Monday 28 December 2015

CLIMATE CHANGE submission for listening

A listening room is a place where we listen and talk about what we hear. All submissions should be sent to alisteningroom (at) gmail.com and be clearly titled CLIMATE CHANGE SUBMISSION.

The third listening sessions is yet to be held, yet I feel compelled to initiate a fourth session with the title CLIMATE CHANGE. With the Paris talks right behind us, floods in Chennai and Yorkshire, unheard of winter and summer temperatures, methane leaks in Los Angeles, the dying off of biodiversity and drastic reduction of all glacial ice around the globe the world appears to be changing at an alarming rate. Yet evermore we seem to be stuck inside the eye of the hurricane, as if the pace of change around us has outdone our collective reflexes. What we can be done by an individual seems negligible, yet it is clear that drastic action must be taken, to shift the equation closer to manageable physically and psychologically.

Thus I feel compelled to ask questions. What is my relationship to global warming, do I need to think about it, does my relation in fact only exist through media? What is our response, or what should be our response? Should be politicize it, where will this lead? How do we mobilize action? Where does sound come into play in our relation to climate change? Where does sound come into play in my relation to what I hear about it and what makes me fear climate change? Is climate change even real? How do I sense it? What about resources, can we manage them better? Are sounds resources? Can we raise awareness in communities inside and outside the music and art space? Should this be something we need to think about? How do these questions affect the work we produce? Should it? What will sound be in the future? Is sound already nostalgic? Can sound react beyond the archival?

The issue is big, and the questions, coloured by my own desire for action, do not aim to be exhaustive or even necessary. They aim at pointing especially towards our personal relations to climate change, how it appears to us, and the relation of this is to the local sound ecology we inhabit: both biological and mechanical. I do not wish that people only listen more to the animals around them, but also the plants, people, news coverage, cars, everything that can be picked up. How will this all change along with the climate?

We are taking submissions tackling precisely this, and I would like participants to consider this issue from the subjective and personal to the planetary point of view, again submissions can be anything recorded, it can be made for the occasion or be something already made. We accept everything and will listen to everything submitted.

The call is open to everyone. Sessions last a day, and everyone is free to come and go as they please. If you wish to submit sounds or music please email us clearly stating as your subject CLIMATE CHANGE SUBMISSION to alisteningroom (at) gmail.com if you wish to submit something which is not online please wetransfer it to the same address, again clearly stating the subject and your name in the message box. If you wish to write something about your submission please feel free to so do. All works will be published on our site and the sounds which are online will be linked.

The date of the session will be announced soon.