An Ear to River ~ counterflows
Author/s: Blanc Sceol
Date of production: 2024
Language/s: English
Transmission details: This sound piece asks us to listen with the Channelsea River, a recovering waterway in East London, and home to London’s largest combined sewage outfall, historically discharging 16,000 million tonnes of raw sewage annually into the river. The voice and field recordings bring us into contact with a slippery journey through underground pipes old and new, precarious river living, court battles, hope and uncertainty. This piece is part of an ongoing series of site specific actions with river, enacted in connection with our part in the establishment of moorings and conservation cooperative ‘Surge Coop’ in 2018.
Surge Cooperative is a collaborative effort to benevolently occupy the Channelsea river in London, as a place for people to live on the water, and a way to acknowledge the living systems that are already present.
The piece is part of ‘RadioActive – on water’ podcast series co-curated by Meira Asher and Stephen Shiell, exploring the interactions between transmission, sound, activism and water.
