«We went upstream, and this turned out to be a wonderful experience that reinforced my beliefs in synchronicity, community, and transmission as essential facts. Field recordings and listening practices are not something one truly owns; rather, they disseminate naturally and call to be shared. Beauty resides in the bridge of sound ecologies between individuals across space and time. Listening unites us.»

– Pablo Diserens

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It is recommended to listen to the piece with good speakers or headphones, as it includes a wide range of frequencies (especially subsonic ones originating from the songs of blue whales).

You can read the interview in its original English edition here.

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During Pablo Diserens' digital residency at Ocean-Archivee through TBA21 throughout 2022/23, the artist and field recordist (field recorder) proposed a project encouraging members of ocean comm/uni/ty. Also, other enthusiasts were keen to make aqueous recordings for a collective sound piece. The aim of this liquid synergy was to gather recordings from various wet ecologies and, at the same time, to stimulate listening regardless of any prior experience.

The result has been recordings by 35 collaborators integrated into a composition entitled Upstream Ensemble. It navigates the multiplicity of the water cycle as a sonic body. The work moves upstream through oceans, rivers, networks of pipes, ponds and glaciers, investigating the continuous flow of water and the environments that surround it. Listeners encounter habitats adrift amid the songs of sea lions, dolphins, blue whales, Arctic terns and algal photosynthesis. Also the invasive hum of submarines, ships and human infrastructure. With Upstream Ensemble, the world's fauna, flora, geologies and aquatic technologies blend into a synchronized movement that documents diverse sonic perspectives of these wetlands.

In resonance with the practice of deep listening (deep listening) by Pauline Oliveros. Also, Rachel Carson's exploration of the intertidal zone in The Edge of the Sea, The project proposes focusing on attentive listening as a way of interacting with and existing in the planet's waters. By fostering shared practices of listening and attunement, Pablo Diserens aims to develop a sense of interconnectedness, blurring the boundaries between species and environments.

Experiencing aquatic biomes both individually and collectively acts as a way of rethinking our relationships with the world. Although these are predominantly solitary experiences, Pablo believes that field recording and listening are communal and environmental practices. They serve as gateways to terrestrial synchronicity and to the mapping of the world in time and space. Thus, listening can become a political act that forges emotional bonds with the world and its biotic communities.

Ocean-Archive.org presented the cassette and digital edition of the community piece Upstream Ensemble on their website. As well as an interview that you can read below, revealing details about their listening practice, their relationship with sound. The power of listening and of deep listening. These are aspects of the process and production of the piece, and photos of the collaborators.

INTERVIEW WITH PABLO DISERENS

When did you start working with sound and what were your first passions or influences?

Sound became the core of my practice in 2016. But my enthusiasm for sound was born a few years earlier when I was studying film. During my studies, I realised that the films that attracted me most were those in which dialogue did not occupy a central position. Thus leaving space for the images, the bodies and, above all, the sounds to become the key components of the narrative and the staging. For me, the soundscapes of films became characters capable of infusing visual sequences with meaning.

This is information and life, a kind of essence far more vital than most human exchanges. Some examples that come to mind today are the films of Yannick Dauby, Carlos Casas, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Yasujirō Ozu and Jacques Tati.

A few years later, while studying sound and music, I was captivated by aqueous/icy ambiences, concrete music composition and microphonic techniques. At the time I didn't fully understand it, but immersing myself in these practices proved to be the gateway to the meticulous forms of listening I was seeking. Field recordings, acoustic ecology. The deep listening Pauline Oliveros's answers to this underlying question were: How could I link my affection for the natural world, my desire to exist with it, my concerns for its health, and my interest in these technologies and artistic practices?

From then on, I immersed myself completely in works, such as… Energy Field by Jana Winderen, Sonic Antarctica by Andrea Polli, Weather Report by Chris Watson, The Great Animal Orchestra by Bernie Krause, Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle's In the Field: The Art of Field Recording, the entire discography of Éliane Radigue and many others. It was truly mind-blowing… to witness countless people sharing a similar bond with the postures of listening and attunement. From then on I became deeply interested in soundscapes. Microphones became tools for accessing what mattered to me most. Listening and sound as ways to deepen understanding and connection with the world.

Awareness of the power of listening

When did you become aware of the power of listening? When was the first time you realized that listening could become a political act and could generate emotional bonds?

I think of any form of positioning that does not align with capitalist, neoliberal and extractive ideologies as inherently political. Currently, most of the societies we live in are manipulated by absurdly fast, environmentally apathetic systems that grab attention and generate money. In this climate, slowing down, tuning in to our surroundings, witnessing other forms of reality, bringing them to the fore and learning from them is to go against these harmful currents.

