Echoes in the Anthropocene: ecological sound art and ecosocialist activism in Brazil
About
As climate change intensifies, artists and activists worldwide find new ways to communicate its urgency. This research explores how artworks and ecosocialist demonstrations convey sound and activism in the Global South.
Through a sensory ethnography based on participant observation, relational listening, and sound recording, this proposal aims to understand how ecological art and political activism work together to resist the ongoing impacts of colonialism and capitalist extraction.
The study examines two Brazilian sound art projects – “Amazônia Verde Viva” (“Green and Alive Amazon”), by composers Albery and Thiago Albuquerque, and “Sons que Curam” (“Sounds that Heal”) by Shirley Krenak, and one political movement – Coalition for the Climate, Rio de Janeiro. These interlocutors were chosen for their engagement with political and environmental forms of sound production in Brazil, unusually connecting radical acoustic and political ideologies side by side.
The Albuquerques compose with animal voices. Krenak uses sound to amplify the voices of the natural world, blending field recordings of forests and rivers with Indigenous storytelling and musical composition. In protests organised by the Coalition for the Climate, sound becomes a vital tool in political mobilisation. Protest chants and drumming create a shared experience that unites communities in their fight against environmental destruction and injustice.
Ultimately, the research aims to understand how people build narratives about the environmental crisis through sound, and how the technology they use also constructs discourses about climate collapse. In this way, the project aspires to expand the sound studies framework, contributing to ecocriticism by disseminating findings to both academic and activist communities, and promoting forums and workshops.
The research seeks to inspire NGO leaders, political movements, and artists to listen, record and edit their own practices in Brazil, UK and other places, presenting them in workshops and exhibitions, and harvesting alternatives approaches to the current crisis.
