Across damaged ecologies, constrained cultural spaces, and threatened languages, listening becomes a way to remain present to what endures – tracing human, environmental, and linguistic entanglements through practices of attention and transmission.

11:00–11:45
Margarida Mendes
Deep Time Soundings
Performative lecture

11:45–12:30
Yazan Khalili
Radio Alhara, a Communal Media. What digital radios can offer for our infrastructure of connectivity
Lecture and Q&A

12:30–13:15
pantea
Maram-Nameh
Lecture and Q&A

Moderated by Mirna Belina

In her performative lecture Deep Time Soundings, Margarida Mendes traces the rapidly changing ecology of Portugal’s Tagus River – a landscape marked by pollution, dam control, and eucalyptus monocultures that alter the river’s hydrology and desiccate surrounding lands. Developed with the Natural Contract Lab and in consultation with ProTejo, her research follows activists who monitor the river around Vila Velha de Rodão, an epicentre of environmental crime. Through field recordings, voice, and testimonies from river guardians, Mendes creates a multisensory account of an ecosystem in deep transformation, offering a study of environmental mourning and the fragile ties between landscape and community.

Artist, researcher, and cultural producer Yazan Khalili presents the lecture Radio Alhara, a Communal Media. What digital radios can offer for our infrastructure of connectivity. Khalili is interested in structures, institutional as well as other, how they are built and how they perform. Drawing on his role as co-founder of the Palestine-based Radio Alhara, he considers how digital radio can function as a structure of cultural production. Framed by his broader practice examining landscapes, institutions, and social and technological phenomena as politicised entities, Khalili asks what radio can offer as an infrastructure of connectivity, solidarity, and cultural exchange when conventional institutions cannot.

Selected as the resident for The Walls Have Ears, a sound-studies writing residency organised by Sonic Acts and De Ateliers/Woonhuis, pantea develops a living written-and-sonic work within Khamoosh /xɒːˈmuːʃ/ – a collective shaped by shared listening, archival practice, and alternative ways of gathering. The project contributes to Maram-Nameh /maˈɾɒːm nɒːˈme/, an evolving, multilingual guide and living archive that partially traces silences across histories and geographies, engaging endangered and suppressed languages and the fragile worlds they hold. Through fragments, words, and collective storytelling, the work explores how sound carries memory, loss, and cultural persistence, inviting restoration as resonance rather than reconstruction.

Margarida Mendes, Yazan Khalili, and pantea’s presentations will each be followed by a Q&A moderated by Mirna Belina.

Important notes for Symposium visitors

– With a Symposium ticket, visitors also have access to the Stedelijk Museum and its exhibitions for the entire day.
– To ensure a smooth check-in process, please arrive at least 15 minutes before the Symposium begins. Personal items such as backpacks and bags must be stored in the museum cloakroom, located in the basement.
– Laptops and tablets may be brought into the Symposium room if carried by hand or placed in a transparent bag.