{"id":5392,"date":"2025-06-17T17:20:52","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T15:20:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/?p=5392"},"modified":"2025-06-18T12:02:55","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T10:02:55","slug":"sound-as-method-ecological-practices-and-the-politics-of-listening-giorgio-mega-in-conversation-with-manfredi-clemente","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/editorial\/sound-as-method-ecological-practices-and-the-politics-of-listening-giorgio-mega-in-conversation-with-manfredi-clemente\/","title":{"rendered":"Sound as Method: Ecological Practices and the Politics of Listening \u2013 Giorgio Mega in Conversation with Manfredi Clemente"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"flex basis-auto flex-col -mb-(--composer-overlap-px) [--composer-overlap-px:24px] grow overflow-hidden\">\n<div class=\"relative h-full\">\n<div class=\"flex h-full flex-col overflow-y-auto [scrollbar-gutter:stable_both-edges] @[84rem]\/thread:pt-(--header-height)\">\n<div class=\"@thread-xl\/thread:pt-header-height mt-1.5 flex flex-col text-sm pb-25\">\n<article class=\"text-token-text-primary w-full\" dir=\"auto\" data-testid=\"conversation-turn-4\" data-scroll-anchor=\"true\">\n<div class=\"text-base my-auto mx-auto py-5 [--thread-content-margin:--spacing(4)] @[37rem]:[--thread-content-margin:--spacing(6)] @[72rem]:[--thread-content-margin:--spacing(16)] px-(--thread-content-margin)\">\n<div class=\"[--thread-content-max-width:32rem] @[34rem]:[--thread-content-max-width:40rem] @[64rem]:[--thread-content-max-width:48rem] mx-auto flex max-w-(--thread-content-max-width) flex-1 text-base gap-4 md:gap-5 lg:gap-6 group\/turn-messages focus-visible:outline-hidden\" tabindex=\"-1\">\n<div class=\"group\/conversation-turn relative flex w-full min-w-0 flex-col agent-turn\">\n<div class=\"relative flex-col gap-1 md:gap-3\">\n<div class=\"flex max-w-full flex-col grow\">\n<div class=\"min-h-8 text-message relative flex w-full flex-col items-end gap-2 text-start break-words whitespace-normal [.text-message+&amp;]:mt-5\" dir=\"auto\" data-message-author-role=\"assistant\" data-message-id=\"d949168a-bad9-49a8-ad4f-e5555ed16ee7\" data-message-model-slug=\"gpt-4o\">\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-col gap-1 empty:hidden first:pt-[3px]\">\n<div class=\"markdown prose dark:prose-invert w-full break-words dark\">\n<p data-start=\"127\" data-end=\"496\"><em>In this conversation, Giorgio Mega talks with Manfredi Clemente after his residency at Fondazione Studio Rizoma. Starting from Horoi, a sound project and installation, they delve into the conceptual and political threads running through Clemente\u2019s artistic practice: sound as a relational tool, ecology as complex thinking, and art as a means rather than an end.<\/em><\/p>\n<p data-start=\"127\" data-end=\"496\"><a href=\"http:\/\/iframe%20style=border:%200;%20width:%20100%;%20height:%20120px;%20src=https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/track=3923131218\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/artwork=small\/transparent=true\/%20seamlessa%20href=https:\/\/manfrediclemente.bandcamp.com\/track\/horoi-sounds-from-the-installationHoroi%20-%20sounds%20from%20the%20installation%20by%20Manfredi%20Clemente\/a\/iframe\"><iframe style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/track=3923131218\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/artwork=small\/transparent=true\/\" seamless=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/manfrediclemente.bandcamp.com\/track\/horoi-sounds-from-the-installation\">Horoi &#8211; sounds from the installation by Manfredi Clemente<\/a><\/iframe><\/a><\/p>\n<p data-start=\"127\" data-end=\"496\"><em><strong data-start=\"503\" data-end=\"520\">Giorgio Mega:<\/strong><\/em><br data-start=\"520\" data-end=\"523\" \/>When we presented <em data-start=\"541\" data-end=\"548\">Horoi<\/em>, the sound project and installation, there was so much to unpack that it was impossible to fully explore the ideas and values that underpin your research and practice beyond this specific work. Getting straight to the point, let me ask you now: what are your thoughts on the relationship between sound, ecology, and politics? Let\u2019s begin with the first intersection. Sound ecology is a well-established discipline, yet it\u2019s often treated more from a research (or academic) perspective than as a practical one. What does it mean to you for a sonic practice to be an ecological one?<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"127\" data-end=\"496\"><em><strong data-start=\"1147\" data-end=\"1169\">Manfredi Clemente:<\/strong><\/em><br data-start=\"1169\" data-end=\"1172\" \/>I could answer that question in many ways, all of which would be partially accurate but, inevitably insufficient. So I\u2019d rather start by describing the value that sound holds for me and for my practice. I believe sound places us in a very specific and largely underestimated mode of relating to the world. Unlike vision\u2014which, due to optical limitations, must maintain a certain distance from objects (when you bring something too close to your eye, it goes out of focus), sound makes distance intimate. Its vibrational nature engages not just the auditory system but the whole body: sound passes through us, resonates within us, and deeply connects what is near and far. This deeply physical quality translates, for me, into sound\u2019s unique and meaningful capacity to place us in the world. Sound allows the \u201cother\u201d to reach us and touch us, despite the distance. Precisely because of this primary physical and spatial dimension, I believe sound can play a central role in representing and nurturing relational practices\u2014both on tangible levels (territories, environments, individuals) and on intangible yet equally real levels (such as social or political space). When I present a work in a space, I alter that environment and have the potential to prompt those who inhabit it to temporarily rewrite their relationship with the world. This potential increases if the process of creating the work is itself relational\u2014entailing reciprocal listening to places and people, to objects and realities. The ways in which this potential manifests are many and deeply dependent on the work and the process behind it. It\u2019s hard to generalize, but one can at least imagine the complex web of relationships such a process can activate. In a project like <em data-start=\"2921\" data-end=\"2928\">Horoi<\/em>, I didn\u2019t consider sound the final goal of my inquiry into the territory. I used it as a tool and method for analysis and research, precisely because of this extraordinary potential. A method for investigating and realizing the relationships that define an environment is, by nature, an ecological method. A process that makes this investigation public\u2014even if only momentarily focusing an audience\u2019s attention on specific environmental relational themes\u2014is a political process.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"127\" data-end=\"496\"><em><strong data-start=\"3414\" data-end=\"3421\">G.M.: <\/strong><\/em>Right, so when discussing each of these elements, it\u2019s inevitable to consider their relational aspects, both conceptually and in terms of practices that involve and encourage contact and exchange with humans and non-humans alike. So now I\u2019d like to ask you about ecology. Unlike sound, it\u2019s increasingly invoked as a framework for interpreting environments\u2014though sometimes in instrumentalized or superficial ways. What is ecology to you, when taken \u201cseriously\u201d?<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"3892\" data-end=\"4448\"><em><strong data-start=\"3892\" data-end=\"3899\">M.C.: <\/strong><\/em>I like to think that much of the current popularity of the term \u201cecology\u201d, beyond the urgency of climate change, comes from a growing need for complex thinking. This need arises in response to ongoing attacks on critical thought\u2014often grounded in the oversimplification of social and political phenomena. I believe current neoliberal and authoritarian narratives depend on staying on the surface of meaning, avoiding depth\u2014what someone might call a kind of phantasmagoria or reification. Ecology, in contrast, offers ways of resisting this trend. To your question, I\u2019d say ecological thinking is the ability to read the world on two simultaneous levels: horizontal and vertical. Much like in early polyphony, where independent melodic lines progressed autonomously while also generating vertical harmonies, so too in territories, landscapes, and inhabited spaces, we find independent but interconnected paths\u2014each with rich individual complexity and a simultaneous capacity\u2014and necessity\u2014to align symbiotically with parallel trajectories. These alignments, as Anna Tsing aptly notes, are often fleeting, fragile, and precarious, but grasping those vertical moments is crucial for a deep understanding of reality. A perspective that accounts for both the horizontal and vertical, along with the inherent precarities of their relationships, is an ecological reading of reality. And I think such an approach should not be limited to studying ecosystems in a strictly biological sense, nor confined to specific environments\u2014the city, the forest\u2014but should instead embrace forms that connect spatial production processes, as identified long ago by Henri Lefebvre, with the analysis of landscape and environment. It should establish constant connections between the particular and the general, the tangible and intangible, the concrete and the abstract. I also believe that it\u2019s the responsibility of ecological thinking to show that ecosystem alterations are constant mechanisms\u2014to highlight their (often devastating) criticalities but also to emphasize the evolutionary opportunities they create. And yes, to propose positive models, to open up alternative narratives by referencing ignored or taken-for-granted interconnections. It\u2019s in this spirit that art can contribute. In fact, I believe it already is\u2014by transforming itself and, as I said earlier, becoming a method and a means rather than an end.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"6312\" data-end=\"6681\"><a href=\"http:\/\/iframe%20style=border:%200;%20width:%20100%;%20height:%20120px;%20src=https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=1000976848\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/artwork=small\/transparent=true\/%20seamlessa%20href=https:\/\/manfrediclemente.bandcamp.com\/album\/hajime-yori-kotoba-shirazarikiHajime%20yori%20kotoba%20shirazariki%20by%20Manfredi%20Clemente\/a\/iframe\"><iframe style=\"border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=1000976848\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/artwork=small\/transparent=true\/\" seamless=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/manfrediclemente.bandcamp.com\/album\/hajime-yori-kotoba-shirazariki\">Hajime yori kotoba shirazariki by Manfredi Clemente<\/a><\/iframe><\/a><\/p>\n<p data-start=\"6312\" data-end=\"6681\"><em><strong data-start=\"6312\" data-end=\"6319\">G.M.: <\/strong><\/em>I agree that an approach which is transversal, deep, and connected to lived experience gives ecology more substance. And thank you for the perfect segue in saying that art is becoming more of a \u201cmethod and means rather than an end.