moves toward you
As if a living creature
The voices fade away … or seem to fade away,
And you know the surface above your head
Will not break.
The voices beyond the surface
Will grow distant and imperfect
And you, quite alone, will move deeper into the forest.
*
This poem was written on January 1, 2023 by my father in law, the poet, playwright, literary critic, political activist, and educator Robin Mathews at age 91.
The poem relates to ‘Sounding Modernity’ by the way it evokes our ability to remember and feel our environment.
This episode is dedicated to him and his wife Esther Mathews with thanks to the Mathews family.
A short bonus episode is also available with a conversation with Robin about the poem.
Robin is a Canadian icon who is regarded as a Canadian nationalist par excellence. For over 60 years Mathews fought for Canadians of all races and origins-–and for Canadian independence. His contributions to the preservation, development and promotion of Canadian culture are exceptional and unique.
For more information see:
- https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/robin-mathews
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Mathews_(poet)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadianization_movement
- https://abcbookworld.com/writer/mathews-robin/
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre Society
(bell and breath)
(muffled sound of ocean waves)
This recording filters out all high and mid-range frequencies that I captured of ocean waves at Canaveral National Seashore in Florida, on March 23, 2023 around midnight while doing an impromptu soundwalk with colleagues from the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology conference Listenng Pasts - Listening Futures.
Why did I do this?
I invite you to sit with the loss of these upper and mid frequencies as a metaphor for the loss of biodiversity on earth.
I don’t mean to inflict undue pain here
In any way. Rather my point is to invite you to sit with this sound. To sit with the trouble, as Donna Haraway would say.
And I suggest you try to avoid enjoying it as an aesthetic experience or getting used to it as the new normal.
It’s not normal.
Luckily all I have to do to bring back the high frequencies is turn a button and you could experience the rich splendour of this soundscape…
but I’m not going to do that.
What does ecological loss sound like where you live?
*
Thanks to the Atlantic ocean for allowing me to record your waves and to filter your sounds in order to help raise awareness within human communities about the perils of our behaviour to your great waters and all of its living beings.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the National Parks Conservation Association.
(bell)
I got up this morning, or I was awoken rather by the most beautiful sound. It was a snow plow, very gently pushing the snow from the sidewalk. It was a beep and I could hear it, at a distance, and now it's passed.
So I decided to take out my microphone and, and record. It made me think about my friend and colleague Eric La Casa in France, who I've known for a long time, and is a very accomplished sound artist, and who often records quite ordinary sounds spaces - but they're not ordinary at all - especially in the hands of a sound artist like Eric, who has a way of capturing subtle sounds and patterns of sounds and layers of sound that are very meaningful and artistically interesting.
So I was thinking of Eric as this sound came and left, and my microphone was off, but my ears were open, and so I wanted to record what's going on on my street this morning at about 5:00 AM and to see what's out there without passing judgment on what's good or bad but just spending, as Eric often does, recording, soundscapes as they are and allowing us to not only listen to them, but to feel the space and to consider the larger context of what these sounds are telling us, and in the context of this project, sounding modernity, it's important to listen to all sounds, to be open to them constantly, and not necessarily with a lot of effort, but certainly with an openness to hearing what the spaces around us are saying in their own language and to be attentive to that, with or without microphones. In this case, I will record a bit of the street sound.
Thanks for listening.
(sound of window opening and street sound)
*
Thanks to Éric La Casa for his complicity and our long friendship.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is a donation to Harmony House Ottawa.
(Claude Schryer n 2023)
It's March 6, 2023 and I’m at Trout Lake Park in Vancouver. About 2 years ago, I went for a long soundwalk with climate activist, and now politician, Anjali Appadurai, which became episode 23 of season 2 of this podcast.
It was the first time that Anjali did a soundwalk and it was a very powerful moment for me because I've often thought back about what Anjali said that day. It has informed my work as a climate activist and on the role of art in the climate emergency. I encourage you to read, to listen to it. Today, we are going to hear an excerpt from that conversation, near the end, about the issue of privilege which comes back again and again in this sounding modernity season. So here’s Anjali from our soundwalk in 2021….
(Anjali Appadurai in 2021)
- This really meshes with what I was talking about. It circles back to the beginning of the conversation when we were talking about who's the ‘we’ and that privilege is the central question to that. Looking at the issue as this multi-layered thing and looking at it as a spectrum of history. What have the power dynamics been? Say you can take a slice of history, say the last 500 years. What were the advantages? Privilege can go back as far as you wanted to go back, right? And of course it's so nuanced. Not every white guy has this much privilege, but you do have a privilege that goes back hundreds of years and I think one aspect of privilege, one that a lot of people leave out is this economic aspect, right, of class and resources. And that is not often talked about in the climate conversation, but it's a huge piece of it. Because when we talk about the extinction of our species, this extinction doesn't happen overnight. It happens in a spectrum. Who are the last ones standing? Those with the most resources and who are the first ones to go? It's those with the least, the most disenfranchised. So I don't think you can talk about climate without talking about privilege ultimately. And I think it's on each of us to unpack that for ourselves and to bring that into the conversation.
(Claude in 2023)
Back in 2023 again now. I’m going to skip ahead to another excerpt of our conversation from 2021 with Anjali. This time she talks about privilege in a more global context.
(Anjali in 2021)
- I'll just leave with one more thought. There's a lot of framing about how to divide up in an equitable way, the remaining emissions, the sort of carbon budget of the world. So the carbon budget is a framing in and of itself and then there's this other framing that floats around the right to atmospheric space and how, if you look at atmospheric space as a human right, and if you divide up how much we have left in the world, how many people have way more than what would be their fair share, how many people have way less? And that's a deep question of privilege as well. And talking about the global north, I mean, that really plays into our global privilege.
(Claude in 2023)
My question for you is ‘what are the privileges in your life?’
This episode is an excerpt from e23 appadurai – what does a just transition look like?.
Thanks to Anjali for her permission to use our 2021 conversation in this context.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Climate Emergency Unit.
For more information on Anjali's work see : https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjali-appadurai-44645a69/
(Jacek Smolicki)
The ultimate question I'm asking is how can we move away from soundwalk as a kind of framed aesthetic experience or artistic experience and turn it into an existential practice or basically something that is just ingrained in our everyday life and we don't have to frame it anymore. It's just basically part of our way of living.
(Claude Schryer)
Can you give an example of that?
(Jacek Smolicki)
An academic example would be the concepts developed by Steven Feld, acoustemology, where basically listening, a kind of sonic way of being in the world is part of your culture, part of existence. You don't tell yourself, okay, I will listen to the world more carefully from now for another hour, and then I can just return back to my everyday life but you basically just keep listening, right? A kind of sonic sensitivity is one of the most important ways of understanding the world as opposed to being pushed to the background and only lifted up during those kinds of frame situations such as a soundwalk.
(Claude Schryer)
I've been sound walking in an analytical way, so I'll try to make sense of the sounds and where they are and what they're about but there's also an absorption factor where you allow the sounds to speak to you in their own language, right? As opposed to sort of rationally figuring them out. So, if we stop here and listen, what are you hearing?
(Jacek Smolicki)
I hear a coexistence of culture and nature and at the same time a kind of friction between two realms that in fact are just one realm and we kind of try to maybe separate them. We talked a little bit about this positionality and we hear the whistle of the train. From one perspective, we heard some people here referring to that sound as being very calming and reassuring, but if you think of indigenous people, that sound might mean a completely different thing. It's a form of bordering and creating, some kind of a division, of cutting the land and deciding how the land is to be traversed and utilized. So it definitely has a violent connotation if we look from that perspective and if we listen from that perspective. I think that this is some kind of sensitivity that I'm aiming at, also, while teaching, to be able to also take that thought into consideration when we try to value or kind of assign value to different sounds. I think Dylan Robinson is talking about oscillation. I think he calls it to be able to constantly oscillate, to move from one way of understanding sound to another. And basically by doing that it destabilizing certain certainties that characterizes our way of listening and, and by doing that, becoming open to those other understandings and perceptions…
(Claude Schryer)
And asking questions. You know, we were on a panel together a few days ago (Stetson University) when we were asking the question, how can listening help the world that is in crisis? and it's an open-ended question because with listening everybody has their own way of listening, but there are certainly deeper ways of listening that we can learn and unlearn as we work our way through these issues.
(Jacek Smolicki)
Exactly and that we've been talking a lot about hope. We've been talking a lot about how this openness is almost inherently good. I have that feeling. People talk about if we open up our listening and if we invite other perspectives, then we are doing something good. But I think that opening comes with certain responsibilities too, right? I like to think of it in a way that the more open we become to those different perspectives, the more troubled, actually, we should become more concerned rather than content and calm, so there's this disruptive aspect to listening that Hildegard Westerkamp has been writing about, but as we open ourselves, as we include other perspectives, we at the same time disrupted something, right? That we at the same time should be calling ourselves to action and becoming more responsible. So, there's some kind of an obligation I think that should follow that act of opening and deepening our listening.
(Claude Schryer)
I agree. Thank you for this moment. We will listen again.
*
This episode with artist Jacek Smolicki was recorded on Friday March 24th, 2023 at 8.44 am at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
It’s a soundwalk about soundwalking but also about the role of acoustic ecology in the ecological crisis.
After completing our first 5 minute conversation (e113 part 1) we heard a passing train and continued our conversation, which is this episode (part 2).
I encourage listeners to do your own soundwalks. There are many guides and methods. One of my favorites is Soundwalking by Hildegard Westerkamp but also Jacek's new book Soundwalking through space, time and technologies.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Children and Youth Artists' Grief Deck! Artists’ Literacies Institute.
*
Jacek Smolicki (born during martial law in Kraków) is a cross-disciplinary artist, designer, researcher and educator. His work brings temporal, existential and critical dimensions to listening, recording and archiving practices and technologies in diverse contexts.
Besides working with historical archives, media, and heritage, Smolicki develops other modes of sensing, recording, and mediating stories and signals from specific sites, scales, and temporalities. His work is manifested through soundwalks, soundscape compositions, diverse forms of writing, site-responsive performances, experimental para-archives, and audio-visual installations.
