Soundscapes as Timescapes joins three artists with distinctively different approaches to exploring intersections of sound, ancestry, and landscape. Proposing instruments and sound waves as forms of record, the artists point to the sonic threads and aural traces of deep time. The three practices reinterpret linear time-keeping by linking instruments to practices of land-keeping, and ecologies of sound, seasons, and material culture. Juliette Lizotte’s techno-composed science fictional character utilises a traditional Basque Country instrument to access their historical landscape. Merche Blasco constructs electroacoustic devices that act as biorhythmic communicators with multiple non-human beings. And Nyokabi Kariũki combines classical piano, voice, electronics, and instruments from the African continent in ensembles with birds, musicians, and natural phenomena to show the sonorous continuities still present in a seemingly broken world. The session will be followed by a discussion with the artists.

The listening session is part of the symposium The RING: On Instrumental Time, organised by Xenia Benivolski and Rachael Rakes. Unfolding over two days, this symposium of discourse and listening events is prompted by the ancient and enduring relationship of clocks and instruments, and music and time. The sessions bring together artists who build, rearrange, and manipulate instruments, and study the various scales of temporal perception transmitted through natural and augmented sound.

Juliette Lizotte is a video maker, artist, community organiser and radio maker based in Amsterdam. Juliette’s work focuses on mythological figures as portals to address ecological urgencies and make ground for resistance to status quo while exploring role play methodologies for collective storytelling.