Margarida Mendes – Sensorial Ecologies Lecture at Sonic Acts 2024 Biennial

Our perception of the environment is shaped by how we sense, as well as through sociality protocols that are informed by intergovernmental sensing infrastructures. Our collective sense of our surroundings is shaped by practices and policies that mould our eco pedagogies and ecological politics, giving space to future worlds.

In this lecture, Margarida Mendes transmits an ontology of the sensory, departing from her experiments with listening to riverine sites under 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.