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e75 radical listening as climate action
Season 3 Episode 75
- '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.'
Claude Schryer, FKL’s Unheard Landscapes Symposium, October 29, 2021
e75 radical listening as climate action is my presentation and Q&A period at the FKL’s Unheard Landscapes Symposiumon 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
Script
Note: audio on podcast is slightly different due to improvised elements during the presentation. The question-and-answer period below was transcribed using TEMI and slightly edited for concision.
Good morning, Bonjour
Welcome to radical listening as climate action.
It’s 7.35am here in Vancouver on Friday, October 29th, 2021. The sun is just rising here on the west coast of Turtle Island. I know you’ve already had a long day of presentations and deliberations where you all are in Blois, France so I’ll try and be brief in my presentation and get to questions as soon as possible. Je vais parler en anglais mais il me fera plaisir de répondre à vos questions en français aussi.
But before I start my presentation, I want to let you know that I’m recording this talk as episode 75 of my conscient podcast, which is a podcast, sometimes in English, des fois en français, that explores art and the ecological crisis. The third season of this podcast is on the theme of radical listening, so I thought it would make sense to include this presentation as an episode. Please let me know if you do not want to be recorded when we get to the question period, ok? I understand that the Symposium is also doing a podcast of this presentation, which is great so there will be 2 versions, I’ll be publishing this recording later today.
Let me begin by saying that I’m speaking to you from the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. I would like to acknowledge these nations as the traditional keepers of these lands and reiterate my commitment to indigenous people as an ally.
Some of you might know that I’m a composer by training and worked in acoustic ecology for most of the 1990s, with the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and other similar organizations - before joining the Canada Council for the Arts for 21 years. I retired from the Council in 2020 in order to focus my work on art and the climate emergency through my podcast and a new organization in Canada called SCALE, the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency: which is an example of a collective action that the Symposium has suggested we undertake. I can talk about that more later if you wish.
I was very pleased to see that the Unheard Landscapes Symposium is exploring climate emergency issues, such as changing soundscape of our endangered planet today and, importantly, future soundscapes and thefuture of listeningitself as the climate emergency deepens. And the crisis will unfortunately get much worse as emissions are currently actually rising worldwide in spite of efforts at COP26, which starts in a few days just north of you in Scotland.
So big thanks and Graci to Stefano Zorzanello and the FKL Symposium o
Published on 4 years, 2 months ago