Listening is Action

Listening is Action: A Soundwalk with Hildegard Westerkamp

The composer Hildegard Westerkamp invites us to her home in Vancouver. She talks us through her first field recordings, the idea of soundwalks, her work at the Vancouver Co-operative Radio and her participation in the World Soundscape Project. She takes us to listen to the places she recorded more than twenty years ago, the sounds of which constitute the material for some of her soundscape compositions. This sound documentary is an invitation to listen more attentively to our environments in order to evolve our relationships with ourselves and the wider world.

Listening is Action was narrated by Hildegard Westerkamp, produced, recorded, and edited by Luis Velasco-Pufleau, with music by Hildegard Westerkamp, mixing by Christophe Rault, and lead voice by Rachel Gordy. Diffusion: Babelfish asbl. 2022, 31 minutes.

Territory Acknowledgement: Listening is Action was recorded in the city of Vancouver, which is situated on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Funding: Listening is Action is part of the research project ONTOMUSIC, held at the University of Bern and McGill University, and was financially supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 101027828.

Festivals:
La Semaine du Son / De week van de Klank (Brussels, Belgium), 4 February 2023
Official selection: SONOHR festival (Bern, Switzerland), 25 February 2023