He has performed, published, and exhibited internationally (e.g. In-Sonora Madrid, Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, AudioArt Kraków, Ars Electronica, Linz, and Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo). His broad scope of site-responsive artistic and research work includes projects concerned with the soundscapes of the Swedish Arctic Circle, the Canadian Pacific Coast, the world's tallest wooden radio mast in Gliwice, the UFO testimonies from the Archive for the Unexplained in Sweden, the Jewish Ghetto in Kraków, the former sites of the Yugoslav Wars, Madrid's busking culture, and Alfred Nobel's factory complex in Stockholm, among many other places.
In 2017 he completed his PhD in Media and Communications from the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University where he was a member of Living Archives, a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council.
Between 2020-2023 Smolicki pursues an international postdoctorate funded by the Swedish Research Council. Located at Linköping University in Sweden, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and Harvard, USA, his research explores the history and prospects of field recording and soundwalking practices from the perspective of arts, environmental humanities, and philosophy of technology.
In 2022/2023 he is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard.
He is also an associate scholar at the Informatics and Media Hub for Digital Existence at Uppsala University. From January 2020 he is a member of BioMe, a research project that investigates ethical implications of AI technologies on everyday life realms. Smolicki explores sonic capture cultures and the impact of AI technologies on human and other-than-human voices.
He is a co-founder of Walking Festival of Sound, a transdisciplinary and nomadic event exploring the critical and reflective role of walking through and listening to our everyday surroundings.
Since 2008 Smolicki has been working on On-Going Project, a systematic experimentation with various recording techniques and technologies leading to a multifaceted para-archive of contemporary everyday life, culture, and environment. The On-Going Project includes Minuting, a record of public soundscapes performed daily ever since July 2010, for which he received the main prize at the Society for Artistic Research conference in 2022.
For info see https://www.smolicki.com/index.html.
(Claude Schryer)
Jacek, what is soundwalking?
(Jacek Smolicki)
That's a very broad question, but I'll try to answer from two perspectives: my own and from what is kind of more generally considered soundwalking. So, to quote Hildegard Westerkamp, one of the pioneers of that practice, basically, a soundwalk is any kind of excursion into an environment which is motivated by us listening to it. Whether we do it with or without technologies or whether we do it on our own or in a group and the point of soundwalking is to connect or reconnect us with the environment, with how it sounds at the very moment to kind of reaching this sense of immersion in the here and now.
My approach to sound is slightly different. I treat soundscapes as a kind of gateways to not only the momentary - the way that the sound expresses itself in the moment or the sound expresses events that happen at the moment - but also as gateways into the past and into the future.
I like to kind of expand the perspective of soundwalking and use it as a kind of a vehicle to move us between different scales, between different temporalities and between different standpoints or different angles from which we can engage in this act of connecting with the environment. And the way I do it is by encouraging people to listen with whatever listening capacities they have, but also through technologies.
And, as a scholar in media, in communications and within a personal interest in technological developments within sonogram, I'm trying to treat technologies as our companions rather than enemies or something that is alien to our human nature and try to build kind organic synergies between the way we implement technologies in our lives and in our ways of understanding nature around us.
(Claude Schryer)
And all the ethical ramifications of that…
(Jacek Smolicki)
Exactly and of course, ethical ramifications, so I like to call my approach to soundwalking as kind of a kind of transversal listening or hybrid listening where basically listening becomes like a vector that cuts through different layers of the environment in a kind of geological material sense, but also in a temporal sense. So as we stand here for example, we're not standing only here in this particular geography, but we are at the same time kind of benefiting from other geographies that surround us and we can actually hear, for instance, air traffic and through that sound we can connect with very distant geographies in a most direct sense, the geographies from which those planes arrive or are destined to, but we can also think of the plans around us as some of them are not necessarily native to this geography, right? They come from somewhere else. They pertain to different histories of, for instance, colonization and so on. And the same applies to temporalities. The sounds we hear today are here for some reason, right? They have roots in other sonic events that might not be directly accessible to us and this is also why I like to encourage imagination as a kind of natural component to soundwalking and listening and to enable a more speculative approach to how we listen. So instead of really trying to dissect and understand all the sounds around us to also think more imaginatively about what kinds of sounds existed before we stepped into that environment and what kind of sounds might exist in the future also because of our actions at the very moment.
(Claude Schryer)
We're doing a soundwalk now here, mostly talking about sound walking, but it's an experience and I've done it over the years and I encourage my listeners to do it because it's a very rewarding practice and it's one you can do anywhere, anytime. So before we run out of time, what would be a good question for people to ask themselves or to keep in mind as they soundwalk?
(Jacek Smolicki)
I think one important question would be what is my position within the soundscapes that I'm working through and how do I approach the soundscape? What kind of associations dominate my way of experiencing it, for instance, and start basically there and then trying to maybe gradually leave that zone and consider other ways of positioning ourselves in the soundscapes and by doing that, acknowledging the possibilities of other perspectives on the soundscapes and other ways of understanding and coexisting with it.
(Claude Schryer)
In other words, what is my position in listening ?
*
This episode with artist Jacek Smolicki was recorded on Friday March 24th, 2023 at 8.38am at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
It’s a soundwalk about soundwalking but also about the role of acoustic ecology in the ecological crisis.
After completing our 5 minute conversation we heard a passing train and continued our conversation, which is part 2 of this episode.
I encourage listeners to do your own soundwalks. There are many guides and methods. One of my favorites is Soundwalking by Hildegard Westerkamp and also Jacek's book Soundwalking through time, space and technologies.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Children and Youth Artists' Grief Deck! Artists’ Literacies Institute.
*
Jacek Smolicki (born during martial law in Kraków) is a cross-disciplinary artist, designer, researcher and educator. His work brings temporal, existential and critical dimensions to listening, recording and archiving practices and technologies in diverse contexts.
Besides working with historical archives, media, and heritage, Smolicki develops other modes of sensing, recording, and mediating stories and signals from specific sites, scales, and temporalities. His work is manifested through soundwalks, soundscape compositions, diverse forms of writing, site-responsive performances, experimental para-archives, and audio-visual installations.
He has performed, published, and exhibited internationally (e.g. In-Sonora Madrid, Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, AudioArt Kraków, Ars Electronica, Linz, and Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo). His broad scope of site-responsive artistic and research work includes projects concerned with the soundscapes of the Swedish Arctic Circle, the Canadian Pacific Coast, the world's tallest wooden radio mast in Gliwice, the UFO testimonies from the Archive for the Unexplained in Sweden, the Jewish Ghetto in Kraków, the former sites of the Yugoslav Wars, Madrid's busking culture, and Alfred Nobel's factory complex in Stockholm, among many other places.
In 2017 he completed his PhD in Media and Communications from the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University where he was a member of Living Archives, a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council.
Between 2020-2023 Smolicki pursues an international postdoctorate funded by the Swedish Research Council. Located at Linköping University in Sweden, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and Harvard, USA, his research explores the history and prospects of field recording and soundwalking practices from the perspective of arts, environmental humanities, and philosophy of technology.
In 2022/2023 he is a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard.
He is also an associate scholar at the Informatics and Media Hub for Digital Existence at Uppsala University. From January 2020 he is a member of BioMe, a research project that investigates ethical implications of AI technologies on everyday life realms. Smolicki explores sonic capture cultures and the impact of AI technologies on human and other-than-human voices.
He is a co-founder of Walking Festival of Sound, a transdisciplinary and nomadic event exploring the critical and reflective role of walking through and listening to our everyday surroundings.
Since 2008 Smolicki has been working on On-Going Project, a systematic experimentation with various recording techniques and technologies leading to a multifaceted para-archive of contemporary everyday life, culture, and environment. The On-Going Project includes Minuting, a record of public soundscapes performed daily ever since July 2010, for which he received the main prize at the Society for Artistic Research conference in 2022.
For info see https://www.smolicki.com/index.html
(various layered excerpts from my soundscape compositions throughout this episode)
Conclusion 1 : we need to face reality and learn how to unlearn
- Mayer Hillman, e01: ‘We’re doomed. The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.’
- Joan Sullivan, e01 terrified ‘even if we are doomed, and I think we are, I refuse to do nothing…’
- Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective : ‘we need to walk a tightrope between desperate hope and reckless hopelessness, balancing rational and relational rigour.'
Conclusion 2: we need to develop and implement a radical theory of change through the arts
- David Haley, e19 : ‘we now need aesthetics to sensitize us to other ways of life and we need artists to sensitize us to the shape of things to come.
- Jen Rae, e19 : ‘The thing about a preparedness mindset is that you are thinking into the future and so if one of those scenarios happens, you’ve already mentally prepared in some sort of way for it’.
- David Maggs, e109: ’If we only speak with our arts, and do not listen with them first, revelation is replaced by dictation…’
Conclusion 3: we need to transition out of modernity
- Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective : ‘We are part of a much wider metabolism, and this metabolism is sick. There is a lot of shit for us to deal with: personal, collective, historical, systemic. Our fragilities are a big part of it. This shit needs to pass, so that it can be composted into new forms of life, no longer based on the illusion of separability.’
- Eric Beinhocker: e19: ‘Humankind is in a race between two tipping points. The first is when the Earth’s ecosystems and the life they contain tip into irreversible collapse due to climate change. The second is when the fight for climate action tips from being just one of many political concerns to becoming a mass social movement. The existential question is, which tipping point will we hit first?
Conclusion 4 : we need to change the story
- George Monbiot, Out of the Wreckage: ‘Despair is the state we fall into when our imagination fails. When we have no stories that describe the present and guide the future, hope evaporates. Political failure is, in essence, a failure of imagination. Without a new story that is positive and propositional, rather than reactive and oppositional, nothing changes. With such a story everything changes’.
- George Marshall, e01 : ‘we need passionate storytellers to break habitual patterns, discover alternative values and consider new perspectives’.
