July 2023 – Page 2

(soundscapes of east vancouver at c. 5am)

I can’t sleep tonight.

What about you?

I love nighttime soundscapes.

They’re so bareboned, minimal, like the rumble that you hear now, mostly from Vancouver harbour, but also the industrial area here in east vancouver.

So I’m up, recording, listening, figuring out what keeps me up at night, this night, other nights, when I listen and try to understand…

Sometimes I feel like I can hear inaudible sounds, like the polar ice caps melting…

(homeless person walking by with wagon)

But of course what I’m hearing here is the life around me. A homeless person just walked by with their wagon of survival materials and that’s what happens at night. Life unfolds and people try to survive.

Some are dormant and some are very active, like the raccoons who are doing their work.

But back to the ice melting, that’s what I find bewildering is this state between awakeness and sleep. A kind of dream state where I’m not sure what exactly I’m hearing and my imagination kind of takes over, so, I do sometimes feel like I’m listening to things like the ice melting up north in the arctic or feeling the trees around me growing.

What is the sound of a tree growing? What are those kinds of things.

They don’t always wake me, but they sometimes keep me up at night in wonder and I worry about this fragile world…

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023, 5.12am.

What keeps you up at night?

The soundscape for this episode was recorded at 5.07 am in Vancouver on May 3, 2023.

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).

My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the The Only Animal theatre company.

The post e126 sleepless – what keeps you up at night? appeared first on conscient. conscient is a bilingual blog and podcast (French or English) by audio artist Claude Schryer that explores how arts and culture contribute to environmental awareness and action.

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About the Concient Podcast from Claude Schryer

The conscient podcast / balado conscient is a series of conversations about art, conscience and the ecological crisis. This podcast is bilingual (in either English or French). The language of the guest determines the language of the podcast. Episode notes are translated but not individual interviews.

I started the conscient project in 2020 as a personal learning journey and knowledge sharing exercise. It has been rewarding, and sometimes surprising.

The term “conscient” is defined as “being aware of one’s surroundings, thoughts and motivations”. My touchstone for the podcast is episode 1, e01 terrified, based on an essay I wrote in May 2019, where I share my anxiety about the climate crisis and my belief that arts and culture can play a critical role in raising public awareness about environmental issues. The conscient podcast / balado conscient follows up on my http://simplesoundscapes.ca (2016-2019) project: 175, 3-minute audio and video field recordings that explore mindful listening.

season 1 (may – october 2020) : environmental awareness and action Season 1 (May to October 2020) explored how the arts contribute to environmental awareness and action. I produced 3 episodes in French and 15 in English. The episodes cover a wide range of content, including activism, impact measurement, gaming, arts funding, cross-sectoral collaborations, social justice, artistic practices, etc. Episodes 8 to 17 were recorded while I was at the Creative Climate Leadership USA course in Arizona in March 2020 (led by Julie”s Bicycle). Episode 18 is a compilation of highlights from these conversations.

season 2 (march – august 2021 ) : reality and ecological grief Season 2 (March 2021 ) explores the concept of reality and is about accepting reality, working through ecological grief and charting a path forward. The first episode of season 2 (e19 reality) mixes quotations from 28 authors with field recordings from simplesoundscapes and from my 1998 soundscape composition, Au dernier vivant les biens. One of my findings from this episode is that “I now see, and more importantly, I now feel in my bones, “the state of things as they actually exist”, without social filters or unsustainable stories blocking the way”. e19 reality touches upon 7 topics: our perception of reality, the possibility of human extinction, ecological anxiety and ecological grief, hope, arts, storytelling and the wisdom of indigenous cultures. The rest of season 2 features interviews with thought leaders about their responses and reactions to e19 reality.

season 3 (october 2021 – february 2022 ) : radical listening Season 3 was about radical listening : listening deeply without passing judgment, knowing the truth and filtering out the noise and opening attention to reality and responding to what needs to be done. The format is similar the first podcast format I did in 2016 with the simplesoundscapes project, which was to ‘speak my mind’ and ‘think out loud’. I start this season with a ‘soundscape composition’, e63 a case study (part 1) and e64 a case study (part 2), a bilingual speculative fiction radio play, set in an undergraduate university history seminar course called ‘History of 2021 in Canada’. It concluded with a soundscape composition ‘Winter Diary Revisited’.

