Arctic Auditories is a collaborative research project funded by Norges forskningsråd from 2022 – 2025. Our team comprise myself, Paula Ryggvik Mikalsen (literary scholar, UiT, the Arctic University of Norway), Za Barron (human geographer, Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Britta Sweers (cultural anthropologist, Bern University) and is led by Katrin Losleben (feminist researcher, UiT, the Arctic University).
Arctic Auditories seeks to listen to “hydrospheres” (water environments) of the High North through local, migrant and indigenous ears, aiming to discover whether shifting sensory emphasis to an aural register can reveal more about changing environments that have historically tended to be visualised. According to our academic statement, “through engaging in diverse listening processes, we seek to understand collectively non-hegemonic knowledges about how humans and more-than-humans live by, with, and in changing Arctic waters. On this basis, we aim to provide additional layers to the cartography of the High North. The findings will be conveyed to the wider public with an exhibition at the Polar Museum in Tromsø”.
Fundamental to the project are a series of collaborations that adapt soundwalking methodology. I am involved with the delivery of these and am simultaneously sourcing a representation of the arctic soundscape from various textual accounts, the progress of which you can read on the Ersfjordbotn blog. Katrin Losleben and I are conducting interviews with artists who use sound in artistic and social scientific explorations of hydrospheres and cyrospheres (frozen water environments). As the project develops I will be leading field recording workshops and hope to install a open audio stream in Tromsø harbour.
