This soundwalk is part of my MA research project at York University, “Dancing An Expanded Habitual: Attuning to the More-Than-Human World” (Acorn 2023). It is a site-adaptive work in response to a creation-as-research project which took place in High Park in Toronto’s West-End. The sound design is by Matt Smith. I hope you enjoy experiencing it. If you want to reach out to share your experience with the walk, I’d be happy to hear from you: acorn.amanda@gmail.com or @__subtlebody__ 

Please download the MP3 version or stream this soundwalk directly from Soundcloud. There is a quiet version and a ‘rave’ version, if you enjoy some more full sonic accompaniment. Once you have a version of the walk available to play on your device, choose a place you enjoy walking to do this 40 minute soundwalk. It may be a place you walk often or a route that is new to you. Perhaps a forest, a city park, a beach, your favourite alleyways or streets. Please take pauses, stops or rest anytime you’d like.

If you want more time with a prompt pause the recording during your walk. You might bring a notebook with you and following the walk, write down some emerging images, sensations or thoughts from your walk/dance. This soundwalk is an invitation to notice, sense, move and dance with the world around you.

Thank you to Robert Abubo, Lori Duncan, Benjamin Landsberg, Matt Smith, Bee Pallomina, and Ann Trépanier for your work and contributions to no place, as the development of that project led me to the questions and work held in this project. I wish to thank the land at High Park, and all of the more-than-human bodies who reside there, where I pondered, walked, danced and practiced for many months. The rich descriptions in the writing of the thesis and this walk belong to and exist because of them and their generous, vibrant and resonant presence.

This walk was created on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Tkaronto and is home to many First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. Tkaronto is covered by Treaty 13 signed with the Mississaugas of the Credit, and the Williams Treaties signed with multiple Mississaugas and Chippewa bands.

If you’re not sure of the original peoples on whose land you reside, please use this link to the Whose Land website to find out.