Sound Arts and Eco-Artivism: From the Political Dimension of Sound to the Possibilities of Situated Listening

Abstract

This study aims to offer a space for debate and reflection on the political dimension of music and the possibilities of “eco-artivism” in the field of contemporary sound creation. In order to question the vision of the artistic work as a mere object of pleasure and a decontextualized phenomenon, we reflect on sound and listening as sources of production of critical and reflexive knowledge. From this perspective, the space of sound arts is revealed as a fertile field of experimentation capable of projecting itself towards political, cultural, social and environmental claims. The foundations that lead from the classical soundscape to the new framework of biomusic will be reviewed as a propositional space that attempts to pay attention in a situated way to the dialogue between human and non-human sounds, questioning both the dichotomy between culture and nature, as well as the ethical pretensions of preservation that characterize the positions of the traditional soundscape. Finally, in order to illustrate some of these reflections, two specific works are reviewed: La selva (1998) by Francisco López and Amazonia (2019) by Félix Blume. Their divergent aesthetic and ideological positions materialize in two opposing types of listening – one deep and decontextualized, and the other situated and shared – which allows for a debate about their ecological implications.