Co-dreaming Climates: Public Space for More-Than-Human Socialities

In the face of ongoing but unevenly distributed planetary catastrophe and, in the words of Patricia Reed, an urgent need to “make inhabitable worlds in common”, I argue for listening as a mode of urban spatial practice that offers the opportunity to remake our relations with more-than-human others. Recent work in sound studies has explored the potential of listening to create mutuality, dissent and agency; here I am interested in how pedagogical tools can be designed to support these more radical modes of listening. Weaving essay writing with transcribed audio from a webtool that deploys field recordings and from staged conversations around food, I share experiments drawn from collaborations over the past two years. This is work developed as an architectural researcher, working with performance makers, sonic artists, urban curators, natural scientists, and community and cultural organisations who are seeking to make public space for climate. Through this transdisciplinary praxis, listening is deployed to produce personal and social affects, space for political encounter, and attunement to ecological relations. In coming together to listen, we sought to create spaces for co-dreaming climates, where climate is understood as in crisis, as atmosphere, and as potentiality.