Conclusion 5 : we need to connect our efforts
- Todd Dufresne, e19: ‘whoever survives these experiences will have a renewed appreciation for nature, for the external world, and for the necessity of collectivism in the face of mass extinction.’
- Asad Rehman, Green Dreamer podcast (e378) : ‘Our goal is to keep our ideas and policies alive for when the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable’.
- George Monbiot, tweet November 13, 2021 : ‘We have no choice but to raise the scale of civil disobedience until we have built the greatest mass movement in history.’
My question to you is ‘how can listening help’?
*
This episode is longer than the usual 5 minutes because that’s how long (8m 30s) it took to tell this story.
This episode is a selection of quotes and findings from my learning and unlearning journey about art and the ecological crisis that I presented during my keynote speech to the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology ‘Listening Pasts - Listening Futures’ conference on March 24, 2023 at the Atlantic Centre for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
I warmly thank the authors I have quoted.
I also thank the Canada Council for the Arts for their support of the Sounding Modernity project and travel funds to attend the conference.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is a donation to Atlantic Center For The Arts.
(bell, breath and occasional balloon sounds)
Me : have you ever had the feeling that you were being observed?
Observer : I’m observing you.
Me: Who are you and what are you observing?
Observer: Ah, well, I’m a part of you and I’m observing the traps that you fall into.
Me: Traps?
Observer : Do you remember the Facing Human Wrongs course you took during the summer of 2022
Me: Ya.
Observer: The one about navigating paradoxes and complexities of social and global change and all those trappings along the way?
Me: Ya, I remember. Easier said than done, though.
Observer: Yup
Me: So. What are you observing?
Observer : Well, what can I say? I notice that you’ve fallen into a trap called ‘exit fixation’ which is where people feel a strong urge to walk out on an existing commitment. For example, when someone realises that the path they are on is full of paradoxes, contradictions, and complicities. Often their first response is to find an immediate exit in hopes of a more fulfilling and/or more innocent alternative or maybe even an ideal community with whom to continue this work.
Me: Like an escape?
Observer: Ya, something like that
Me: BTW where are those balloon sounds coming from?
Observer : Oh, that’s from your imagination
Me: hum. It sounds like …
Observer: (laughter) it could be anything
Me: OK. Anyway, what else do you see?
Observer: Well. I also see a trap called proselytizing which happens when people try to teach and convince others that a particular issue of interest should be the most important thing for everyone.
Me: Wait a second, I do that all the time as a climate activist and with my art and ecology podcast and…
Observer :(interrupting) of course you do and well you should - no worries - but, the danger is that your work could be perceived as an effort to assert ‘moral high ground’ and while this trap may be driven by a genuine passion for an issue, and you certainly are passionate about your work, it has the potential to impose onto others in a way that does not respect their own un/learning journey, and often actually has the opposite effect, pushing people away rather than inviting them in.
Me: ok. Ya, I see. Let me think about that.
Observer: Sure and when this trap occurs, it can be useful to ask, you know, why do I need to teach or convince or inspire others about my learning experience? Where is this perceived need stemming from? And if you really feel you need to bring something to the attention of others, maybe you can ask yourself: What is the most pedagogically responsible and effective thing to do so that your message can land?
Me: ok. What else?
Observer: I also see some virtue signalling and self-righteousness trappings, which is when you assert yourself as having the best, most righteous, most critical, most insightful, most creative, most valid or, the most marginalised perspective.
Observer: This approach tends to be focused on wanting to be seen in a certain way by others or by oneself, and may be motivated by a desire to minimize or deny one’s complicity in harm.
Me: maybe subconsciously, but it’s a catch 22, isn’it ?
Observer: (interrupting) more like a labyrinth or a dilemma that you need to sit with… You remember when Donna Haraway says that we need to ‘stay with the trouble’. Something like that. (silence) ok. one last trap?
Me: Sure
Observer: This is a tough one for you.
Me: hum…
Observer: Hey I need you to be strong here buddy, ok
Me: Ya ya ya I’m listening
Observer:. It’s called spiritual bypassing and it happens when spiritual ideas or practices are used to sidestep, avoid, or escape sitting with analyses of historical and systemic violence and the difficulties of one’s complicity in historic and systemic harm. Do you know what I mean?
Me: Yes I think I do but I don’t think I do this.
Observer: (interrupting) maybe not consciously but spiritual bypassing often manifests itself alongside with cultural appropriation which is something you think about every time you record a soundscape with that microphone of yours, right?
Me: I see what you mean. You’re quite a good observer.
Observer: thank you but right back at you. Think of me as a guardian angel.
Me: Or the devil…
Observer: Whatever (laughter) Now one of the dangers with spiritual bypassing is to project interpretations of ‘oneness’ that erase the realities of historical and systemic inequalities, and interpretations of ‘Enlightenment’ that tend to reinforce exceptionalism and you tend to do that…
Me: Yes, sure, I do, but it’s all part of being an artist..
Observer: (interrupting) True but that does not necessarily make it right, does it? Something to think about...
Me: (interrupting) That’s a lot to think about, to learn and unlearn.
Observer: what are the traps in your life?
*
This episode is longer than the usual 5 minutes ( 7 minutes) because that’s how long it took to tell this story.
This episode comes from learnings I received from taking the Facing Human Wrongs course during the summer of 2022 with support from Azul Carolina Duque.
The sound of balloon came to me while I was deflating a balloon while creating sound for a theatre production called Why Worry About their Future, produced by my colleague Sanita Fejzić, as part of the undercurrents festival here in Ottawa, when I realised that the sound of air being released from a balloon was the right sound to accompany this 2 person play.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the South American Indigenous Network Emergency Fund (second donation).
(sound of bath draining, at first with a strong oscillating rhythm followed by water flowing and silence)
It goes down the drain (again) and into the sewer system to be processed and dumped into the Ottawa river, then it evaporates into the sky and it rains back into our lakes and rivers, bringing with it with many pollutants, and then is pumped into our homes, in our bodies and heated until… (repeated and improvised)
Where does your bathwater go?
*
The rhythm comes from this sound of my bathtub draining, which occurs from the pressure on the tub that creates an oscillation.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is a donation to the Ottawa Riverkeeper.
(bell and breath)
On December 19th, 2022 I read David Maggs’ Art and the Ouija Board? blog, as part of his Metcalf Foundation Fellow on Arts and Society.
I was struck by this section in particular:
- Like a Ouija board or a dowsing wand, art is the capacity to pay attention to the world in unusual ways, a capacity to attend to the world in terms of the aesthetic. To make sense of life through lines, shapes, patterns, forms, colours, textures, rhythms, harmonies, imagery, and more. As Canadian poet Don McKay puts it, “Poetry returns from the business of naming with listening folded inside of it.” If we only speak with our arts, and do not listen with them first, revelation is replaced by dictation, and we can expect our audiences to engage with us as pamphlets or punditry. While not without purpose (no doubt didactic art can inform), information engages at the level of knowledge, whereas transformation requires engagement at the level of being, giving art a value proposition few can rival in this age of unprecedented need…
(3 minute ‘A Soundwalk in the Rain of St. John’s, NFLD’ 1992 by Claude Schryer)
Thank you David. Thank you David for your series of blogs on the relationship between art and transformation. Now David is from Newfoundland, which reminded me of a piece I recorded on July 2nd, 1992, at 2.20pm called A Soundwalk in the Rain of St. John’s, NFLD where I was a radio artist in residence at Sound Symposium 6.
- Of course, an interesting debate is whether the sounds of the environment are music or whether they're noise. And I guess that depends principally on your interest in hearing them as music or not. What we hear now is a combination of traffic sounds and water falling on concrete and grass and falling through trees. And once in a while a drop falls directly on the microphone. It's quite loud and quite noisy, but I find it quite beautiful to listen to. And as I listen more and more, I hear little differences in how the rain sounds as it falls and different kinds of materials, how the traffic changes, how this space, Memorial University, is in fact an acoustic space with a lot of activity, a lot of different kinds of sound activity. And so we'll try to hear it. The rain, of course, is a problem because it really is dominant and it's a powerful natural phenomenon that we basically can't avoid. So we're probably better off listening to it and enjoying it. Of course, that's from my perspective as a person from another part of the country, Montreal, where it probably rains less than here in St. John's but I'm particularly interested in discovering this part of the world, this province, and seeing how it sounds. So rain is a part of your life here and it's quite fascinating. It's quiet though, and, and it's a little gray here….
How can we listen through art?
*
Thanks to David Maggs and the Metcalf Foundation for your important work. David and I were co-founders of the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency (SCALE) and have had many fruitful exchanges over the years. I admire his courage and encourage you to subscribe to his Dispatches (at the bottom of the page)
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is a donation to the First Light St-John’s Friendship Centre.
(Sound of fire)
This is another fireside storytelling episode, this time by a wood stove at our cottage. Thanks for joining me. Pull up a chair…
As I mentioned in episode 106, sometimes, when I get discouraged I like to build a fire, like this, to lift my spirits and to re-energize.
(Sound of fire)
Today’s story is an excerpt from Part 1, Warm Up : Into The Future from Vanessa Andreotti’s Hospicing Modernity book, written by the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective. I first heard this story, in audio form, while driving through a severe snowstorm on January 19th 2022.
(rumble of car)
The road was very slippery. I could hardly see. I probably should have stopped but I was mesmerized by the story and kept driving through the storm, not knowing how my trip or this story might end. I recall that the story inhabited my body and my spirit that day, where it remains. I believe that stories,, including speculative fiction, have that ability to sit with us and guide us through life.
So, this story places you on December 10 2048, one hundred years after the universal declaration of human rights. You are in a 3D virtual reality world conference where people are gathered to decide the direction of education after a period of catastrophic events.
I’ll read you a short excerpt now from the end.
