This self-reflective audio paper investigates the politics of listening in the borderlands of Western Thrace, Greece. Introducing the notion of ‘aphonic borderscapes’, it examines how listening, soundwalking, and long-durational field recording can attune us to forms of silence shaped by ecological destruction, militarization, and erasure. The work moves through three sites: the ‘emptied’ ecological silence of the burned Dadia Forest; the ‘arrhythmic’ militarized quiet of Mikro Dereio; and the ‘aphonic’ silence of unmarked loss outside Sidiro. By attending to these sonic territories, the essay explores how silence and arrhythmia operate as political forces. It asks how an artist-listener may ‘lend an ear’ to narratives rendered inaudible, proposing a methodology of situated listening that recognizes the interdependence between recordist, landscape, and the echoes of those who traverse these contested terrains.
Lefteris Krysalis (Wed,) studied this question.