May 20, 2021
In contemporary Western culture we seem to have lost an intimate
connection with the land. More often than not we consider our
surroundings as a passive backdrop in which humankind can take
center stage: controlling the landscape, developing
infrastructures, and extracting resources at will. This rather
anthropocentric position has become unviable, however, as recent
human-driven ecological crises – like climate change, the dramatic
loss of biodiversity and large-scale destruction of habitats – are
clearly indicating. If we wish to develop a more sustainable
future, we urgently need to reconnect to our environment and
restore a more reciprocal relationship with the earth.
In the context of the project Land, studium generale
commissioned the Radio ArtEZ series Sounding Places / Listening
Places in which writer and music journalist Joep Christenhusz
and creator of sound works, musician, writer, poet, and Deep
Listener Sharon Stewart enquire how sound and listening can help us
to do so.
In this third episode, Sharon Stewart converses with geographer and sound artist Ame Kanngieser, Melbourne, Australia, and vocalist, writer, composer and interdisciplinary artist, Lisa E. Harris from Houston, Texas about themes of land, ownership and sound. Do we have an intrinsic right to record our immediate soundscape? Who owns sound?
Shownotes:
The interview with Ame Kanngieser took place on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri and Bunurong people of the East Kulin Nations. We acknowledge the traditional owners of these lands and pay our respects to elders past and present and to Country itself. Sovereignty was never ceded, resistance is ongoing.
Reading and listening
AM Kanngieser:
Lisa E. Harris
They eat the Kill and then Have Cake.
(For Juneteenth in Texas, USA)
What happens to captives when
captives are set free
to run on captured land?
Is this called Jubilee?
Should not their ancestral land be restored to them and them unto
It?
Black people, we have made a new covenant every time our feet stand
upon the Earth.
We restore the captive land . She is set free to run through our
captured feet.
And this is just one reason why
They make us to hover so
The drip draws
Bone from
The meet.
-Li Harris
6/19/2020
Sounding Places - Listening Places was commissioned by ArtEZ
Studium Generale. Interviews, texts and voice overs by Sharon
Stewart and Joep Christenhusz. It is produced by Ondercast for Studium Generale ArtEZ.
Studium Generale curator for this series: Catelijne de Muijnck