At the Symposium of Sonic Acts Biennial 2024, Astrida Neimanis gives a talk examining the curious relationships between language and feeling, presence and absence, solid ground and being untethered at sea.

In a time of extinction and climate catastrophe, how are we to feel? Feeling intensifies, but also wavers. Feeling’s temporal container pulses, its membrane now more porous: the past seeps in, the future jumps the gun. Feeling anything swims in the wake of what once was, and is burdened by what will or will not remain tomorrow. How do species-strangers care for and hold one another? What do we touch when we touch another, and what touches us back? Meditating on various instances of multispecies contact, moving from the edge of the ocean to the scientist’s workbench, this talk examines the curious relationships between language and feeling, presence and absence, solid ground and being untethered at sea.

Realized by Paradiso & Sonic Acts as part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.