A new way of life, a new social condition—a new mode of being. In the aftermath of Covid-19, we continue to search for what truly matters: how we live, what we value, and how we listen.

This short soundscape is composed entirely of environmental recordings and voice, drawing inspiration from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, a reflection on two years of voluntary solitude in the woods in 1845. The piece invites the listener to sit in near-darkness, wearing headphones, and momentarily shut off the visual world in order to enter a quiet acoustic space.

Presented in one of the rooms of HOTEL CLASKA’s 8th gallery—an iconic cultural site now approaching its closure—the work becomes a quiet gesture of farewell, and a small experiment in listening. What do we lose, and what do we gain, when we listen with our eyes closed? What might we hear in a world reshaped by the so-called “New Normal”?

Thanks and sound collaboration to Aaron McKnight