I delivered this sound walk event in partnership with the arts organisation Arts on Prescription in Alexandra Park, Hastings. The ecological concerns underpinning this event was explored through an engagement with the distinct yet related fields of philosophy of mind (focused on plant consciousness) and ecopsychology (focused on the emotional connection between humans and nature including the capacity for immersion in nature to improve our wellbeing and generate sustainable ways of thinking). The methods used in this sound walk event aimed to challenge modern human’s exploitative behaviour towards nature – which is a strong underlying factor contributing to climate change – to reimagine the relationship between humans and the more-than-human world.
INSTRUCTIONS:
This sound walk event began with an open discussion about the participant’s perceptions about nature and more specifically plants. It was a lively discussion which created a sense of togetherness in the group.
Next, the participants took part in interactive exercises in pairs during which they were instructed to decide who would be the guide and the partner. The partner was then instructed to close their eyes, and the guide was instructed to lead them to a specific point, including moving the partner’s bodies and heads to the exact position that the guide envisioned. Then the guide instructed the partner to open their eyes for 20 seconds. This was repeated for 3 minutes after which the pairs swapped roles and repeated the activity. In this way, the participants engaged with their senses of sight and hearing.
The next interactive exercise involved the same process; however, along with positioning the partner’s bodies and head, the guides were also instructed to place their partner’s hands on the point that they envisioned. The partner was then instructed to feel the different textures around the area that their hand was placed for 30 seconds while keeping their eyes shut, to engage with their senses of touch and smell. These interactive exercises were aimed at creating an immersive experience – through engaging with the different senses – in an active rather than a passive way.
This was followed by a group mindfulness breathing exercise after the participants had formed a circle around an ancient redwood tree. These exercises related to somatic ecology which outlines a parallel between the ways we relate to our bodies, and the ways we relate to the natural world including the environmental crisis.
SOUND WALK
We then walked to an area in Alexandra Park where the participants were led through the tree route while listening to the sound walk composition played through speakers and were asked to actively engage with their senses. The 21-minute, site-specific sound walk responded to seven trees along this route. In collaboration with the composer Black Astronaut, we applied a form of ‘entangled listening’ to co-create with plants through recording the inner sounds of these trees. Listening in its entangled form addresses a need for a patient, sensory attentiveness to the more-than-human world and its interconnections. Next musical elements were improvised to these field recordings. I developed the poetic lines of Anna by researching the histories of each tree and associated Indigenous knowledge, excluded in colonial botany’s categorisation of these plants in Victorian times. These lines resurrected these forgotten histories to question colonial botany and capitalism’s hierarchical structures and exclusion of Indigenous knowledge in a decolonial approach, by using my sung interactive segments juxtaposed against a spoken narrative arc. The poetic lines were also developed through an engagement with philosophy of mind to offer a joyful re-engagement with nature where plants are seen as possessing agency, memory, kin recognition, intelligence, and perhaps the ability to possess consciousness.
REFLECTIVE ACTIVITY
We then walked back to the Art in the Park venue where I used elements of socially engaged practice as the participants were asked to co-create mixed media artworks that reflected on the immersive experience of the event.
© Annie Goliath (she/her) is an award-winning, interdisciplinary artist-filmmaker, musician, educator and researcher who lives and works between London and Hastings. She works across an array of expanded practices including film, performance, installation, sound and socially engaged art. Find out more about her work at www.anniegoliath.com.
