During this residency, I will focus on the foundational aspect of the Senne River in Brussels, specifically on the historical record of the covering and diverting of this watercourse, and then delve into its current condition between the streets of the city. This aspect intersects with a concept of development that has taken root in various parts of the world. Through different strategies and models, it is often presented as the only viable method for progress, a linear trajectory that implies a progressive distancing from the minimal contexts, that also make worlds. Thus, the covering and diverting of the Senne River exemplifies and reveals the operations, layers, forms, and narratives that constituted the solutions of a past that still persists, both in its effects and paradigms, and beyond the immediate territorial contexts. In this project, I will explore its vestiges through transductive and metaphorical processes.

Observing the maps, I move from a macro view of Brussels in the Senne to a progressive zoom-in and vice versa. As my own stature undergoes a change of scale, as a kind of miniaturisation, I delve deeper into the measures and dimensions of the development concept in question. Listening to the river Senne from a distance and from up close, the urban environment of Brussels seems to be influenced by its signals, the one and the other seem to intercept each other in a reciprocal relationship. There is a feedback field between the two. Both sound signals are at a point of proximity where they are more than progress; they carry singular and complex expressive elements, many of them imperceptible, that do not respond to a single perspective.

I explore this Senne/Brussels feedback field using zoom-in and zoom-out technologies such as microphones, maps and hand lenses. By experimenting with imperceptible sounds, changes of scale, different surfaces, distances, and proximities, I intend to reflect on this concept of development at work not only in Brussels, but also in other regions of the planet, as well as on the underdevelopment that results from it. In the meantime, I intend to think about alternative models that differ from the human scale, its logics and paradigms.

Graciela Muñoz is a composer, musician and postdoctoral researcher, working in improvised creative processes, in dialogue with other ecosystems. Her works wander between mixed media, acousmatic, soundscape, and other assemblages. She studied composition in Chile and electroacoustic music in Barcelona with Andrés Lewin-Richter at the Phonos Foundation. She holds a Master’s degree in Media Arts from the Universidad de Chile, her degree process consisted of a site-specific sound installation where the soundscape of the Baker River converged in the dry riverbed of the Petorca River in Chile. After finishing her master’s degree, she pursued a PhD in Philosophy with a major in Aesthetics and Theory of Art at the Universidad de Chile. Currently, she developing her postdoctoral project (Fondecyt- ANID), at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, entitled “Listening to miniature forests: ethical-bio-logical amplification of the concept of listening from the Magallanes subantarctic ecoregion”.

www.labsonoro.cl