- In the period between 2038 and 2047, we finally accepted that we were part of the problem and needed to engage with our painful reality to avoid being wiped out. The Mars colony tragically failed in 2038, destroying our hopes for life on another planet. In 2039, a massive event made us all suddenly recognize the enormous cost of our mistakes. Finally we could see that we were addicted to arrogance, consumption, and unaccountable autonomy. We realized that we needed mass rehabilitation. We grasped the gravity of the fact that we were only three billion people left on the planet. We understood that we had caused the extinction of 70% of all species - and the extinction of all life in entire regions of the earth - and we were extremely close to causing our own. We recognized that planet Earth is alive and we are part of the metabolism, not the center of the world or a special species. We also worked out that humanity is capable of both horrendous and wonderful things. We started to face our own and others’ humanity in all its complexity and be taught by the human wrongs we had inflicted upon each other, upon other beings, and upon the planet.
- Then we all had to learn quickly, collectively, and without schools or moral manifestos:
- To heal intellectually, emotionally, collectively, economically, ecologically, and politically;
- To abolish colonial and racial violence, inequality, hierarchies of worth and separations;
- To center the earth and decenter our egos, identities, human narratives, and separations;
- To age and die in generative ways;
- To care for, rather than compete with, everything and everyone;
- To plant, repurpose technology, compost, repair, and regenerate everything;
- To prioritize the common good for humans, non humans, and the planet;
- To use words and conversation carefully and wisely, with humility and maturity;
- To own up, sober up, clean up, grow up, show up, and exist differently.
What speculative fiction stories inhabit you?
*
Thanks to the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective for use of the story in this context and to collective member Azul Carolina Duque for her advice.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is a donation to the South American Indigenous Network Emergency Fund
.
(bell and breath)
Today's episode does not have any sound other than my voice and a series of silences. And I think you’ll understand why in a minute.
(Silence)
Writer and broadcaster Jesse Wente, author of Unreconciled, became the first indigenous person to chair the Canada Council for the Arts during the summer of 2020, a few weeks before I retired from the Council.
(Silence)
In an August 6, 2020 interview with the Toronto Star, I was deeply moved by what Jesse said.
- The way I view work now within colonial structures and institutions is harm reduction. Ultimately, the goal for me is to reduce the harm the Canada Council causes, not just to my community but to any community that suffers under colonialism, which is really all of us on some level, and to make it somewhat easier to exist, work, live and participate.
(Silence)
I invite you to think about this statement. In fact, I invite you to explore your feelings about this statement.
(Silence)
Jesse goes on in that same Toronto Star interview to say :
- What does the new world look like? How do we support that? How will we be nimble enough to be comfortable not knowing and yet developing policy around not knowing? With artists and the cultural sector, even though we’ll be among the last to restart, I think we have a fairly significant role to play in helping to define what recovery and restoration look like.
(Silence)
Now I could not find a sound in our modern world to respectfully accompany Jesse’s words and his questions.
(Silence)
The only sound, or absence of sound, so to speak, that made sense to me was silence.
(Silence)
Jesse asks us to think about what the role of the arts sector in helping to define what recovery and restoration look like, and if I may add, what it might sound like.
(Silence)
Jesse also invites us to imagine what a new world might look, or sound like.
(Silence)
My question for you is ‘What do you not know?’
I would like to thank Jesse Wente for his kind permission to use his quotations from this interview in this context. Thanks also to the article authors Karen Fricker and Carly Maga and the Toronto Star and the Canada Council for the Arts.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is a donation to the Anishnawbe Health Foundation.
(bell and breath)
(sound of campfire)
I invite you to slow down, or maybe stop, what you’re doing and listen to a campfire story
We’re sitting in the snow, by the Preston River in Duhamel, Québec. The snow absorbs the sound here but it is also slightly amplified by the cottage and frozen trees. It's raining so you also hear drops of water, snow and ice falling in between the fire crackles.
Sometimes, when I get discouraged about the ecological crisis, I build a campfire like this to lift my spirits and re-energize.
Campfires are also a great place to tell and listen to stories that engage your emotions.
Today’s story is an excerpt from my conversation with climate photographer Joan Sullivan from e96 – the liminal space between what was and what’s next.
The story begins with Joan taking photos in the winter by the St-Lawrence River near Rimouski :
- If you've ever stood on the shores of a winter river that has no ice, it's kind of, you know, gray, right? That particular day, it wasn't gray, but in general, a winter river is just sort of meandering through a gray-ish landscape. It's banal. It's not visually dramatic. And it occurred to me that very day that the worst possible thing is that it becomes normal to see a river without ice. It's becoming normal and it is not normal. So I didn't know what to do. I'm all alone, you know?
- I just take my camera and I tried to take a photo of this orange, you know, metaphorically on Fire River, but my hands were shaking, you know, it was like, click, click, click. And, and, you know, each image was blurred. And, and I just deleted them all. So I started again. I tried to hold the camera, you know, close to my chest, to like, steady it, and my hands were shaking, and it was the strangest thing. It's never happened to me in 30 years of photography that I couldn't stop my hands. And it's suddenly dawned on me that I, my hands, weren’t shaking up because of the cold, but because of an anger, you know, this deep, profound anger about our collective indifference in the face of climate breakdown. Wait, we're just carrying on with our lives as if you know, la la la and nothing, nothing's bad's happening. So there was this sense of rage. I mean, like, honestly, it's surprising how strong it'd be in a violent rage just sort of coming outta me.
- I wanted to scream, and I just, you know, took my camera and just moved it violently, right? Left up, down the, and almost, I suppose, it was almost like I was like drowning in the water. You know, my arms are just doing everything. And I was holding down the shutter the whole time, you know, 20, 30, 40 photos at a time. And I did it over. And oh, I was just, I was just, I was just beside myself. And you know, you at some point, you just stop and you're staring out at the river. And I just felt helpless. I just didn't know what to do…
(River sound continues in background)
Thank you, Joan, for this story and your work as an artist. You can listen to the whole 8 minute story on the conscious podcast e96.
The question for this episode is drawn from Joan’s story :
What can we do about our collective indifference?
The campfire for this episode was recorded on December 30th, 2022 at our cottage in Duhamel, Québec.
The story is an excerpt from my conversation with climate photographer Joan Sullivan from e96 – the liminal space between what was and what’s next. You can hear the entire story here :-)
The YouTube video version of this episode includes footage from our cottage and from Joan’s Je suis fleuve photo series.For more information on her work see https://www.joansullivanphotography.com
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
This recording is a rope holding a boat to the dock at Toronto Harbour on November 26th, 2022.
Sketches by Sabrina Mathews.
(bell and breath)
(loud sound of train passing at close distance)
(once the train has passed, cross fade between quiet city and very quiet mountain forest)
(indigenous artist and curator France Trepanier from conscient podcast é55 trépanier - a very small moment in a much larger space, in French):
- I think that with this cycle of colonialism, and what it has brought, that we are coming to the end of this cycle
- and with hindsight, we will realize that it was a very small moment in a much larger space, and that we are returning to very deep knowledge. What does it mean to live here on this planet?
- What does it mean to have the possibility, but also the responsibility to maintain harmonious relationships?
What does a very small moment in a much larger space sound like?
*
This quote is from indigenous artist and curator France Trepanierfrom conscient podcasté55 trépanier - un petit instant dans un espace beaucoup plus vaste (a very small moment in a much larger space) recorded on June 7, 2021. When I recorded this train I felt great relief once the train had passed, but also a feeling of accountability for the life forms that were masked by the violent rumble of the train.
Thanks to France Trepanier for her permission to use her quote for this episode.
This passing train on Adanac street in Vancouver was recorded on a Zoom H4n Pro audio recorder on October 14th, 2022 at 10am.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
(sound of bell and breath)
On December 5th 2022 we had a heat pump installed in our house in order to reduce our carbon footprint.
What is a heat pump, you ask? Well, basically, It heats and cools a space by transferring thermal energy from the outside using a refrigeration cycle powered by electricity.
It’s a more environmentally friendly source of heating than say methane gas but it still generates carbon through manufacturing and in the production of electricity to run it. It also does not address the fact that the highest carbon polluters in the world are multinational corporations and nation-states. So what power does one individual household have? Quite a bit actually? The least we can do is change what is within our control, in our own homes and living spaces. That does get us off the hook by any means in terms of our accountabilities but it does move us in the right direction and it feels good to take action . .
Now, let’s get back to my story. Our house was heatless on this day and I was working right here in my second floor studio, when I heard a mysterious tapping sound coming from the basement through the air duct.
(fade in sound of distant tapping)
I stopped working and turned on my audio recorder.
As I listened I felt myself being transformed by the sounds of the heat pump, which, of course, are made of materials from the earth, just like we are.
(fade in indoors heat pump drone)
(fade in external heat pump fan).
(heat pump installation technician from Ottawa Home Services):
- This thing is smart. Everything talks to each other. I would just leave it on auto and let it choose what it wants to do.
What does decarbonization sound like to you?
*
This episode was recorded at our home in Ottawa. Thanks to Kevin Taylor and technicians from Ottawa Home Services for their collaboration and to Azul Carolina Duque for her guidance.
While this episode is not directly about art, it has implications in terms of how we listen to the sound of energy around us and how they affect us. In this case, the heat pump is a lesser evil on our environment than a gas furnace but remains an issue. Perhaps our homes are too large to heat and cool for the energy sources available? Maybe we should rethink …. Everything?
My point here is that we need to think about how we heat and cool ourselves but also feel these materials in our bodies and listen to them…
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
(ocean shoreline)
The problem with beauty is that it can distract us from reality.
Sit with me, please, take a moment. Sit and listen…
Over there, about 56 kilometers to the northeast, is the traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, also known as Vancouver.
Listen to the ocean flowing, like the blood and liquids in your body. We are water.
Listen to the ravens passing by and croaking. They are poetry in motion.
Listen to the city rumbling at a distance, but it's hard to hear, isn’t it? Let me help by filtering out high frequencies…
(cutting out of high frequencies)
Ah, there is the drone of the city.
It’s both beautiful and bewildering, isn’t it?
A plane is coming. I’ll bring back the high frequencies.
(bring back high frequencies)
The sky is littered with aircraft around here - seaplanes, jets, helicopters - but they can have a strong aesthetic effect as they inch their way across the sky, merging with the rumble of the city.
