Listen back to the video lecture of Margatia Mendes, recorded at Sonic Acts Biennial 2024.

Researcher, educator, and curator Margarida Mendes’ lecture asks how our understanding of the environment is shaped on different scales from the way we sense, to social protocols and intergovernmental infrastructures. For Mendes, a collective sense of our surroundings is formed by practices and policies that mould our ecological pedagogies and politics, giving space (or not) to future worlds. Through her work she transmits an ontology of the sensory, starting with her experiments in listening to riverine sites that are undergoing transformation. Addressing acts of sensory co-emergence as non-linear and intertwined with ecosystems, she questions how the protocols of listening intercede with one’s relation to environmental grief, and what role the environmental humanities has in developing better ears towards the planet. The lecture is followed by a Q&A session with curator and researcher Rachael Rakes, as well as audience members.

→ Explore more of the Sonic Acts Biennial 2024 programme at https://2024.sonicacts.com

VIDEO CREDITS Production: Sonic Acts Camera: Engage! TV Intro sound: Jessica Ekomane Intro design: Knoth & Renner with Anja Kaiser
Realised by Paradiso & Sonic Acts as part of New Perspectives for Action. A project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union.