Intention:

We have been conditioned by a thread of misguided power structures. Their labels could include the following: systems of social stratification and hierarchy via Agriculture(1). Colonialism, with its forced acquisition of land, resources, slavery and oppression of indigenous communities. The Industrial Revolution, with its emphasis on mass production and relentless consumption. Capitalism, the ownership of the those means of mass production. The Great Acceleration, accelerating growth on almost all frontiers including energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and population growth, thrusting the planet into a massive uncontrolled experiment.

We are in the Holocene, approximately 12,000 years that should have been one of the most geologically stable periods in human history. However we’ve abused our environment in the last few centuries to the extent that scientists are warning that the world has entered its sixth mass extinction, an event when a majority of species on Earth die off. It is now suggested by the International Commission on Stratigraphy that we are in the Anthropocene, an epoch where human activity has made a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. Regarding earth systems and global socioeconomic trends over the Holocene, it indeed seems likely that we are in a time of accelerating uncertainty and suffering as a species, and that Capitalism, or the Capitalocene(2) is the latest word to describe our trajectory

For most of us, that is, second nation people, there is opaque understanding that we are collectively doing something wrong, but with no way to change, even as it gets harder to survive in these highly volatile times. This condition could be termed as “collective aphasia”(3), which feels like no accident in a hugely unequal world, but also not entirely conscious either. I put forward the notion that the Great Acceleration is also the Great Hijacking of the Human Psyche, where our relationship with place, each other and ecology diminish, in favour of some sort of trauma bond with hierarchy, colonialism, consumption and growth. As Graeber and Wengrow write “We know now, that we are in the presence of myths”(4), and they are destroying us.

What are the ways in which we can start to undo this process? How do we even understand how we've been conditioned? It is one thing to understand the need to deconstruct and rebuild, but another thing entirely to corporeally understand that our shared reality is shaped by colonial impositions. From money, to culture, to aesthetics, to religion to gender norms, even the language I’m using to write this article - they are all conditioned by colonial legacy.

Decolonising Listening Exercise V1 is a small effort to understand and rewire this affect on the level of sound. We journey beneath language and separation, into a sonic realm where we are listening as, not listening to. A good way to describe this is it's like the act of discovering your favourite songs as a child or a teenager - the way we listened to music then was with our body and soul. We weren't listening to the music, in a sense we became the music. We understand that listening is something that can be deconstructed for the sake of our shared ecology, rebuilt with decolonised perspective, and that most of all, it feels good. Our bodies know the difference. How do we now take this forward in challenging myth in the Capitolocene?

Note:

When we speak about decolonising listening, it's important to acknowledge that the specificity of what decolonisation means for first nation peoples is the return of stolen lands and the dismantling of the colonial infrastructure”. It means this for second nation peoples too, but there are steps to getting there; first we need to become aware of the extent of our colonisation. It’s important not to fall into the trap of settler innocence occurs when people rely too heavily on the notion to ‘decolonize your mind,’ thinking, or knowledge. The end goal is to act to decolonize, that means giving back Indigenous ancestral lands, and in general undoing practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people / area.

Decolonisation is firstly:

- the undoing of colonialism / neocolonialism

Then:

- an ongoing critique of worldviews learned from historical Western power structures

- challenging norms that stem from colonial impositions of religion, language, economics & culture

References:

1. Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott

2. The Capitalocene, Part I: on the nature and origins of our ecological crisis by Jason W. Moore

3. Inspired by Ann Stoler’s Colonial Aphasia: Race and Disabled Histories in France. “It is not a matter of ignorance or absence,” writes Stoler. “Aphasia is a dismembering, a difficulty speaking, a difficulty generating a vocabulary that associates appropriate words and concepts with appropriate things.”

4. “We know now, that we are in the presence of myths” David Graeber & David Wengrow on the conventional account of human history as a saga of material progress. From The Dawn of Everything