Localising Acoustic Ecology: A critique towards a relational collaborative paradigm

Abstract

This article focuses on critically provincialising some of the ethico-political challenges inherent to much of the acoustic ecology vocabulary and conceptual framework. As we will demonstrate, much of the underlying limitations stem from an adherence to a particular self-transformation praxis (from the ‘New Age’ movement) alongside an overtly optimist and culturally selective outlook on how a well-informed acoustic designer would guide individuals and communities to a better sonic world. This epistemological and aesthetic outlook is presented in order to offer an alternative view on how collaborative works that deal with the sonic can take place within communities. One, where rigid hierarchies and orthodoxies are substituted by an intersubjective listening that changes all actors involved in the process. This is the framework from which we present Cildo Meireles’s Sal Sem Carne LP (1975) and Lilian Nakahodo’s sonic cartography Mapa sonoro CWB: Uma cartografia afetiva de Curitiba (2015–).