(Fading to silence)
One of the problems with modern aesthetic experiences is that we tend to choose the ones that reinforce our own world view and deny the shit around us.
Dr. Vanessa Andreotti suggests that we learn to ‘hold space for the good, the bad, the ugly and the messed up, within and around’
How can we ‘de-modernize’ art?
*
This episode is dedicated to my colleague Hildegard Westerkamp whose voice, from her Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989) composition, was in my head when I wrote the narrative for this episode. I respectfully borrowed her technique of filtering a soundscape as part of a narrative.
The recording was made on a Zoom H4n Pro in one take on Saturday, October 1, 2022 at 8am at the Boat Pass at Winter Cove National Park, Saturna Island, BC.
I thank Dr. Vanessa Andreotti for the use of her words.
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
(Deep breath)
Tension
I was thinking about the tensions in our lives and the art of finding a balance point…
So I went for a sound walk in Vancouver and came upon a piece of fishing line. I brought it home, strung it up and recorded myself plucking it
(sound of fishing line being plucked by hand)
I held the fishing line with my left hand while I gradually reduced the tension with my right hand.
Later that day I went for another soundwalk and came upon a white metal fence. I started to gently tap one of the rods with my middle finger tip, like a heartbeat...
(sound of metal fence rod being tapped)
Finally, as I continued my search for sounds of tension, I came upon another metal fence, this one by the ocean and struck it with a wooden stick while slowly decreasing my walking pace.
(sound of metal fence tapped by a piece of wood)
I invite you to sit with me for a moment and feel these sounds. Try not to think, just feel.
(sound of decreased tension by filtering and slowing down)
How do you feel now ?
(further decrease of tension by filtering and slowing down to silence)
What about now?
(silence)
How do you feel now?
(Deep breath)
*
This episode was recorded on a Zoom H4n Pro audio recorder in Vancouver in September, 2022. I composed it as a pilot episode with the intention of exploring somatic and embodied listening. It’s basically a sketch but I thought it would be a good way to start this 4th season of the conscient podcast because it asks an open ended question that will come back again and again throughout this project : how do you feel now?
I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).
Welcome to episode 0 of season four of the conscient podcast, Sounding Modernity, five-minute sound meditations, published every Sunday from January 1 through December 31, 2023.
My name is Claude Schryer and I'm happy to be back podcasting about art and the ecological crisis after a 10 month break.
I'm talking to you today from the unceded traditional territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation, also known as Ottawa, where my family and I are grateful to live.
Veuillez prendre note qu’une version en français de cet épisode et de toute la saison 4 est disponible sur le canal balado conscient et sur Youtube.
So, what is Sounding Modernity?
In a nutshell, every sunday in 2023 I’m going to publish a 5 minute sound art work comprised pof field recording, soundscapes compositions, narration and silence, lots of silence, en francais and in english, that explores how we listen modernity, topics such acceptance, aesthetics, appropriation, collapse, complicity, despair, entanglement, exploitation, failure, fiction, hope (maybe also hopelessness) humour, kindness, unlistening, reciprocity, resilience, separability, validation, violence, worlding and many more I haven’t thought of yet. Every week will be a new opportunity to create a dialogue for shared learning and unlearning, learning and unlearning, learning, unlearning.
Overall the idea is to ‘stay with the trouble’ as Dr. Donna J. Haraway suggests.
At the end of each episode you’ll be asked to ponder a question - to think about a complex issue - and if you feel comfortable, you can respond on conscient.ca to the question, in any way you wish : with words, images, sounds, video, etc. I will respond to all submissions.
My hope is that we find a way, together, to navigate our way out of modernity’s trappings and to create, step by step, the conditions for other worlds to emerge.
Let me give you an example of an episode. This is the trailer for episode 1, of season 4, which is actually episode 101 of the entire podcast series. It’s called tension and what you’ll hear is the question that i mentioned earlier.
Now I won’t get into some of the references and theoretical underpinnings of this project however I invite you to read a blog I wrote about the project on conscient.ca.
In terms of promotion I’ll be using social media etc which you are welcome to share but I think the best way to promote this kind of project is through word of mouth so If you like what you hear, please tell your friends and colleagues.
You’ll find links to subscribe to the weekly conscient newsletter, conscient podcast in English, au balado conscient en francais, to the conscient YouTube channel and to the conscient podcast Facebook and instagram pages at subscribe.
I want to end this intro by warmly thanking my collaborators and also the Canada Council, Strategic Innovation Fund Seed grant for their support of this project.
You can reach me at claude@conscient.ca
Thanks for listening and I hope to hear from you during the season.
special edition: winter diary revisited (music only) is a 16-minute version of e99 and é100 without any narrative. See e99 for more information on winter diary revisited in English.
édition spéciale : journal d’hiver revisité (version musique) est une version de 16 minutes de e99 et é100 sans aucune narration. Voir é100 pour plus information en francais.
Ceci est la version '40 minutes de composition seulement' de l'épisode 100 journal d'hiver revisité - hommage à r. murray schafer, destiné à ceux qui veulent écouter la composition sans l'introduction de 25 ‘ et les crédits de 3’. Voir l'épisode 100 pour les détails sur cet épisode.
'Que seraient les Prairies sans le vent ? C'est le son principal ici, celui par rapport auquel tout le reste est enregistré. Mais pour l'enregistrer ? Impossible.'
*
journal d'hiver revisité - hommage à r. murray schafer (introduction 25' + composition 40' + crédits 3') est une composition de paysage sonore qui présente des extraits d'un essai non publié que R. Murray Schafer a écrit après un voyage d'enregistrement de 10 jours qu'il a entrepris avec moi dans la campagne manitobaine en février 1997 pour la Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (WDR). Je 'revisite' ce voyage avec une combinaison des écrits de Schafer et des nouveaux paysages sonores hivernaux enregistrés en Ontario et au Québec en 2022 et des paysages sonores d'archives. La version anglaise de cette pièce est l'épisode 99 du balado conscient. Le mixage final a été réalisé dans le cadre d'une résidence à New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) à South River, Ontario en février 2022.
This is the '40-minute composition only' version of episode 99 . See episode 99 for details on winter diary revisited - homage to r. murray schafer. It is intended for those who want to listen to the composition only without the 25' introduction and 3' of credits.
'What would the Prairies be without wind? It’s the keynote sound here, the one against which everything else is registered. But to record it? Impossible.'
*
e99 winter diary revisited - homage to r. murray schafer (25' introduction + 40' composition in 12 parts + 3m credits) is a 68-minute episode that closes season 3 and features a soundscape composition of mine based on an unpublished essay that composer R. Murray Schafer wrote after a 10-day field recording trip that he and I undertook in rural Manitoba in February 1997 to produce a radio program on winter soundscapes for the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (WDR). In this episode, I ‘revisit’ this trip by illustrating Schafer's text with new winter soundscapes recorded in Ontario and Quebec in 2022 as well as archival soundscapes. The final mix was realized and presented as part of a residency at the New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) in South River, Ontario. e99 (b) winter diary revisited - homage to r. murray schafer (composition only) is the 40-minute composition only (without the introduction or credits). The French language version is cons conscient episode 100. I'll be back with season 4 in the spring.
'I came to realize that in season three that I continue to be very deeply moved by the layering of words and soundscapes. There's something about it, when new contexts for listening are created, that I find it very stimulating. It's like the spirits of the sounds are actually speaking directly to me and that I can hear and feel their presence. Now I've always felt this, but I rarely talk about it, because it sounds so, you know, strange or is hard to explain, but there it is. It's something that I just love doing and I'm interested to know if you have any similar experiences, so please write or reach out to me and let me know.'
*
This episode is a reading of my January 2022 #conscientpodcast blog about some of the high and lows of season 3 of this podcast and my interest in layering words and soundscapes that create new contexts for listening, with excerpts from episodes 65, 69, 81, 86, 96 and a preview of e99 Winter Diary Revisited.
Also available as a blog: https://www.conscient.ca/conscient-podcast-blog-january-2022/
'We are missing so many voices that could be the change. Art gives us that opportunity to amplify those voices and I think it's important that now, more than ever, that we amplify those marginalized voices, those racialized voices, those voices that are being directly affected with what's happening around mother earth (CHANTAL CHAGNON). An online map that showcases all the ideas, artists, institutions, projects and programs that are around this idea of climate and art intersecting with each other, and we would launch this resource at the online sharing that would happen in spring of 2022 (KEVIN JESUINO) I think part of the question what it is that art can do in this moment of time in terms of the climate emergency. (MELANIE KLOETZEL). I always say traditional indigenous knowledge, we were the prime example of what sustainability should be. (CHANTAL CHAGNON)'
*
My #conscientpodcast conversation with indigenous artist Chantal Chagnon, multidisciplinary artist Kevin Jesuino and performance maker & educator Dr. Melanie Kloetzel of the climate art web project about decolonization, networking, mapping and growing the climate arts movement.
'We find ourselves in a liminal space right now and liminal space means it's that time between what was and what's next. That's where we are. It's a place of not knowing and unless all of us humans, and not just artists, recognize that we are already in a transition - not just an energy transition - but a cultural, a democratic, a social transition. There is an end. We will come out of this. No one knows how, but we will pass through. It's inevitable and what waits on the other side is up to us to design.'
*
My #conscientpodcast conversation with photographer and writer Joan Sullivan whose work is focused exclusively on climate change and the energy transition. We spoke about her roots in science, her work as a columnist for Artists and Climate Change, how we are the climate emergency and liminal space between what was and what's next.