I don't know exactly when I realized that listening allowed us to do this. It all seemed like a slow progression, an opening, an unlearning. Inevitably, I read and listened to a lot of works that pointed, like a map, towards the benefits of listening. But ultimately, the most fascinating experience is when it happens to you, when listening changes you. One day, you realize that you are tuning into the Earth in a different way.

You can find sounds that convey much more meaning as you direct your attention. Over time they unravel, inviting you to be present. Given this extra time, emotional and sensory connections form and strengthen. Perhaps one day you become aware of a sound or an animal you hadn't noticed before. Another day you recognize that parts of you are no longer fully human. You've let the world in. Listening changes others around you. It somehow spreads through individuals.

As Pauline Oliveros says: «The more I listen, the more I learn to listen.» For me, sharing this practice with others is immensely gratifying. Even if just one person's eyes light up while they're listening to a frog, a photosynthesising alga, or a bat for the first time. Those eyes say: «There are so many things around me.» Listening is a non-human becoming. It is a power of connection, and presence is its gift.

To listen

What is your relationship with your environment like? How do you practice listening in your daily life?

Presence is everything to me. It is a dialogue between the inner and the outer worlds that allows understanding, empathy, connection and care. In life, I strive to be present with the world, with myself and with others as much as possible. But of course, it's not easy to fit into the structural human frenzy we live in. Much of this presence is constantly being devoured by forced ideals of productivity.

So, when the opportunity arises, I move away from the reality we have created for ourselves and immerse myself in non-human realities. I am engulfed by the minutiae of the biomes. I observe and listen, I get closer, I change perspective, scale and skin. I am all ears to the Earth, my eardrums capture small fluctuating oscillations. Play and curiosity rethink the landscape. Microphones, like instruments, are placed inside, between or near various sources, some of them inaccessible to my human ear. I notice sonic embraces and interpret reliefs. At the head of the valley, everything vibrates.

I believe these stances are attempts to materialise Ursula Le Guin's words: «to seek the experience of existences outside the human boundary». I sense parts of a giant network of beings and things. I ask myself questions such as: «What is it like to be a frog?» or «Do rocks and ice feel us in the midst of their geological time?». Imagine being a glacier for a second... What must it be like to be terrifyingly witnessing your own disappearance, dripping away at such a rapid pace; you disappeared in a second!

Now become an amphibian… existing on the borders of disparate habitats while undergoing drastic somatic changes. You embody adaptable fluidity. A fragility that depends on the health of your home, suggesting that change, growth and healing are possible. All you need is a permeable skin. I believe there is much to learn from our environment; we only need to listen. Presence is to invite the world by embodying diverse forms of otherness.

Deep listening

How do you think the practice of deep listening by Pauline Oliveros has influenced your own?

«The deep listening It is the basis of a radically transformed social matrix in which compassion and love are the basic driving principles. Because they guide creative decision making and our actions in the world.» — I always carry this phrase by Pauline Oliveros with me. Her writings and exercises on the potential for greater awareness and listening practices have been essential to my personal and artistic development.

His way of thinking about sound and listening is holistic. It encompasses everything, the outside and the inside, the natural and the artificial, the concrete, the imagined and the dreamed (I recommend reading his text). Quantum Listening). As I see it, the deep listening It invites us to the complexities of the world and to our own. It is a multiple, multisensory and amorphous way of existing in the unfathomable sea of things, like a sonic lattice that continuously materialises.

Through her philosophy, I came to know myself and my relationship with the world better. At the same time, it broadened my understanding of sound. Undoubtedly, it had a profound impact on how I position myself within ecosystems as I record and listen to their inhabitants. It enriched my sense of belonging, of presence, of kinship with the Earth. What I also really like about Oliveros's work is that it is profoundly collaborative and inherently political. She calls for unity in such a powerful and moving way that it is difficult to ignore.

You asked me before when I became aware of the political power of listening; well, reading Pauline Oliveros’s work was certainly a milestone. In my opinion, it encourages us to think, live, work and navigate the pluralities of life. A much more porous way than Western society teaches us. It is humble. In her own words: «The skin also listens».

Upstream Ensemble

What were some of your challenges with the production of Upstream Ensemble? How did this residency project transform your own practice?

The production process of’Upstream Ensemble It was collaborative in nature, and that, for me, was truly inspiring. The original aim was to bring together people from the ocean comm/uni/ty platform and foster a collective listening experience via the Internet. Fiona Middleton (manager of ocean comm/uni/ty, TBA21's social platform) and I wanted to propose a deepening of community relationships with water. Sound through aqueous synchronicity. Some of the challenges I faced arose from the uncertainty inherent in the project. Sharing an open online call is one thing. Receiving contributions is another, and what kind of recordings people would send me, if any, is yet another. Imagine if I had only received recordings of waves, for example.

