Contemporary climate research is struggling to connect with, and communicate, lived experiences of frontline communities to local and global audiences. There is a strong need to centre research methods and forms of communication that are culturally appropriate, that are collaborative and co-designed and that are able to transmit complex information in diverse and creative ways.
Climates of Listening: Amplifying Pacific Experiences of Environmental Crisis (CoL) is the first practice-led research project to use sound and listening as a framework for expanding understandings of Indigenous Pacific human-environmental relations in the face of rapid ecosystemic transformation. Sonic practices such as storytelling, poetry, singing, music and listening are widely used in Pacific cultures to connect to, make sense of, and communicate knowledge about, the world. Drawing on these practices, this project innovates an interdisciplinary "sonic geography" to help scholars and advocates better conceive of the holistic, multifarious and hyperlocalised ways that environmental crisis is felt and attended to. In doing so, it expands existing literature beyond narratives of "vulnerability" and "resilience", and problematises the politics of representation and translation of Indigenous Pacific experiences into Western ideas and knowledges.
It is critical for audiences to access and understand the experiences of frontline communities in their own voices and in their own words. By connecting to sound and listening, this project approaches the relationships Pacific communities hold to environments in ways that foreground the dynamic and spiritual kinships that form the basis of Pacific culture and Pacific responses to climatic change. Through sound and listening, audiences are invited into the day to day practices and experiences of Pacific communities addressing the ongoing impacts of colonisation and how these are exacerbating changes that affect land and marine subsistence, health, economics and social livelihoods.
The overall objectives of the project are to 1) consolidate ethnographic material from five frontline Pacific Island sites as a foundation for understanding and communicating Pacific Indigenous-environmental relations 2) to work with Pacific partners to ensure that the way the material is used is following ethical and cultural protocols 3) to communicate this material through written and artistic forms, including publications, original sound art pieces and a research exhibition and 4) to train scholars, artists and advocates in listening methods for environmental research.
