AM Kaangieser is a geographer and sound artist. I find her practice very inspiring. Her ideas about translation and indigenous knowledge led me to some further research about these complexities.
~ Suspend the will to know, and allow the ambiguity of what is being heard flow through ~ Kaangieser also points out that knowing fully is impossible, and translating into certain knowledge systems or languages is reductive. I appreciate this and want to explain this in my listening activities.
From “To Tend For, To Care With: Listening as Method.” On being unwanted:“If Anglo-Europeans can undo our conception of nature, of environment, and conceive of our relations to/with places as dynamic and interdependent, then attuning to a ‘no’ becomes much more imaginable. That environments hold histories within them is incontestable. The world is filled with stories of places haunted by spirits and memories, by the energetic and atomic residues of traumatic events. There are many places that are not to be entered, or even spoken of, by certain people. Sacred sites for ceremony or important transitions are not to be encroached on, and it is not possible to always know what places hold what significance. The acknowledgement of such places through conservation and heritage designations map awkwardly over spiritual perimeters. I can feel, even when human permission is given, that there are places that are not appropriate for me to be in. The moment in the rainforest showed me that even where clear protocols of asking and granting permission are undertaken with villagers, this does not mean that such negotiations can be translated onto the specific place itself. Permission needs to be sought again and again, each and every time, from everyone and everywhere. What I carry with me in listening is that I cannot assume consent based on prior interaction. Listening as taking-leave is about acknowledging that my presence is doing something to where I am. I have learnt to attend to what I sense, even when I might not understand why. I-Kiribati and African-American scholar Teresia Teaiwa writes that “Indigenous knowledge is not always transparent or accessible to all, nor is it meant to be” (2005: 16). Knowledge of environments, knowledge of places are not always mine to ask for or to hear, and to meet the world with this as a reminder is very important. To be able to listen to, and appreciate, what is not for us as Anglo-European scholars and artists is one of the most imperative things I have been taught to accept and practice.”