Expanded River Listening

Last June in Milan, researcher, curator, artist, and educator Margarida Mendes was invited to  contribute to the inaugural edition of the cultural event Terraforma Exo, held on June 15 and 16 in  Parco Sempione. Her lecture, titled Expanded River Listening, recounted her journey along the  Mississippi and Tejo rivers, back in 2019. The purpose of the trip was to explore and analyze the  connections between the soundscapes and landscapes she encountered, beyond the untamed  appearance of the view.  

Navigating and camping along the riverbanks while engaging in dialogues with local activists and  scientists, Mendes dug into the “background noise” of those remote surroundings to identify and  analyze what she termed the “sonic residues of toxicity”: alterations in the soundscapes of  territories that reflect the impacts of changing conditions and extractive practices.  

Specifically, Mendes witnessed how sonic tools can be used to read and unveil the complexity of the  petrochemical corridor, which stretches over 160 km along the Mississippi River, by registering  power dynamics at play before they are fully legible in the landscape. 

Mendes’ research intricately weaves together sound, landscape, and social implications. In her  writings, she frequently borrows terminology from the realm of sound to describe the places she  explores. Terms like “synchrony,” “noise,” “attunement,” and “rhythm” are employed to refer to  environmental transformations, which are mapped through the sounds that accompany and bear  witness to these changes. Sound is not merely considered a component of the landscape, but the  language through which a territory communicates and calls for help.  

Clara Rodorigo: In your text Sounding the Mississippi, you vividly depict the sounds and impressions from  your journey along the river. It made me think of David Toop’s exploration at the beginning of  his book Ocean of Sound, where he delves into the nuances of everyday sounds. Curiously we crossed paths right after attending a lecture by Toop at Terraforma Exo, last June. 

The terms you employ to narrate your journey—like the rhythmic flow of the river and the  evolving perception of time—seem rooted more in a sonic lexicon than in traditional  environmental descriptors. I guess this is aimed at underscoring a deeper connection between  sound and our perception of space and time. In your view, are sonic elements indispensable  and inherently intertwined with our environmental experience? How? 

Margarida Mendes: Everything in nature produces rhythm, hence existence is profoundly rhythmical and sound is  always intermingled with one’s environmental experience. This is always a very singular and  unique perspective. Our environmental adaptation has always been shaped by the different impulses  and reactions to rhythmic patterns, which deeply affect our senses and perception. So yes, I would  say that sound is deeply connected with one’s perception of space and time, and that environmental  experience, and evolution is deeply rhythmic—as pulse, vibration, and metabolism affect  morphogenesis throughout.  

In my work, I am concerned with these topics in relation to the patterns that the industry may  imprint on bodies and social systems, and how these grow in adaptation to their surroundings. I am interested in how different species adapt to rising background noise and environmental  transformations. And how these are co-produced. 

You recount the experience of camping as a blending of bodily interiority and environmental  exteriority, where the tent’s thin membrane acts as a living second skin, directly interfacing  with external elements. Do you believe that engaging directly with nature is essential to  enhance our understanding of the interconnected relationship between humans and non–human entities? 

For Amerindian cosmology, everything has once been human. There are many natures and only one  culture. The theory of perspectivism, which comes from Viveiros de Castro, after Kopenawa and the  Yanomami people, teaches us that. There is little difference between us and others, however, there  are always different individual experiences. 

I believe that at the time I wrote that text piece on my Sounding the Mississippi research I was  referring to the continuous exposure to background noise, and how the thin membrane between my  body, the environment, the surrounding animals, and industry, was getting ever thinner. I sensed  little distinction between the inside and outside of my body and the sonic continuum around me. I  wrote from a place of wonder and immersion, which the exposure to long fieldwork periods  outdoors always enhances. When one is exposed to the elements for long, this shifts our perspective  about matter, the space of othering, and other processes going on around us. 

The act of listening, as you describe it, is “intersubjective,” embedded within an  environmental framework that links sound with architecture. What opportunities do you  envision within this perspective? Do you believe in cultivating and guiding listening towards  heightened awareness, possibly transforming it into a practice of subversion or resistance? 

Listening creates a space of encounter. Think per example of feminist scholar Sarah Ahmed’s  writing, who speaks to us about “hearing as touch”, and how the intersubjective space is always  aurally diverse, while accounting for the confluence of different forms of experience. Most of my  practice is focused on exploring listening as a mode of raising awareness to interspecies relations  and the political dimension of the sensory, as it is spatialized through different dynamic systems,  affecting communal relations. 

As I surveyed sonic infrastructures for ocean prospection, and had conversations with activists  around toxic sites, listening became an investigative tool that I deployed to test its agency and  effectiveness towards raising awareness of environmental relations. This has affected how I create  works, and produce more just protocols for listening, definitely resulting in a form of sonic  activism. So yes, I think there is definitely a form of sensuous resistance in sonic literacy. 

I’m particularly interested in your proposition of interpreting sound as a forensic medium,  capable of providing tactics. This made me think of Brandon LaBelle’s argument that  “Background Noise” can reveal the underlying dynamics and tensions within a given  environment, reflecting broader cultural, social, and political contexts. Can you expand on the  concept of “counter sonicity” and sound as a medium for sensing the environment? 

Sound traces ongoing relations before they are imprinted in the geological strata, revealing layered  conditions against the fixity of representation.

I was thinking of counter-sonicity in my essay A Sonic Ocean as I looked at how different  scientists and military interventions used sonic tactics as a mode of creating different interactions.  Either for ocean conservation purposes (think per example of the pinger sounds emitted by  fisherman boats to avoid fish bycatch, or the experiments with coral reef and oyster reproduction in  Australia induced by sound). In both these cases frequencies are deployed to counter other  frequencies in order to provoke a particular stimulus on marine fauna, and allow its reproduction. I  am interested in some of these tactical conservation strategies, and how sonic modes of knowing are  being deployed towards different ends.  

When you ask yourself “Could one develop forms of restorative listening to soundscapes  under constant distress?”—are you implying that the act of listening could also entail a practice  of care? 

In my view, it is always a practice of care. I seek modes of attentive listening that  enhance relations between different communities (not only humans), and my thesis project on “Sensorial Ecologies” was looking exactly at how we can enhance practices of sonic literacy as a  mode of engaging in environmental conservation, leading to more just forms of cohabitation. This  entailed leading listening circles with communities who were exposed to toxic events, allowing  their grief to be expressed, as well as having a series of conversations that led to generating more  conscious practices of listening, among scientists, policy-makers, and different coastal  communities. It is my hope that if we recover listening relations, the core of our existence might be  also cared for. And this might be a way of promoting better environmental guardianship,  intergenerationally.