I
n 1998, Peter Cusack, a sound artist who
currently lives and works between London
and Berlin, began a project called Favour-
ite Sounds. Behind it lay a simple premise:
that he would record his favourite locational
sounds. The project asked for nothing spec-
tacular, but for sounds that were defined
by their very ordinariness. An album, Your
Favourite London Sounds, followed three
years later – it included the hubbub of
various markets, the ding-ding ring of a
double-decker bus, the chimes of Big Ben,
a key turning in the door. Taken together,
each, in its own quiet way, went to create
a tapestry of life and with it a sensory
immediacy that speaks to both resonance
and memory. It’s what Cusack calls ‘sonic
journalism’ and it is a way of working that
has taken him from recording city sounds
across the world to, most recently, the land-
scapes around the Aral Sea in central Asia.
‘Sonic journalism is the equivalent of
photo-journalism,’ he comments. ‘While
images give you extra information to the
written text, the addition of a sonic dimen-
sion provides even more material. Sound
is sensory and so it is more immediate and
immersive.’
For Cusack, sonic journalism adds time,
distance and emotion to any given subject.
But it is also a way of mapping change, of
stepping up to provide advocacy. His latest
project, Aral Sea Stories and the River Naryn,
is a powerful case in point. It is a series
of recordings of landscapes, of rivers, of
weather and animals and people, all made
between 2013 and 2018 in remote areas of
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
‘In 1960, the Aral Sea was the Earth’s
fourth-largest lake,’ Cusack says. No
longer: climate change, pollution and
water politics that stretch from the Soviet
period to the present day have had theeffect of dramatically reducing the water
mass. He explains: ‘The reason for this is
that the rivers that feed the Aral Sea were
diverted for major irrigation projects.
The sea’s drying up is probably the largest
human-centred environmental catastro-
phe of the last century. And because it’s in
central Asia, most people don’t know about
the disaster.’
Cusack’s recordings teem with gentle,
elegiac sounds, testaments to a myriad of
eco-systems: affect one and the others will
tilt. ‘There is a bit of a turnaround now,’ he
says, ‘and that’s the reason for my interest.
But its future is caught between the poli-
tics of the surrounding countries. Once it
became independent, Kazakhstan tried to
reverse the drying-up of the sea in its area.
But Uzbekistan, which shares the sea with
Kazakhstan, doesn’t want to restore it. The
question is: how do you restore half a sea?
It can’t be done, so a dam has been built
across the narrowest section in Kazakh-
stan. There, the water is rising, but on the
other side, the sea is still abandoned.’
Cusack’s Aral Sea is not designed to be
listened to as you would an ordinary album.
Sound art – and sonic journalism – does
not function in the way that music does;
rather it is there to give a shape to the world
and to ask questions of it. This is central to
Cusack’s work. Produced using relatively
simple equipment, his recordings and
publications are meticulous artefacts, with
accompanying photos and texts.
All these projects fall under the
umbrella title of Cusack’s larger, long-
term project entitled Sounds from Dan-
gerous Places. The exclusion zone around
Chernobyl in Ukraine is possibly the most
dangerous place Cusack has recorded to
date (pictured right). Recording in 2006
and 2007, long before Chernobyl tourismstarted up, he had to seek permission from
Ukraine’s Ministry of Emergencies. He
borrowed a Geiger counter from officials
there and you can hear it ticking on some
of the recordings. The tracks vibrate: you
hear frogs croaking, chickens clucking and
there is a sense, for a second, of something
almost Edenic. And then you remember.
This additional extra is the essence of
sonic journalism. We discuss recent news
reports on British TV, where speeches made
by prime minister Boris Johnson on the
steps of Downing Street have been accom-
panied by nearby protesters, clearly audible,
chanting ‘Liar!’ and ‘Stop the Coup!’.
Can work such as Cusack’s effect change
for the good? He is, after all, an ecological
activist located in an art world. However, it
is an art world that is growing increasingly
active in terms of social justice and eco-
logical urgency: look, for example, at the
disinvestment protests led by American
artist Nan Goldin against the Sackler Trust
for its links to the opioid crisis; or, in the
UK, against galleries receiving BP funding.
Sonic journalism is already playing its
part in this, says Cusack. ‘It’s more preva-
lent than one might expect. I have noticed
that broadcasters include a lot more back-
ground sound now. Those chants against
Johnson are excellent examples of what
sonic journalism is.’ The sound and fury of
the anti-Johnson crowds says more about
the presence of dissent than a newspaper
column can. ‘And this,’ Cusack says, ‘is
powerful.’^ OPETER CUSACK’S ARAL SEA STORIES AND THE RIVER
NARYN (CORVO RECORDS, LP AND DOWNLOAD) IS
AVAIL ABLE FROM:
corvorecords.bandcamp.com/album/aral-sea-stories-
and-the-river-naryn-2 / corvorecords.de
sounds-from-dangerous-places.org/
favouritesounds.orgMIXED MEDIASPOTLIGHT
PETER CUSACK
74 NEW INTERNATIONALIST