season 4 (1 january – 31 december 2023) : sounding modernity

About

I’ve been retired from the Canada Council for the Arts since September 15, 2020 where I served as a senior strategic advisor in arts granting (2016-2020) and manager of the Inter-Arts Office (1999-2015). My focus in (quasi) retirement is environmental issues within my area of expertise in arts and culture, in particular in acoustic ecology. I”m open to become involved in projects that align with my values and that move forward environmental concerns. Feel free to email me for a conversation :

View the original: https://www.conscient.ca/e126-sleepless-what-keeps-you-up-at-night/

On 31 May 2023 researchers, creatives and climate change campaigners gathered to explore the importance of experimental environmental storytelling in building climate resilience.

Screenshot of ecopoetics video start frame. Green background with black and white photo of wind turbine in centre. Features text ‘Reimagining climate resilience through ecopoetics; Green Tease event’. Click to play.

Watch a video of the event. Viewing tip: click on the two arrows in the top right corner to optimise experience.

The climate crisis is asking artists, activists and policymakers to reassess how they engage with audiences: “Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis,” as the writer Rebecca Solnit recently reminded us. Together, we explored how ecopoets are creating innovative and immersive storytelling that push audiences to reflect and react to ecological issues by transforming our ways of thinking and living.

Ecopoetics is not limited to the written word, embracing performance, visual arts, and digital media. It is poetry of ecology and thinking with ecology. Bringing together poets, artists and researchers, this Green Tease provided a space for discussion and creative expression on how we might use ecopoetics to cultivate everyday resilience in the face of the climate crisis.

This event was created in collaboration with Martin Schauss, a researcher in literature and ecology, at the University of Edinburgh who got us started by giving examples of ecopoetics from sunrise poems on the Isle of Skye, to poetry bus tours in New York City. He was followed by Alec Finlay, an artist and poet working with a range of media and forms, who gave examples of how his art encourages place-based awareness by mapping into the Scottish landscape a consideration of Scotland’s energy history.

We next heard from Yulia Kovanova, a Scotland-based artist and BAFTA Scotland-nominated filmmaker working across different media, and Patrick James Errington, a poet who recently published, the swailing, a poetry collection on human and natural loss in the context of Canada’s burning landscapes. Yulia and Patrick showcased their mixed media collaborations, focusing on ecological precarity, resilience, and multispecies relationships. As we watched excerpts from Yulia’s films, Patrick performed poetic companion pieces, drawing reflections on the relationship between spoken word and visual arts.

Finally, writer and activist Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, who currently organises Climate Camp Scotland, spoke to the sometimes conflicted relationship between storytelling and activism, and how they can nurture each other. Her provocative question, “and then what?”, interrogated how creative inspiration and writing should do more than help formulate new ideas, and instead lead us to act. Emphasizing how ecopoetics, environmental literature, and activism should feed each other, she asked participants to reflect on which stories have ever led them to take action.

Re-imaging place through digital sound walks workshop

Following the inspirational talks, SCCAN Story Weavers Kaska Hempel and Lesley Anne Rose shared a hands-on taster on using digital sound walks to re-imagine the places we care about. In groups everyone set off to create their own ecopoetic sound walk using the walksy app. https://www.artwalkporty.co.uk/walksy-walking-app.html).

To highlight the importance of local writing and reading communities, the event also included a bookstall by Lighthouse Bookshop focused on ecopoetics and environmental writing in Scotland and beyond.

The post Ecopoetics reflection and recording: environmental storytelling and climate resilience appeared first on Creative Carbon Scotland.

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Monthly Archives: July 2023

Conscient Podcast: e126 sleepless – what keeps you up at night?

About the Concient Podcast from Claude Schryer

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Ecopoetics reflection and recording: environmental storytelling and climate resilience