What Does The End of the World Sound Like? Listen to This

There is, of course, a western privilege at play with the extent to which climate issues affect more vulnerable groups disproportionately — often within the Pacific and South America — than others around the globe. It is, all too often, a deficiency in our understanding of ecological crisis, too — the fact that others are already living with its real, often destructive consequences. Anja Kanngieser, a sound artist and academic, is exploring climate justice issues in the Pacific through the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research at the University of Wollongong. Speaking to me from Australia, they described a formerly colonized region, many countries within it having only gained their independence in the 1970s and 80s. The area lives with the effects of extractive industries such as mining and deep seabed exploration, alongside the nuclear testing legacies of the France, Britain and USA throughout the Marshall Islands.

Kanngieser’s sound art encompasses oral testimony, field recording and data sonification to amplify climate justice issues, weaving a narrative around the people and soundscapes of the Pacific. Their work consciously diverges from the pristine natural soundscapes feeding into conservation practices, which are founded on a western idea of nature at odds with the outlook and needs of communities in the Pacific. “There's not much discussion about how that particular idea can be really damaging for different kinds of people," they said. “There are Indigenous communities who rely on their environment for natural resources.”

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