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 Radio ArtEZ podcast series Sounding Places / Listening Places writer and music journalist Joep Christenhusz and creator of sound works, writer and Deep Listener Sharon Stewart enquire how sound and listening can help us to do so.
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.
This three-part miniseries centers around Deep Listening®, the lifework of composer, musician, writer and humanitarian Pauline Oliveros. Aspects of this creative and meditative practice are shared from the perspectives of Sharon Stewart, Tina Pearson and Lisa E. Harris, Deep Listening® certificate-holders.
In the second mini-episode Sharon Stewart draws upon her own scores and the work of Canadian composer, multimedia artist and Deep Listener Tina Pearson, inviting you to contemplate some ways we can involve ourselves in a respectful, listening and playful dialogue with our sonic environment.
This interview forms part of Sharon Stewart's current area of inquiry for the ArtEZ Professorship Theory in the Arts, namely: ethics and ethical practices within artistic research and the creative arts.
Shownotes:
Oliveros’ 1976 article “On Sonic Meditation” in Software for People
