Radio Papesse

Upon Radio Papesse's invitation on the occasion of Lucia Festival 2020, Pablo Sanz introduces and comments on his sound piece with notes and hints to better listen to it: you'll find here an introduction and an afterward remark by the author. 
 

Based on environmental recordings along the territories of Amanã and Mamirauá, in central Amazônia, Strange Strangers focuses on unusual listening perspectives (above, underwater, and ultrasound), inviting us to listen to (within) a singular world of vitality and non-human otherness. Listening cultivates profound encounters with other beings (life-forms, abiotic terrestrial matters, sounds…), and with our being as an other. 

“The first sequence guides us inwards and beautifully implements the radical ecological approach developed by the philosopher Vinciane Despret: that of placing ourselves in relation to other animal species as individuals in relation to other individuals, of perceiving them not simply as representatives of their vast family, but in their singularity as subjects”.  Juliette Volcler - Phonurgia Nova

Strange strangers is a notion by Timothy Morton for speaking about non-human creatures, conceived as ambiguous entities, as beings unable to be completely comprehended and labelled. This idea prompts us to examine the paradoxes and fissures of identity within “human” and “non-human”, and within “self” and “other”. Furthermore, recognising agencies and vitality beyond the human makes it also possible to think sounds and works of art as phenomenological beings that in some powerful sense display “something like agency and something like affect.”

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Pablo Sanz is an artist, composer and researcher. His body of work includes site-specific and public art projects, immersive installations, multichannel live performances, exhibitions, releases and pieces for broadcast and headphone listening. His practice is an open-ended investigation of listening, more-than human agencies and aural vitality, with a focus on the limits and thresholds of perception and attention.