Planetary Listening, book+cassette, ISBN 978-3000788598, English, 80 pages, 2024, Germany

Swamps & Stars was a series of events by artists and researchers from Berlin and other cities that explored ‘the vibrations between swampy spaces and the cosmos’. These events were sound-based, performances and participatory happenings and took place throughout 2023. The collective Planetary Listening has created a documentation of these events. Divided into four modules (one per season), they brought together artists, scientists, storytellers and musicians from the perspective of listening with a planetary vision across the city. The publication gathers reports on the activities and data at the events, while the cassette contains eighteen tracks from participants and a QR code linking to the PDF of the publication. Within the pages we find interviews with the protagonists, and a varied practice of situated listening in all its declinations emerges, where the participating audience can deeply connect to the local environments, understand the theoretical possibilities of interspecies communication, and realise the importance of paying attention to the sound waves we perceive in the spaces we temporarily inhabit. This small book, printed in risograph, summarises the knowledge that can then be heard in its sonic form on the cassette, and represents a case study that can potentially be replicated in other strategic parts of the world.