Paper short abstract:

What does a post-anthropocene world sound like? This paper undertakes an imaginary journey into sonic futures after the anthropocene. It explores reports and observations from the human silencing during the first lockdown phase of the Covid19 pandemic as a realword experience of reversed silence.

Paper long abstract:

What does a post-anthropocene world sound like? An ecological model of sound - resp. of noise and silence - in the Anthropocene is outlined, followed by an imaginary journey into sonic futures after the Anthropocene. For that purpose the paper references reports and observations from the first lockdown phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, framed as a sudden glimpse of a sonic post-anthropocene; a sudden human silencing that enabled or even forced people to get in contact with the vividness of their immediate environment such as singing birds. This realworld experience of reversed silence can be understood as a reverie in the sense of Gaston Bachelard because it made people also think about other possible (sounding) worlds. The paper aims to discuss sonic and aural reveries of a post-anthropocene and post-anthropocentric world or reversed silence.