Pororoca

Activation

Listening to the tide(s)

Rehearsal 1

1. Listen to the sound of a river when encountering a sea.

Write how does it sound?

2. Listen to the sound of a river when encountering a sea.

Draw - over what you have written - how does it sound?

3. Listen to the sound of a river when encountering a sea.

Re-create the sound - over what you have drawn and written - of how does it sound?

Draw the map of a body of water, perhaps the nearest one to you. Make of its outline countless lines, delineate the lines of all the edges of the tides, in all their epochs and times as well as of the coasts of the past and the elevations of its future.

Shared during Tidal Diaries C4PP

session 6 'To listen, to listen'

[EN] How can we listen to waters? How can sound making / deep listening / sonic reverberations challenge constructs and practices of political economies, financial capitalism, dispossession and extraction? How can both sonic, audible, and material sound practices reclaim, manifest, resonate?

This activation is shaped and defined by one of the most significant experiences we had in Brazil, Colombia and the UK – deep listening as a collective act and activation. For this activation you are invited to first rehearse and then collectively record a new/old love song. Old, as it will bring memories, and soundscapes you might be familiar with. And new, as it together with others will become a new soundscape. Love, as an invitation to think through love as affective action. It is the first session and can also be the last. Doubling this activation will allow for change to be manifested after consecutive weeks, days or minutes of thinking through and with water.

Our experiences in our three immersions where given shape through the stories were given and shared with us. ‘Listening’ as shared with us, was also a form of activism. In Sonic Meditations – or ‘recipes for listening’ - Pauline Oliveros offers meditative experiences to direct attention to the act of listening as a collective. Listening as a pause for thoughtful action. … to engage with any sound performative, to create a feeling of community, through practising together. We also were thinking with many of the leaders, quilombolas, lawyers, fisher people, mangrove planters from all regions, with Grandmother Helen Lindmark (Sámi Indigenous People) podcast with MOTH (NYU More-Than-Human Life and with Marie Louise Richards; Silent song where many voices, reverberating citations and inaudible tunes are asking to be listened to through affective frequencies.

Rehearsal 2

1. Listen to the sound of a river when encountering a sea, and everything that is part of this encounter.

Write - over what you have already re-created, drawn and written - how does it sound?

2. Listen to the sound of a river when encountering a sea, and everything that is part of this encounter.

Draw - over what you just wrote, and over what you have already re-created, drawn and written - how does it sound?

3. Listen to the sound of a river when encountering a sea, and everything that is part of this encounter.

Re-create the sound - over what you just draw and wrote, and over what you have already re-created, drawn and written - how does it sound?

Draw a map of two bodies of water. Perhaps of more. Perhaps the ones nearest to you. Make their contours into countless lines, delineate the lines of all the tidal borders and edges, in all their epochs and ages, in all their times. As coasts of the past and the elevations of the future.

Gabriela Leandro Pereira and Felipe Arturo listening to the waters of Dique de Tororó, Salvador. Brazil

João Araujo Santana listening to the waters of São Francisco de Conde, Baía de Todos os Santos. Brazil

Record

Embracing bodies of water tell us about themselves as much as of their communities and the tense dynamics of the spaces they occupy in the world we co-inhabit. They also tell us about the presence of beings that are resistant and sensitive to the changing currents of waters.

What narratives do the waters of rivers and seas and their encounters hold?
What would they tell you about their history, their struggles and their relationship with human beings?
What would a world be like in which the brackish waters of the encounter of rivers and seas could emit their own voices and we had the ability to hear them?
What portals or doors are opened where rivers encounter seas?
Where do estuaries and river mouths take us and what worlds do they allow us to access?

Pororoca and all material contained in this website is licensed under Creative Commons Non-Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)