'Yes, we agree that anti-racism is important. Yes we agree that anti oppression is important. Yes, we agree that equity is important. Yes, we agree that sovereignty is important for indigenous peoples in particular and that decolonization is really important but to us, these are tools to get toward a new society, to transform the world in which we live. If I can refer to the panel that we had the other day that led off this conference, to get out of the social historical economic trap that we're currently in, that forces us to compete with each other, that forces us, as Peru ?? was saying, to ignore the land and what the land is trying to say to us, that forces us to treat certain arts as better than others, without truly understanding the artistic standards that some arts products are created to turn. To turn over the Massey Commission and say, you know what, that is the trap that we're also in. These historical institutions that have come out since the 1950s that basically are struggling with relevance this day and age.' (Charles C. Smith)
'We hear conversations around this idea of back to normal and I beg to question: was it ever normal before? What's the better? Was it best before? We wanted to have a conversation around the state of how artists and arts organizations emerging out of a pandemic and also what it means in a time of planetary renewal, given also the racial reckoning about renewal that was going on, we felt it that there were assumptions being made about how we would begin again and so we wanted to make sure that we had our different panels and focus around this idea of starting back, but also addressing what was happening to artists and to organizations prior to the pandemic that led to some of the further marginalization of IBPOC artists and the further under sourcing of IBPOC artists so how do we begin to address that so that can be shifted or changed emerging out of the pandemic.' (Kevin A. Ormsby)
*
My #conscientpodcast conversation with Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) Executive Director Charles C. Smith and Program Manager Kevin A. Ormsby on Dec 10, 2021 about the Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Fall 2021 | Art in the Time of Healing: The Importance of IBPOC Arts in Planetary Renewal. 1 of 6 episodes recorded at this event.
'We have a national data set that's about to emerge and that's a really powerful thing. If we can gather data from across the country from arts and culture organizations across the country and build a data set over time, then we'll actually be able to understand what kind of programming we need for environmental sustainability in the arts and culture sector. We can actually do that based on the demonstrated needs of the community.'
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My #conscientpodcast conversation with scientist and manager of the Creative Green Tools Adaptation project, Devon Hardy on Dec 10, 2021, at a CPAMO panel about art and climate and walking the back alleys in Montreal on December 16, where Devon talks about the importance of measurement tools for the arts sector in the climate emergency.
'The economic models and the way that policy is guided in Canada and around the world at the moment assumes that culture will not change. It assumes that we're self interested individuals, which science is now showing us that that is not the case. We're actually very collaborative and that are ancient cultures and traditional cultures around the world already knew this but we're assuming we're continuing to plan the economy under these old assumptions, that are just no longer useful and no longer actually accurate. What needs to happen now is a massive culture change and what's interesting in from the lessons world war II is that we know that this has been done in the past and very rapidly. While we sometimes fall into cynicism and think that things can't change, in the face of this particular issue, these lessons, I think are very important to learn from and I think can be applied to national cultural policy.'
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My #conscientpodcast conversation with climate emergency organizer Anthony Garoufalis-Auger on Dec 10, 2021, at a CPAMO panel about art and climate where Anthony talked about our need for massive culture change and how lessons from the past can inform national cultural policy.
'The environment and sustainability is an integral, if not the founding process, of how we view the world: interconnectedness, responsibility as human beings, to be caretakers of the earth, to be forward thinkers about what we do now will affect seven generations later and that has always been our understanding since we can remember. It's written into our wampum belt designs and our pottery shards and all of those things that are encoded knowledge, is what I am using today and what my family has used to understand our responsibility.'
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My #conscientpodcast conversation with indigenous multidisciplinary artist Santee Smith, artistic director of Kaha:wi Dance Theatre, on Dec 10, 2021 in Tkaronto at a CPAMO panel about art and climate where Santee talks her new post-apocalyptic work in progress ‘SKéN:NEN’, ecological calendars, permaculture and more.
'I look for stories that are not there just to educate people. If I tell a really good story and it happens to be about the global crisis, about global warming and about the effects on community, if I get your heart, then you're gonna go forward and look at other things, you're gonna start doing some research. It's like, I wanna look at and so to me, I always tell people, tell a really good story and get them on your side, and then they'll go and do their own work. As opposed to like, these are the seven things that are happening in the world right now, due to global warming. When people feel that they, they immediately start going to their shopping list or the things that they're gonna do, or if they feel they're being lectured but if you tell them a really good story, they're gonna be engaged in the story they're gonna, their heart's gonna be in, they'll have a nice little cry or they'll get angry and they'll, they'll walk outta that theatre and they will feel empowered to do something or maybe empowered to read something or to reach out to an MP and say, I gotta do something.'
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My #conscientpodcast conversation with indigenous playwright, actor & director Keith Barker, artistic director of Native Earth Performing Arts on Dec 8, 2021 in Tkaronto about indigenous theatre & storytelling including a reading of his 'APOLOGY, MY' 5 minute play for the 2021 Climate Change Theatre Action with voice actors Riel Schryer and Sabrina Mathews. Also with excerpts from e92 santee smith and e44 bilodeau.
'I would first and foremost love to see artists really lean into experimentation with their creative practices and to share what comes out of those practices - the learning and experimentation - with each other. I think that's something that even as a community of art makers we can get better at, but what that then also does is it starts to socialize learning about what art as a system of knowledge production is and this is how we start to disentangle ourselves from the ways that we're trying to solve this challenge, or the ways that we're even thinking about what is happening right now as a problem to fix, is maybe part of the dilemma to begin with and that art, as a way of knowing, is so critical.'
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This episode combines a conversation with dance artist, choreographer, director and embodiment facilitator Shannon Litzenberger on December 8, 2021 in Toronto with Shannon reading her 'State of Emergence: Why We Need Artists Right Now' essay at the Gathering Divergence Multi-Arts Festival & Conference Fall 2021 | Art in the Time of Healing: The Importance of IBPOC Arts in Planetary Renewal organized by Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) led by executive director Charles Smith and artistic programmer Kevin Ormsby.
This is the first of 6 episodes recorded at the Gathering Divergence.
Photo of Shannon Litzenberger by Aria Evans.
Today’s episode features quotes from Artists must confront the climate crisis – we must write as if these are the last days by Nigerian novelist and poet Ben Okri from the November 12, 2021 edition of The Guardian newspaper. Here is the first quote from Ben Okri’s article: ‘Here we are on the edges of the biggest crisis that has ever faced us. We need a new philosophy for these times, for this near-terminal moment in the history of the human. It is out of this I want to propose an existential creativity.’ This episode includes an excerpt from episode 87 kendra fanconi.
Note: Cover art is a collection of flowers and fruits by Jeannine Schryer of Ottawa.
'I don't know how many people in Canada who would immediately understand what radical listening is, because it would occur to me that the listener would have to be sensitized beforehand in order to listen radically, so that the radical listening is a secondary function of becoming radicalized in a political matter or political level. Radical listening is at one level, isn't it, one listens in repose. One listens in usually undefended state of mind and so radical listening would be post action listening or preparatory to action.'
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My #conscientpodcast conversation with my father-in-law, the poet and educator Robin Mathews, which combines a 2021 recording about radical listening with a 2004 recording about political poetry and the role of the artist on society, including Robin reading 3 of his poems: at the Café Lenin, The Lady From Iraq and Unmarked Graves.
'We are all artists of the Anthropocene. We inherently are because this is the world that we're living in right now. There's no other world. We were down earlier at Robert's Creek (BC) and it's a salmon bearing stream. I think of it like we're artists in the Anthropocene, like fish would be in the ocean: the water is all around us and the Anthropocene is all around us. I think it may be what Ben Okri is tasking us with is: can you describe the water? It's all we know, but we need to be able to look from this moment now into the future and maybe that's the job of artists. We're the visionaries, we can see the future and we can envision it in different ways. I think he speaks to that too at the end of the article about saying part of why we need to talk about the times we're in now is in relationship to a future, whatever that future looks like. And I do spend a lot of time trying to negotiate my belief in the future.'
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My 2nd #conscientpodcast conversation with theatre artist and art + climate activist Kendra Fanconi in Robert’s Creek, BC about the ‘Artists Brigade’, Ben Okri, eco-restoration, eco-grief, eco-anxiety & reauthoring the world, with excerpts from e43 haley, e30 maggs & é37 lebeau.
'I'm interested in what we can do to both mitigate the climate emergency and adapt to it but there's another level which is revisioning the world and maybe that's the one that's most interesting, because unfortunately it's going to be rough for the foreseeable future on earth, but life will go on, with or without humans. I think humans have a place in it, but then we have to figure out how we're going to live with much, much less resources and all the damage that's been done and have a positive view of that. So rethinking and reauthoring the world. David Maggs wrote a really interesting paper about that. There was a paper recently by a Nigerian writer, Ben Okri. I'll put the link in the chat. He talked about how artists must confront the climate crisis and that we must write as if these are our last days. That's where I'm at.'
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My #conscientpodcast conversation with Robin Sokoloski, Janis Monture and their students as part of a class in Art Policy, Equity and Activism at Centennial College in Toronto. This episode includes quotes from e40 frasz, e82 washable paint, e05 carruthers, e73 judith marcuse – finding the energy to keep moving and e85 tracey friesen – narratives of resilience for a post carbon world.
'What's starting to interest me is stories of resilience for a post carbon world. What are we going to need for our emotional well-being? It's going to be a different world not long from now. If we do this, and we must do this, this transition has to happen and there's going to be a sense of loss and sacrifice and challenge, not just with what's happening externally from a climate point of view, but in how we're going to have to make changes to our lives and reorient our energies in terms of our advocacy. I feel like there's an opportunity for artists - I'm more connected to the film and television sector and the documentary community - throughout the system, to be able to provide realistic and yet reassuring narratives about what the upside of all this might be.'
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My #conscientpodcast conversation with media producer and cultural impact leader Tracey Friesen of Vancouver about increasing the power of media to affect social change, her book and organization Story Money Impact, and the good work of Good Pitch. Including quotes from e26 klein and e54 garrett.
'Museums have been very good at normalizing social values and so when you have this shift and the government is seeing it, we have to change behavior, the museum can create that space where people can rethink some of their conventional thinking about consuming, for example and there's all kinds of ways, like we were saying earlier, of integrating this kind of knowledge, not in a lecturing way. I think that's the key word, is we can be cheeky. This is a social activity. Nobody is forcing anyone to come to the museum and so when people come, they want to be intrigued, surprised and they love it. If you look at exit surveys, they love to come out thinking it's like: I had no idea that I can make this kind of change and have this kind of impact.'
