• Symposium and exhibition postponed by COVID-19 inspires latest edition of creative arts international academic journal
• Special issue features articles, essays and artwork which merge creative practice with academic investigation and analysis
• Issue explores the act of listening to the land, to others, to difference

Guest editors at Charles Sturt University have published online a special issue of Fusion Journal for the communication, creative industries and media arts.

Associate Professor Jennifer Munday in the Charles Sturt School of Education in Albury-Wodonga said the March 2021 special edition of Fusion with the theme ‘Listening in the Anthropocene’ was initially planned to coincide with the Listening in the Anthropocene Symposium and Exhibition in April 2020.

“That was before COVID-19 came along and everything was postponed,” Professor Munday said.

“The symposium and exhibition became online events in late August 2020 and submissions for this special edition of the journal were reviewed in the months that followed.

“On one hand, the delays brought some wonderfully positive outcomes, with some delightful, engaging and thought-provoking submissions.

“But on the other hand, some disappointments for several of our intended contributors who were affected by COVID-19, particularly those from Europe and the United States.”

Fusion Journal is an international, open access, online scholarly journal co-founded by the Faculty of Arts and Education at Charles Sturt University and the College of Arts, University of Lincoln in the United Kingdom. It publishes refereed articles, creative works and other practice-led forms of production.

The guest editors for the Fusion Journal Issue 19: ‘Listening in the Anthropocene 2020’ were Associate Professor Jennifer Munday, Ms Cassily Charles, Ms Michelle O’Connor, Ms Tracy Sorensen, Dr Bärbel Ullrich, and Ms Louisa Waters.

The special issue features articles, essays and artwork which merge creative practice (video, sound and visuals) with academic investigation and analysis.

“This ‘Listening in the Anthropocene’ issue explores the act of listening to the land, to others, to difference, as encountered in embodied and virtual spaces,” Professor Munday said.

“It explores how we might attempt to interpret what is being said in languages we do not understand.

“How might we resist – even if just for a moment – adding our own sounds to the noises of the neoliberal project of the Anthropocene: the clashing music of the shopping mall, the automated voice, the shock jock, the celebrity, the power tools, the leaf blowers, the bulldozers, the mining blasts?

“How might we listen out, or tune in, to the small, the subtle, the unnoticed, the dying, the unusual, the banal, the mad, the unexpected?”