Listening Through the Sonic Territories of Search

This digital archive accompanies the research project Weaving the Search in Uncertain Times: Care, Co-Creation, and Listening with Women Searching for Disappeared Loved Ones and Sexual and Gender Dissident People in Colombia. Supported by the German-Colombian Peace Institute (CAPAZ), the project was developed in collaboration with partner organizations in Medellín and Bogotá through a series of encuentros (gatherings) dedicated to listening, memory, care, and the ongoing search for disappeared persons.

Conceived as spaces of ethical return, collective reflection, and reciprocal learning, these encuentros brought together women searching for disappeared loved ones, sexual and gender dissident people, researchers, artists, and partner organizations. Through conversations, collective sonic cartographies, cartotejidos, territorial memory practices, and creative collaboration, participants shared experiences and knowledges emerging from la búsqueda while exploring more reciprocal ways of producing knowledge, accompanying one another, and contributing to territorial memory, justice, and pluriversal peacebuilding.

Throughout these encuentros, sound, noise, and silence emerged as ways of approaching memory beyond spoken testimony. Songs, conversations, the sounds of rivers, birds, and the land, the beat of drums and other percussion instruments, moments of silence, and everyday soundscapes became part of the relations through which la búsqueda, remembrance, collective care, and community continue to be woven. Listening is understood here not simply as hearing, but as a situated, relational, and necessarily partial practice shaped by histories, lived experiences, and relations with human and more-than-human worlds.

This digital archive brings together four complementary materials developed at different stages of the project. While some informed and accompanied the encuentros, others emerged through the collaborative processes they made possible. Together, they can be explored in the Listening Through Sonic Territories: Archive Resources section, where they offer different ways of engaging with the reflections, practices, experiences and shared knowledges that shaped this project.