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My conversation with Viviane Gosselin, Director of Collections & Exhibitions, Curator of Contemporary Culture and Mauro Vescera, Chief Executive Officer of the Museum of Vancouver (MOV) about greening their operations and addressing the climate emergency and issues of climate justice through their exhibitions.
‘This episode lasts 59 seconds. I want to share a November 13th, 2021, tweet by British writer and climate activist George Monbiot: 'Now we have no choice but to raise the scale of civil disobedience until we have built the greatest mass movement in history. We do not consent to the destruction of our life support systems’.’
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e83 is my reading of a November 13th, 2021, tweet by British writer and climate activist George Monbiot about ‘raising the scale of civil disobedience until we have built the greatest mass movement in history’. I agree and thank George.
e82 is an unedited, 20-minute soundscape recording, without narration, of a climate emergency rally and march on Friday, November 12, 2021, in Vancouver and an incident with police. The recording includes songs, speeches and chants about climate action and social justice.
'Art is a practice of expanding consciousness, which gives us a tremendous opportunity to explore and to embody possibility and to engage with the earth as it continues to change and with each other.'
- Rebecca Mwase, excerpt from e10 mwase – expanding consciousness (from an interview at Creative Climate Leadership USA, March, 2020)
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e81 inspiration are excerpts from all my #conscientpodcast conversations up to today where the tone and emotion in the voice of each person inspires and uplifts me.
é81 inspiration sont des extraits de toutes mes conversations #baladoconscient jusqu’à date où le ton et l'émotion dans la voix de la personne m'inspirent et m’encouragent profondément.
'Nous, les soussignés, déclarons que les peuples, leurs cultures et le patrimoine naturel et culturel de la Terre sont profondément menacés par le changement climatique causé par les êtres humains et par l'inaction climatique qui aggrave la crise climatique en cours, tout en réaffirmant l'immense pouvoir des arts, de la culture et du patrimoine pour inspirer l'action climatique et permettre une transition juste vers un avenir à faible émission de carbone et résilient face aux changements climatique.'
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é80 est ma lecture #baladoconscient du manifeste 'Accélérer l'action climatique grâce au pouvoir des arts, de la culture et du patrimoine’ élaboré par le Climate Heritage Network pour résumer les messages culturels clés de la COP26 et activer le secteur des arts, de la culture et du patrimoine. Vous trouverez plus d'informations sur les origines et les co-auteurs du manifeste sur cultureatcop.com.
'We, the undersigned, declare that people, their cultures, and the natural and cultural heritage of the earth are profoundly at risk from human-caused climate change and the climate inaction that is deepening the unfolding climate crisis even while we reaffirm the immense power of arts, culture, and heritage to inspire climate action and enable a just transition to low carbon, climate resilient futures.'
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e79 is my #conscientpodcast reading of the ‘Accelerating Climate Action through the Power of Arts, Culture and Heritage’ manifesto developed by the Climate Heritage Network to summarize key cultural messages for COP26 and activate the arts, culture and heritage sector. You can find more information on the origins and the co-authors of the manifesto at cultureatcop.com.
'I think art needs to get on the street, because raising awareness in a gallery is really speaking to the choir. I'll leave raising awareness, because we both agree that the time for that has passed, but I think art needs to revert back to artisan and crafts, in the sense that imagination can lead to crafting things that we will actually need for survival. I think that - and again, this is my radical rant - I think that one of the reasons why we're seeing these unprecedented amounts of anxiety and even this new term 'climate anxiety' that we have, which is almost probably about to be defined as a kind of mental health condition, is because we are so profoundly disconnected from our own means of existence.'
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e78 is my #conscientpodcast conversation with acoustic ecology colleague Dr. Milena Droumeva on November 3, 2021 in Vancouver about multiple points of ‘listening’, thoughts about radicality, that imagination can lead to crafting things that we will actually need for survival and how to address profound disconnections.
'I think the same model (climate emergency coalitions) could and should be used by SCALE to have these arts and culture groups come together, identify a shared vision and a shared set of actions that together constitute a true climate emergency agenda for the arts and culture sector. That's step one and then agreement to jointly campaign all with your individual constituencies on that declaration on that list of actions so that if you are the federal minister of culture or provincial minister of culture, you keep hearing over and over again from all of these different groups that are part of your portfolio. This is what we want.'
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This is my second #conscientpodcast conversation with seth klein (see e26 klein) where we get an update on the Climate Emergency Unit and a suggestion on how the #arts and #culture sector can identify a shared vision and set of actions that constitute a true climate emergency agenda and how to create a joint campaign. This episode includes an excerpt from e41 rae, with Jen Rae, in response to e26 klein.
'I wrote an article called Seeding a Green New Theatre in Canada that is drawing on a lot of principles of conversations happening around a green new deal in the United States and elsewhere, as well as other kinds of social justice movements happening on both sides of the border and thinking through what's the kind of theatre and what are the plays that already existed in Canadian theatre history and what are more of the kinds of stories that we need to be telling and sharing and how to think about the transition that we're facing socially from a justice perspective that really advances and brings forward the impact of the existing system by racialized communities, low income communities, the people who work within the energy or extractive development sector. There are a number of really quite remarkable pieces of work, many of which hadn't been produced a whole lot of times that addressed those issues.'
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e76 kim richards - – seeding a green new theatre in canada is my #conscientpodcast conversation with Dr. Kim Richards, a post-doctoral fellow in public energy humanities at the University of Alberta, about the role of theatre in the climate emergency during a soundwalk around Trout Lake Park in Vancouver on Monday, November 1, 2021. With excerpts from e44 bilodeau, e59 pearl and e36 fanconi.
'To me, radical listening is about stepping out of our comfort zone when we listen. Radical listening about thinking beyond what we think we know when we listen. Radical listening is about recognizing our biases, both conscious and unconscious. It’s about listening actively and sincerely. Ultimately, it’s about getting to the truth and facing reality.'
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e75 radical listening as climate action is my presentation and Q&A period at the FKL’s Unheard Landscapes Symposium on October 29, 2021 about ‘music as acoustic ecology’ and ‘radicality’ in the context of listening and the climate emergency, with excerpts from e54 mahtani, é55 trépanier and e22 westerkamp
'I’ve come to realize that the main barrier to my re-education, and I might not be the only one in this situation, is… ‘me’. My personality, my baggage and that the solution, simply, is to let it go. To release it.'
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e74 letting go – laisser aller was recorded on Tuesday, October 26, 2021, at 6.40am. It’s a bilingual monologue about how I’ve come to realize that the main barrier to my re-education is… ‘me’, and that the solution, simply, is to let it go… A soundwalk around the neighbourhood follows.
'I feel really at the base of myself that creating anything, art, sofas, whatever it is, allows us to give of ourselves to something that may not be lasting but in the moment, that act of creation can engender hope, can engender a sense of autonomy, a sense of possibility and we can't despair right now, we're at a tipping point, as everyone is saying and the question for me is how do we find the energy alone and collectively to keep moving in this urgency that we're all feeling without drowning in despair. I think art has an essential role to play in that agenda.'
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e73 judith marcuse – finding the energy to keep moving is my conversation with arts for social change activist and dance artist Judith Marcuse on October 24, 2021 about ‘radical listening’ and her work as executive director and founder of the International Centre of Art for Social Change (ICASC) and the upcoming Arts for Social Change Network
'It’s 2.29am on Sunday October 17th, 2021. I can hear the rumble of the city in the background, but the rain has stopped for a few minutes. Yesterday, I walked by the People’s Coop Bookstore on Commercial Avenue in Vancouver and thought I saw a new book by Richard Wagamese in the corner of my eye. How could this be? The title was What Comes From Spirit. My heart was pounding. Could this be a new book from my favorite author, who tragically passed away in 2017?'
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e72 richard wagamese’s what comes from spirit is my monologue about my excitement when I found a copy of a posthumous book, What Comes From Spirit, by my favorite writer, Richard Wagamese, at the People’s Coop Bookstore in Vancouver and my reflections on Drew Hayden Taylor’s touching introduction.
'The Green Sessions was invented because this small group of people got together and decided we wanted to do something that created impact. I'm really interested in new and more opportunities for us to collaborate as a sector and putting people into focus and a place of knowledge on this agenda'
- Emma Stenning
e71 green sessions debrief are highlights from the 2021 Green Sessions organizing committee : Philippa Domville, Sandy Crawley, Robyn Stevan and Liisa Repo-Martell of Artists for Real Climate Action, Emma Stenning and Rohan Kulkarni of Soulpepper Theatre and myself from SCALE. We talked about the Canadian arts sector can step forward with impact to address the climate emergency.
'We make choices by not making choices And we live with unbearable consequences We hear alarm bells, but do not respond We cling to uncertainty like a sad song We act as if unaware and innocent We are cognitively dissonant' …
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e70 one step at a time is a monologue that I recorded on September 28th, 2021, in one take, while walking in the forest in Duhamel Québec where I talk recite a poem that I wrote earlier that day about making choices and moving forward one step at a time in ‘radical listening’ mode, which is the theme of season 3 of #conscientpodcast.
'It's 4 56 am on Tuesday, rather than Wednesday, September 29th. I'm about to do something I've never done before, a soundwalk in the dark. I wanted to share with you this experience of walking in the dark and see what happens.'
e69 soundwalk in the dark is a monologue that I recorded on September 29th, 2021, from 4.56am to 5.25am, in one take, while walking around our cottage in Duhamel Québec in the dark. I talk about soundwalking, listening, reconciliation, John Cage, dancing, etc., including quotes from #conscientpodcast season 2: ‘do not listen to this episode’ and e22 westerkamp. Note: I miscalculated the time that the sun would rise and ended up walking in the dark for the entire time !
'I think the transformation of knowledge is really important. What we can do from our generation to the next is try and help prepare them for the impacts of climate change, but it doesn't have to be all doom and gloom…'
- andrew davies
e68 andrew davies and no. 9 gardens is a #conscientpodcast conversation that I recorded on September 26th 2021, in one take, while in a yurt with Andrew Davies, Director of No 9 Gardens, near Kingston, Ontario. We talked about the art and environment, reconciliation, yurts, education, passing on knowledge and the joys of farming and art making.