\u201d That leads us directly into the third concept I wanted to explore in relation to your practice and thinking: politics. Again, as with ecology, there\u2019s politics and there\u2019s politics, ranging from meaningful engagement to token gestures and greenwashing. The age-old question of whether art is political by nature or whether it must serve politics remains open. But in a time when many of us (especially those engaged with these issues) experience a growing sense of helplessness and injustice in the face of power\u2019s blinding disregard, not just in environmental crises but even in the face of an ongoing genocide, broadcast live what can be done with art as a <em data-start=\"7239\" data-end=\"7246\">means<\/em> rather than an <em data-start=\"7262\" data-end=\"7267\">end<\/em>? And should art always carry this kind of diplomatic cover, this passport?<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"7348\" data-end=\"7723\"><em><strong data-start=\"7348\" data-end=\"7355\">M.C.: <\/strong><\/em>I believe it was Colin Ward who described anarchism as a necessary idealism (something diffuse and pervasive), an internal social tension that resurfaces in a multitude of spontaneous forms. Even when not explicitly named, it seems to fuel all those grassroots, horizontal initiatives that help keep alive a collective capacity to counterbalance power concentrations. That ongoing tension may feel exhausting, but it also propels us to act. It sustains the desire to explore alternatives to top-down models, and it exists as a spontaneous dimension of human social life. Returning to your question: art has always been political. For much of history, it was deeply entwined with power, an expression of it, even an extension. Today, art often still speaks the language of a dominant class, enclosed in a bubble that is, by its very nature, exclusionary. We need to cultivate practices that move in the opposite direction of power accumulation, toward horizontality. Practices that can generate effects outside the art system, that can make an impact socially, that at least demonstrate the intention to throw a harpoon at verticality and pull it down to earth. Personally, the path I\u2019m pursuing, and which I know I share with many others, is one of art that centers relationships, ecology, territorial research, the socio-political; that thrives on its processes of activation even before the production of aesthetic objects. Art that moves through the web of events and connections we discussed earlier, constantly correlating aesthetics and ethics. And by aesthetics, I don\u2019t mean just \u201cthe study of beauty,\u201d but rather, in its original sense, the investigation of human perception in the world. If we can steer the creative process in this direction, then yes, art can genuinely participate in that broader social tension. It can imagine contributing to something larger (as it has in the past, and as it still does in many cases today). That\u2019s why I speak of sound more as a <em data-start=\"9443\" data-end=\"9450\">means<\/em> than an <em data-start=\"9459\" data-end=\"9464\">end, <\/em>because I seek practices where the true value lies in the relational dimension of making, and in the participatory processes that this can involve. The artwork itself, I believe, holds that value I mentioned earlier: a momentary reconfiguration of reality. As such, it holds great potential and can speak volumes. But as with much post-war art, it must also testify to the process, highlighting the ecological and intersectional approaches I described earlier, and not existing merely as a \u201cbeautiful object,\u201d let alone as a technical or technological exercise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"mt-3 w-full empty:hidden\">\n<div class=\"text-center\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"absolute\">\n<div class=\"flex items-center justify-center\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"pointer-events-none h-px w-px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" data-edge=\"true\"><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"thread-bottom-container\" class=\"isolate z-3 w-full basis-auto has-data-has-thread-error:pt-2 has-data-has-thread-error:[box-shadow:var(--sharp-edge-bottom-shadow)] md:border-transparent md:pt-0 dark:border-white\/20 md:dark:border-transparent flex flex-col\">\n<div id=\"thread-bottom\">\n<div class=\"text-base mx-auto [--thread-content-margin:--spacing(4)] @[37rem]:[--thread-content-margin:--spacing(6)] @[72rem]:[--thread-content-margin:--spacing(16)] px-(--thread-content-margin)\">\n<div class=\"[--thread-content-max-width:32rem] @[34rem]:[--thread-content-max-width:40rem] @[64rem]:[--thread-content-max-width:48rem] mx-auto flex max-w-(--thread-content-max-width) flex-1 text-base gap-4 md:gap-5 lg:gap-6\">\n<div class=\"flex justify-center empty:hidden\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"max-xs:[--force-hide-label:none] relative z-1 flex h-full max-w-full flex-1 flex-col\" aria-haspopup=\"dialog\" aria-expanded=\"false\" aria-controls=\"radix-\u00abR695ij59jm595j5\u00bb\" data-state=\"closed\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"text-token-text-secondary relative mt-auto flex min-h-8 w-full items-center justify-center p-2 text-center text-xs md:px-[60px]\">\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this conversation, Giorgio Mega talks with Manfredi Clemente after his residency at Fondazione Studio Rizoma. Starting from Horoi, a sound project and installation, they delve into the conceptual and political threads running through Clemente\u2019s artistic practice: sound as a relational tool, ecology as complex thinking, and art as a means rather than an end. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5392"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5392"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5397,"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5392\/revisions\/5397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studiorizoma.org\/pt-pt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}