019 – Listening in the Anthropocene

March 2021

Editors

Jennifer Munday,
Cassily Charles,
Michelle O’Connor,
Tracy Sorensen,
Bärbel Ullrich,
Louisa Waters

Preface

In this edition of Fusion Journal we wish to explore the act of listening to the land, to others, to difference, as encountered in embodied and virtual spaces. We especially encouraged contributions that represent creative practice as well as more traditional text-based articles. How might we attempt to interpret what is being said in languages we do not understand? How might we resist – even if just for a moment – adding our own sounds to the noises of the neoliberal project of the anthropocene: the clashing music of the shopping mall, the automated voice, the shock jock, the celebrity, the power tools, the leaf blowers, the bulldozers, the mining blasts. How might we listen out, or tune in, to the small, the subtle, the unnoticed, the dying, the unusual, the banal, the mad, the unexpected?

In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, our plans for a Listening in the Anthropocene Symposium and Exhibition in 2020 had to change. Initially planned to take place in and around the HR Gallop Gallery on the Wagga Wagga campus of Charles Sturt University, the Creative Practice Circle decided to take the entire event online. The exhibition was presented online on Thursday August 27, while the Symposium will be delivered via Zoom webinar. Confirmed keynote speakers for the Symposium included artists Mandy Martin and Margaret Woodward.