'I've been thinking about decolonization and reconciliation and other issues in our relations with indigenous communities. I was reading the 'wanna be an ally' poem the other day that really affected me positively but also emotionally and I wanted to read it to you.'
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e67 wanna be an ally is a reading of the poem ‘wanna be an ally’ from Towards Braiding by Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti written in collaboration with Sharon Stein and published by the Musagetes Foundation. Used with authors’ permission.
'I’m interested in doing episodes that are in the moment, unedited moments of thinking out loud and not thinking too much because the rest of my body is working at soaking in this space.'
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e66 stillness is a monologue that I recorded on September 14th, 2021, in one take, while sitting still in a kayak in a shallow bay on the Preston River, in Duhamel Québec where I talk about stillness, not-thinking and what I am hearing and feeling at that moment. This recording includes quotes from an unpublished episode of simplesoundscapes from 2016 and #conscientpodcast e19 reality.
'What I'm looking for, ultimately, is an anchoring point: where are we at and what can we do to ensure the continuation of life?'
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e65 drifting into season 3 is a monologue that I recorded on September 13th 2021, in one take, while drifting in a kayak on the Preston River, Duhamel Québec, that explains what season 3 of the #conscientpodcast (on the theme of ‘radical listening’) is about, including quotes from e21 (Dr Todd Dufresne), e23 (Anjali Appadurai) and a zen teaching.
'Welcome back to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. We’re going to conclude our case study today of the 2nd season of the conscient podcast.'
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episode 64 is part 2 of a bilingual speculative fiction radio play set in an undergraduate university history seminar course about the arts scene in 2021 in Canada that launches season 3 of the #conscientpodcast.
L'épisode 64 a case study (partie 2) est une création radiophonique spéculative, bilingue, en deux parties qui se déroule dans le cadre d'un cours de séminaire universitaire de premier cycle sur la scène artistique en 2021 au Canada et qui lance la saison 3 du #baladoconscient.
'Welcome to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. We’re going to do a case study today of the second season of the conscient podcast.'
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episode 63 is part 1 of a bilingual speculative fiction radio play set in an undergraduate university history seminar course about the arts scene in 2021 in Canada that launches season 3 of the #conscientpodcast.
L'épisode 63 (partie 1) est une création radiophonique spéculative bilingue qui se déroule dans le cadre d'un cours de séminaire universitaire de premier cycle sur la scène artistique en 2021 au Canada et qui lance la saison 3 du #baladoconscient.
'I think capitalism is over, but the problem is we have nothing to replace it with. Here's when we need artists, and others, to tell us what kind of vision they have for a future that is different than that: a future of play and meaningful work would be one future that I think is not just utopic, but very possible. '
- dr. todd dufresne
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41, 1m excerpts from season 2 of #conscientpodcast
41 extraits de 1m de la saison 2 de #baladoconscient
'We need greater capacity within the art sector for research to action : tools, understanding, training and connections to truly impact policy. '
- robin sokoloski
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My #conscientpodcast conversation with arts leader Robin Sokoloski about cultural research, arts policy, climate emergency, community-engaged arts, creative solution making and how to create equitable and inclusive organizational structures
'L'art peut aider les humains à évoluer. Cette action a toujours été là. Il suffit de la relancer encore et encore et encore.'
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Ma conversation #baladoconscient avec la chercheure en pratique des arts, Dr. Danielle Boutet sur la conscience écologique, la réalité, l’activisme, le deuil, l’art comme mode de vie, l’innovation et la spiritualité
'SCALE (Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency) is a national round table for the arts and culture sector to mobilize around the climate emergency. A few months ago, you and I, and a few others were all having the same realization that while there was a lot of important work and projects happening at the intersection of arts and sustainability in Canada, there lacked some kind of structure to bring this work together, to align activities, to develop a national strategy, and to deeply, deeply question the role of arts and culture in the climate emergency and activate the leadership of the sector in terms of the mobilization that needs to happen in wider society. SCALE is really trying to become that gathering place that will engender that high level collaboration, which hopefully will create those positive tipping points.'
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My #conscientpodcast conversation with arts and climate organiser Judi Pearl about theatre, climate emergency, collaboration, arts leadership, intersection of arts and sustainability and the newly formed Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency (SCALE)
'The arts give us a shared sense of this moment and its gravity, but also what's possible and how quickly that tipping point could be reached.'
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My #conscientpodcast conversation with Stephen Huddart about dematerialization, nature, culture, capital, supporting grassroots activity, innovation and how the arts can show us what is possible
'Ouvrir des consciences, le rêve dans l'esprit des autres et insuffler des graines de possibles d'un avenir.'
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Ma conversation #baladoconscient avec l’artiste Annie Roy sur l’art socialement engagé, le deuil, les politiques culturelles, l’apport de l’art, ouvrir des consciences et la place de l'art dans nos vies
'Il y a des exemples dans l'histoire quand l’humanité s’est rassemblée pour surmonter des injustices. Il faut s'inspirer de ça.'
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Ma conversation #baladoconscient avec l’activiste Anthony Garoufalis-Auger sur les sacrifices à venir, les stratégies politiques, les coalitions, le point de vue des jeunes et le rôle de l’art et de la culture dans l’urgence climatique
We do have a future. It may look very different and sometimes our inability to see that future is confused for there not being one.
We are facing a crisis of failure of imagination and one of the things that artistic practice does is to nurture imagination. It’s our job.
We need to find ways to encourage people to listen and savour a deeper relationship with our natural world.
We put bounds on what feels like reality and the arts helps us push against that limited set of beliefs: we can imagine the future we want.
Comment peut-on se raconter la planète, ou se raconter notre expérience terrestre, quand on partage un lieu?
My book 'We All Go Back to the Land' explores our Original Agreement to nurture, protect, honour and respect the Earth Mother and work collectively towards healing her.
The arts are a place to ask questions, play out politics, negotiate ideas and create space for people to think through issues.
Reality is deeply subjective but also socially constructed : as a filmmaker I try to explore reality to untangle and figure out in what ways are we being deluded.
I think of the arts as planting a seed and saying ‘here's a problem: let's think about it together and explore avenues.’
Climate change is a cultural issue, not a scientific issue : we need to ask deep questions and listen.
Humanity is adaptable and resilient and when forced to, can make surprisingly monumental changes when the threat becomes real.
A preparedness mindset means that you are thinking into the future and if one of those scenarios happens, you've already mentally prepared.
The arts help people wake up to the need for change AND undergo the transformation process once woken
The role of artists is fundamental and we need their perspectives and ideas about how change occurs.
Art is a tributary coming off from ritual that is still consensually allowed in this reality when the direct communication with nature was silenced.
Il faut passer du modèle ‘Take Make Waste’ à ‘Care Dare Share’ et de créer de l'art régénératif et nourrissant.
We want to do carbon positive work and for our artwork to be involved with ecological restoration.
Artists are interested in understanding how to adapt their practice to the climate crisis but they need help, like we all do.
Quand des chiffres et des courbes statistiques sur le climat sont transposés, joués, et interprétés en musique, ça nous emmène ailleurs.
We need to tell climate stories about what we're fighting for, not what we're fighting against.
Artists are all reporters, somehow journalists, who translate our message into our art.
The bodhisattva path is not simply personal awakening but to awaken in order to be a service to everyone.
Face à la crise écologique, il faut laisser l'énergie créatrice libre, mais pas inconsciente.
The work of artists during World War II was not dystopian (though horrific), the tone was rallying us.
There's something generative and supportive about feeling a sense of purpose in a time of collapse.
Recognition of the good, possible and beautiful is one of the roles that artists can play.
The ecological crisis is a symptom of our rift from nature and our urge to dominate others which artists can touch.
We need to allow for time to pass without actions or solutions and to experience it through listening and meditation
Capitalism is over: we need artists, and others, to tell us what kind of vision they have for a different future
I now see, and more importantly, I now feel in my bones, ‘the state of things as they actually exist’, without social filters or unsustainable stories blocking the way.
De plus en plus, je vois et, surtout, je ressens maintenant dans mes os « l’état des choses telles qu’elles existent réellement », sans filtres sociaux ou histoires sur des activités non durables pour me bloquer le chemin vers cette compréhension ressentie.
excerpts from conscient: art & environment podcast episodes 8 to 17 in the Creative Climate Leadership USA Series
my conversation with change agent, disruptor, artist, counselor, sparkplug and community architect Em Piro on art and sustainability (episode 10 of 10 in CCL USA Series)
my conversation with writer, artist, and climate resilience planner Lauren de la Parra about art, environment and climate action (episode 9 of 10 in CCL USA Series)
my conversation with municipal arts funder and museums educator Matthew Chasansky about art, climate change and government support (episode 8 of 10 in CCL USA Series)
my conversation with ecoarts activist, art-science connector and founding director of EcoArts Connections (EAC), Marda Kirn about art, scientists and sustainablists (episode 7 of 10 in CCL USA Series)
my conversation with artist, filmmaker and educator Andrew Freiband about art as research (episode 6 of 10 in CCL USA Series)
my conversation with scientist Diana Liverman about art, science and climate change (episode 5 of 10 in CCL USA Series)
my conversation with multidisciplinary and circus artist Eliana Dunlap circus arts and climate change (episode 4 of 10 in CCL USA Series)
my conversation with theatre and performance artist, consultant, and cultural organizer Rebecca Mwase on expanding consciousness (episode 3 of 10 in CCL USA Series)
my conversation with artist and educator Ellen McMahon on covid-19, art and science (episode 2 of 10 in CCL USA Series)
my conversation with creative strategist, coach and facilitator Sholeh Johnston about creative climate leadership (episode 1 of 10 in CCL USA Series)
Ma conversation avec le scientifique Robert Kasisi sur la biodiversité, l’art et l’environnement.
Can we change radically our performance practices in order to make necessary changes and concessions?