In this atelier, foraging becomes a way of gathering sound in close dialogue with the environment of the VUB campus. Instead of treating recording as something we take, we approach it as a form of listening with a place. We ask how recorded sounds can stay connected to where they come from, and what it means to record in a responsive and ethical way. If we take sound, how can we also give something back? Through hands-on exploration, shared listening, and discussion, participants are invited to rethink field recording as a reciprocal process, where human and more-than-human presences resonate together.

The workshop is initiated by sound artists and researchers Nele Möller (LUCA) and Ernst Maréchal (RITCS), in collaboration with artist/curator Gosie Vervloessem (The Foragers for VUB Crosstalks).

Ernst Maréchal is an audiovisual artist, performer, and singer-songwriter. With his work, he seeks to address, understand, and (re)imagine issues of (in)equality, diversity, and commonality. He is interested in the ethics of engaging with the voices he meets: how direction and meaning can be given and positions taken – together – around shared interests that he alone cannot embody. As an artistic (PhD) researcher at the RITCS School of Arts/VUB, he develops Social Recordings, a process-based practice that gathers (in musical assemblies) field recordings, sonic encounters, and improvisations created in diverse social, pedagogical, and artistic contexts, in collaboration with artists and non-artists of all ages.

Nele Möller is currently working towards a PhD in the Arts at KU Leuven and LUCA Brussels. Her research project, The Forest Echoes Back, oscillates around the Thuringian Forest in Germany, which is severely impacted by monoculture plantings, climate change, and bark beetle outbreaks, exploring ways to retrace and react to these ongoing changes using field recording, live audio streaming, listening, and mimicry as central methodologies.