2020 introduced a pause to commercial activity due to the world-wide outbreak of the Coronavirus. This brought countless consequences to the environment, and to the sonic environment in particular. New acoustic horizons emerged, signaling times of unquietness and global change, and requiring an enhanced listening awareness to evolve.
The theme for the annual World Listening Day event for July 18, 2021 is “The Unquiet Earth”. The theme, coined by Lisbon-based filmmaker, curator, and organizer Raquel Castro, is an invitation to reflect on and engage with the constant murmur of the Earth, sounds beyond the threshold of human hearing, to remind ourselves that humans share this mysterious and awesome planet. Small, hidden, subterranean, aerial, underwater, infra and ultrasonic sounds, inaudible to the naked ear, can bring a new, potentially hopeful, perspective on the future of the planet and humanity. Listening as activism encourages human societies to question its attitudes as listeners and attempt to construct a more inclusive and empathetic new world.