Sonic Threads: (re)interpreting territories and weaving interconnectedness through listening spaces for reciprocity
When we talk about listening and territory, this interdependence may not occur along pre-designed patterns. It can rather be chaotic yet meaningful.
Discerning these interrelations within an ecosystem with reciprocity traditions is something I have been exposed to since childhood. How can I evidence-through-sound this relationship with the territory without positioning Andean/Indigenous knowledge as a resource for European spiritual and intellectual renewal? What does it mean to bring such matters to a listening space in a European context?
These reciprocal relations frequently do not imply symmetry as they are navigated in a field of power: an asymmetrical yet continuing to be productive situation of “collaborative survival” (Tsing, 2015).
AYNI
AYNI is a ritual-based sound installation that brings together field recordings made between 2021 and 2026 in Peru, Brazil, Colombia, France, Ireland and Portugal. An immersive sonic composition designed for a collective listening environment made as part of the artistic research assignment for Resounding Territories - Sound Ecosystems Project, as well as an ongoing research work on the relations between territory and communities through memory, music and aurality, and how these face the environmental crisis and challenge current political manoeuvres that impact them directly.
The work is inspired by the Andean concept of Ayni: a convoluted relationship with the land that is rooted in reciprocity. Although it has an important economic dimension to it, it is not merely a practice of exchange but rather the generative field in which (human and non human) beings themselves come into existence. This reciprocal relation does not imply symmetry as it is navigated in a field of power. The installation is focused on the ritualistic side of it, while strongly and respectfully considering all other aspects to it through (an interpretation of) the mesa: the central element of the space which is a set of offerings used in the ceremony of pago a la tierra (payment to earth), the Andean ritual of reciprocity and gratitude to earth.