RadioActive - on Water #4 - Sonic Traces by Margarida Mendes

A six-part series by Meira Asher and Stephen Shiell exploring the interactions between transmission, sound, activism and water. Each episode is created by a different artist or group who engage with water politics and the politics of listening through the medium of radio.

Embarking on a journey along hydrobodies - from the deep ocean’s abyssal planes all the way through the Mississippi river, outwards into Indonesian tropical rainforests – Sonic Traces expands on my personal inquiries and journey as an activist and researcher. It sets out to expose how the traces of pollution - be they sonic or chemical - travel through watery spaces, impacting communities across ecosystems. Taking the form of a speculative dérive, it includes field recordings, poetry, field notes, and philosophical wonders.

I address research developed in the Lower Mississippi river petrochemical corridor, North Kalimantan in Borneo island, as well as introduce my practice as an activist concerned with deep sea mining and the impacts of ocean noise. I enquire how the water column is affected by chemical particles circulating through it, as new industries arise and expand from the seabed outwards towards land, tracing some of the cumulative impacts of human presence, while raising awareness into how one is embedded in wider webs of ecosystemic exchange.

For what if one were set to understand watery systems in novel ways that reorganize how one senses and partakes in the world?

Expanding on how traces bear witness to past actions and leave an intergenerational imprint, I explore the complex condition of partition-thinking in natural worlds, problematising human-centric ideas of containment and fixity, in otherwise fluid and interconnected spaces. By doing so, I expand on our conceptualisation of space and corporeality to introduce new perspectives on environmental thinking.

Margarida Mendes is a researcher, curator, artist and educator, exploring the overlap between systems thinking, experimental film, sound practices and ecopedagogy. She creates transdisciplinary forums, exhibitions and experiential works where alternative modes of education and sensory practices may catalyse political imagination and restorative action.

Mendes has long been involved in anti-extraction activism collaborating with marine NGOs, Universities, and institutions of the art world. She holds a PhD in Research Architecture by the Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths University of London and is a member of Natural Contract Lab, a transdisciplinary collective of lawyers and artists working on restorative justice and rights of nature across Europe.