Working with this kind of uncertainty shaped the final result into a damp question mark, which I soon found exciting. There is satisfaction in the act of letting go and relinquishing any expectation. I simply had to let myself be carried literally by the current. As contributions began to arrive, it was deeply moving to hear the fragments of time, places and encounters that people sent. Suddenly, sound connected me with people and animals I had never met. Places I had never been; it was like receiving acoustic letters. (By the way, try sending someone a recording instead of a postcard one day… it can be much more moving).

However, one of them was a family surprise when Mat Eric Art sent me a recording and an exact image of the Mediterranean coast of my childhood! An exception in the process was that one of the collaborators. The one who got in touch was actually the Ocean Canada Network scientific research centre. They gave me access to their hydrophone recording database. They have dozens of hydrophones constantly recording in the Pacific Ocean at various depths (some of them 800 metres below the surface). This archive was like a treasure trove of deep-water recordings full of songs from sea lions, blue whales, humpback whales, orcas, underwater sonar, undersea earthquakes, and so on. Having the opportunity to listen to them was incredible!

Another challenge was to approach the final composition by incorporating at least one or two recordings per collaborator. They had to work collectively while flowing like a river. But that perplexity quickly faded once I heard all the contributions together. There was a wet thread waiting to be woven. The recordings told their own story, that of water making its way through the Earth to the rhythm of its inhabitants. Now the question was, which path do we choose? So we went upstream, and it turned out to be a pleasurable experience that reinforced my beliefs in synchronicity, community, and transmission as essential initiatives.

Field recording and listening practices are not something one truly possesses. Rather, they spread naturally and cry out to be shared. Beauty resides in the bridge of sonic ecologies between individuals across space and time. Listening unites us.

Pablo Diserens (they/she, b.1994) is a field recordist, musician and artist dedicated to deep listening, to non-human realities and to possible forms of coexistence between species. Rooted in ecological commitment and site-specificity, it investigates gestures of presence through a fabric of sound, images and texts. These bring to the fore the acoustic, bio and geological characteristics of the explored environments with the intention of fostering terrestrial connections. The works materialise in various forms that emphasise listening as a radical and political practice. They flirt with an infinity of sub-realities and ecoacoustic phenomena.

These propositions operate within polymorphic forms of inhabiting and of shifting shape among non-human bodies. In solidarity with a wounded planet. Diserens' practice invites people to tune in to the present in order to rethink strategies of care, our relationship with the world and its biotic communities.

Based in Berlin (Germany), Pablo Diserens is also the co-founder and curator of forms of minutiae. It is a publishing platform for the harmonisation of listening, electroacoustic music, sound ecology and visual art.

www.pablodiserens.studio
www.instagram.com/pablodiserens

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Concept: Pablo Diserens and Fiona Middleton. Composition and mixing: Pablo Diserens. With sound contributions by: Alëna Korolëva, Alexandros Maragkoudakis, Bence Kovács-Vajda, Christopher Dean, Cyane Findji, Damian Pace, Elise Rigot, Eliza Collin, Fiona Middleton, Francesco Previtali, Ilù Seydoux, Irene Mansoldo, Isabel Val, Jakob Köchert, Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy, Joana Moher, Katy Lewis Hood, Kosmas Phan Dinh, Kseniya Lushnikova, Leo Maassen, Ludwig Berger, Mat Eric Hart, Mathias Arrignon, Matty Yeomans, Mélia Roger, Moritz Zeisner, Nikos Sotirelis, Nina Blume, Ocean Networks Canada, Pablo Diserens, Sem Zeeman, Slavek Kwi, Surrealich, Thibault Noirot, Varoujan Cheterian.

Special thanks to all contributors, Fiona Middleton, Markus Reymann, Michal Kučerák, Petra Linhartová, TBA21, Madelyn Byrd, Diane Barbé, Lou Croff Blake, Thom Lucero, and Mélia Roger.

Upstream Ensemble is available for purchase in cassette and digital format here.

All proceeds will be donated to the Blue Marine Foundation. It is an organisation that works for the health and conservation of the oceans by securing marine protected areas. It also restores marine habitats, develops sustainable fishing models, connects people with the sea and enhances understanding of the oceans across generations. www.bluemarinefoundation.com

EXTRA MATERIALS FROM THE CONTRIBUTORS

Discover locations. Details of the recordings and images of various sites where members of the ocean community participate. External enthusiasts have carried out their fieldwork through a archiveu original project website.

Interview conducted by Ani Ekin Özdemir with Pablo Diserens during the digital residency at Ocean-Archive.org throughout 2023/2024. You can read the interview in its original English edition here. Date of publication of the interview on our website: 30/12/2024.

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