Echolocation is a technique that some species use to identify distances between elements of their environment by the means of reflected ultrasounds. Those reflections help them navigate in environments that have no visual clues or remain covered in darkness. Eye-impaired people also use echolocation skills. By generating specific sounds and paying attention to their echoes, they can read them as clues to understanding their surrounding. The way Smolicki attends to echolocation is obviously different. In a quite speculative manner, he wonders what it would mean to position oneself in a space where present sounds are listened to as the echoes of the past. In his work, echolocation or ec(h)olocation becomes a technique for reconnecting with the histories of various ecosystems whose soundscapes have over the years been subject to dramatic reconfigurations. Coming from the ancient Greek oikos, eco means home. Ec(h)olocation is hence a technique of becoming aware of one's position - a home - by recognizing, amplifying, and paying attention to the echoes of other positions and homes for some reason relegated to the (audible) past.

During the festival Smolicki will walk through, practically engage with and live-stream past and present soundscapes from two sites; Söderström and Vinterviken in Stockholm.

This performance takes place by Söderström. It is one of the shortest rivers in Europe of crucial importance to the water balance between the Baltic Sea and Mälaren, one of the biggest lakes in Sweden.

Jacek Smolicki is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and soundwalker. His works brings historical, critical and ethical dimensions to recording practices and technologies in diverse contexts. Besides working with existing documents, archives and heritage, Smolicki develops alternative modes of sensing, recording, para-archiving, and mediating stories and signals from various sites, scales, and temporalities. His work is manifested through soundwalks, soundscape compositions, site-responsive performances, experimental para-archives, audio-visual installations, and diverse forms of writing. He is currently a postdoc researcher at Linköping University exploring the history and prospects of soundwalking and field recording practices from the perspective of media arts, environmental humanities, and philosophy of technology. He has exhibited internationally and in 2019 co-founded the Walking Festival of Sound.

www.smolicki.com

Walking Festival of Sound is a transdisciplinary event exploring the role of walking through and listening to our everyday surroundings. It combines a number of free and public events including walking performances and walking seminars. Walking Festival of Sound facilitates a meeting point for an international network of practitioners and researchers interested in sound and walking. Through diverse events we explore how walking and listening practices can augment and challenge the way we perceive, navigate through, and care for our shared environments.

The Walking Festival of Sound 2021 is kindly funded by the Culture of Solidarity Fund.

The program of events is organised and curated by Jacek Smolicki and Tim Shaw.

http://wfos.net/

A YouTube link will be sent to participants shortly before the event.