Terrae Incognitae: Crossing the Borders of Sonic Ecology

This paper argues that a contemporary perspective on the soundscape must inevitably acknowledge the invisible agency of sound as a force that reveals the possible assemblages that make a place, offering ways to rethink the relations between power, politics and space in a critical ecological perspective. A number of art-based case studies support this thesis statement. In particular, the paper focuses on some projects developed during the Liminaria 2015 sound art residency in in rural southern Italy. The analysis of these case studies entails a critical engagement with such notions, and the proposition of a possible approach in which the crossing of the current boundaries regulating the practices of field recording – in the ‘acoustic ecology’ perspective – is a prelude to a novel experience of place and territory.