Anne Bourne

Artist composer improviser cellist vocalist writer creative consultant

When you listen particles decide to be heard — Pauline Oliveros, Quantum Listening, IGNOTA

I shared my idea of the Soundfield Memory Restoration Archive, that we can replicate the physiological response to a soundfield that we love  through memory and that memory as an archive, allows for the possibility that just as we memorized books when books were being burned , we can memorize sound fields in defiance of extinction, with the quantum possibility that particles may migrate out of our memories into the environment when it is safe and seed the re-emergence of a vibrant multispecies environment. When I shared this recently with Allison Glenn, curator of Toronto Biennale 2026, she responded, embodied knowledge resists erasure. 

Listening, I don't perceive hierarchy. Within the synchronicity of a field of pulses, I attune to a vibratory shimmer. Improvising I find my voice without censoring. Opening to musical traditions and tuning systems from the multiplicity, I become a citizen. Listening with other species, elements, in weather, I discover a way to essential being. In my experience, creative expression eases, suffering, mine/ others.

We have voice. In the city the edges of a sound field are pronounced, overlapping sonics complex and self-integrating. People stand for their songs. We brace against noise, embrace each other in the create against all odds climate we find ourselves waking up in. A community of many becomes culture.

I have been focussed on being present for the more than human sound field. Outsider to culture, belonging to the sea. I press footsteps as self-expression. Attending all the  brackish tributaries, the basins, rivers and lakes, I submerge in the language of waves, listen with in each arrival, trace in sound the line where water meets land.  I carry a sound field memory restoration archive into extinction. I compose field recordings of listening. Streams of sonics emerge through my cello, my voice and the electroacoustic processing of piano tones, chorales in spatial array. Offering listening walks, sounding gatherings for all voices, I explore equanimity, translation, microtones, embodied sonic archiving, collective creative expression. My contemplation is non-violence, a fluidity of reciprocal care at the bottom of the ocean, and time. I create with those who stand for the wild.

photo: Learning Endings: Care for the Stranded, with visual artist Patty Chang, LA, wildlife pathologist Aleksija Neimanis, and cultural theorist and author Bodies of Water , Astrida Neimanis; documentation Jonathan Vanderweit, for The Henry Gallery, Lincoln Park, West Seattle