Rewor(l)ding Conservation #3: At the Shores of the River Tagus
A carte blanche to Margarida Mendes
For this new episode of “Rewor(l)ding Conservation”, we invited curator, researcher and pedagogue Margarida Mendes to open up her sonic archives around the Tagus river in Portugal, unpacking her practice as a multidisciplinary researcher exploring how sound can be used not only to describe, but also to sense changing ecosystems.
Situating herself in the watery world of the Tagus wetland, and drawing from her PhD research “Sensorial Ecologies”, in this two-part episode we follow Mendes’ voice as she introduces her work around how sonic practices can be mobilised towards ecological and community reparation and conservation. Her storytelling offers an example of how listening can shape one’s understanding of the environment, mediated by sensing infrastructures, interspecies interactions, and the impacts of extractive industries.
The second part of the episode is an invitation to engage with deep listening, opening our ears to the flows and ebbs of the river, guided by meditative scores that bring us to an embodied relationality with its fluxes and pulses.
For this new episode of “Rewor(l)ding Conservation”, we invited curator, researcher and pedagogue Margarida Mendes to open up her sonic archives around the Tagus river in Portugal, unpacking her practice as a multidisciplinary researcher exploring how sound can be used not only to describe, but also to sense changing ecosystems.
Situating herself in the watery world of the Tagus wetland, and drawing from her PhD research “Sensorial Ecologies”, in this two-part episode we follow Mendes’ voice as she introduces her work around how sonic practices can be mobilised towards ecological and community reparation and conservation. Her storytelling offers an example of how listening can shape one’s understanding of the environment, mediated by sensing infrastructures, interspecies interactions, and the impacts of extractive industries.
The second part of the episode is an invitation to engage with deep listening, opening our ears to the flows and ebbs of the river, guided by meditative scores that bring us to an embodied relationality with its fluxes and pulses.
Margarida Mendes is a researcher, curator, artist and educator, exploring the overlap between systems thinking, experimental film, sound practices and ecopedagogy. She creates transdisciplinary forums, exhibitions and experiential works where alternative modes of education and sensory practices may catalyse political imagination and restorative action. Mendes has long been involved in anti-extraction activism collaborating with marine NGOs, Universities, and institutions of the art world. She holds a PhD in Research Architecture by the Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths University of London and is a member of Natural Contract Lab, a transdisciplinary collective of lawyers and artists working on restorative justice and rights of nature across Europe.
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