This artistic PhD explores the sonic landscape of Western Thrace, a border region in northeastern Greece shaped by migration, military presence, ecological collapse, and minority histories. Using field recording, soundwalking, interviews, and radio, I examine how borders sound and how listening can become a form of knowledge and resistance.
The project takes a bottom-up approach, working with local communities and practicing “listening with humility” to reveal unheard or silenced narratives. I investigate the acoustic imprints of trauma, from the eerie silence of the post-wildfire Dadia forest to the rhythms of distant tanks or contested calls to prayer.
Key methods include:
- Soundwalks & earwitness accounts
- Field recordings guided by testimony
- Mobile radio and live broadcasting
- Sonic mapping and listening scores
The research moves through sites across the region, among them the Evros Delta, the post-fire forest of Dadia, and villages of Rodopi and Evros. Through the notion of aphonic borderscapes, it asks how silence and arrhythmia operate as political forces, and what the positionality of the listener is within them.
The research unfolds through lecture performances, installations, radio and writing.
This PhD challenges dominant narratives through sonic research, proposing that listening is both a political act and an artistic method.
