An Ear to the River ~ counterflows | Blanc Sceol

This podcast asks us to listen with the Channelsea River, a recovering waterway in East London, and home to London’s largest combined sewage outfall, historically discharging 16,000 million tonnes of raw sewage annually into the river.  These discharges have largely stopped since the connection of the Lee tunnel in 2016, enabling the river to begin restoring itself, but it now faces a renewed assault as the new £4.5 billion ‘Tideway Tunnel’ is connected in the coming months. This massive infrastructure project will improve pollution events to London’s inner city rivers, but at great cost and against other more sustainable, lower impact options.

The voice and field recordings bring us into contact with a slippery journey through underground pipes old and new, precarious river living, court battles, hope and uncertainty.

This sound piece is part of an ongoing series of site specific actions with river, enacted by artist duo Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell & Hannah White) since, and in connection with, their part in the establishment of moorings and conservation cooperative ‘Surge Coop’ in 2018.

Surge Cooperative is a collaborative effort to benevolently occupy the Channelsea river in London, as a place for people to live on the water, and a way to acknowledge the living systems that are already present. 

Our research as artists within and without this cooperative seeks to live with, listen with and act with this vital system, finding new ways to tackle problems of neglect and misuse whilst navigating ancient acts of parliament and institutional backwaters to advocate on behalf of this waterway.

Our regular meetings with river are invitations to ourselves and others to gather, listen, observe and learn through a variety of containers, from workshops to walks, reading groups, deep listening, live transmissions and collaborations. These actions and activities become a sustaining stream that encourages us to flow as a river, attempting to connect bodies and organisations across geographical, social and political boundaries. We propose common actions with those connected to river or local to the area, encouraging collective efforts to listen with and celebrate its rich landscape. Through each of these actions our attempts to understand and support river grow and change as we uncover more about the forces at work, both within and without.

~ Blanc Sceol are an artist duo who work in the expanded field of listening, sound, and performance. They instigate participatory gatherings to foster a reciprocal relationship with ecological communities. Their work is a spiral within the space-time continuum.

www.surge.coop
www.blancsceol.co.uk
instagram: @blancsceol