Sonic Archetypes of the Mondine: Artistic Research as Environmental Testimony

This project presents a performative and discursive investigation of the sonic archetype of the mondine — seasonal rice-field workers — as a site of endangered knowledge and minoritised oral traditions. The artistic research positions itself as environmental testimony, making audible the interactions between human voice, ecosystems, and social memory. The work reinterprets historical repertoires through improvisation and site-specific performance, highlighting how vernacular songs and embodied sonic practices resonate with contemporary ecological and social urgencies.
The performances created in this research are grounded in ethnographic and practice-based methodologies, including field recordings, interviews, audiovisual documents, hydrophones and sensors, electroacoustic compositional processes, and vocal improvisation as a form of situated knowledge. Case studies address rice-field pollution, abandoned industrial sites, and invasive alien species, exploring the interplay between human voice and environmental sounds, and demonstrating artistic responses to ecological transformations.
By engaging with the sonic archetype, the research explores how endangered conceptual worlds generate distinctive forms of innovation. The mondina repertoire is treated as generative rather than archival: improvisation mediates dialogue between voice, biophony, geophony, and anthropophony, revealing precarious ecological conditions and making visible subjugated knowledge embedded in the landscape. This approach emphasizes resilience, resistance, and revival, demonstrating the potential of minoritised sonic languages to counter homogenising pressures, platform capitalism, and cultural standardisation, while offering alternative epistemic models for listening, interpretation, and creative action.
The presentation combines live performance and discussion, illustrating how artistic research can act as both an aesthetic experience and a method of ecological and cultural investigation.