TerraTending: 2179 is a site-responsive sonic simulation that presents seven speculative encounters with the earth. These speculative encounters are set one hundred and fifty-seven years from now—following the rehabilitation of the Latrobe Valley coal mines in South-eastern Australia, the last hollowing tickets were relinquished; land-back somewhat underway.  At the beginning of the 22nd century, the practice of TerraTending* was developed, popularised, and eventually ritualised. This approach to lignite listening acted as an acknowledgment of geo-bio entanglements and inspired the earthward orientation of human ears, reaffirming humans as geo-subjects participating as a ‘living part of the geosocial matrix (Yusoff, 2015, p. 204). 

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TerraTending is enabled only by guides known as Belayers. They collect and activate surface artefacts—ancient copper, aluminium, and glass. The sounds of these minerals provide the listener with geophonic signs during their descent and allow listeners to stretch their ears into the earth. With cheeks pressed to the cold carbon, those TerraTending trace the blood of rocks and ancestral salts, learning of the bovine and bones that became the fuel and the fires of the past.
 

* The geonto-tech movement saw a shift in the invention of new technologies that supported earth ontologies, corporeal attending, and material recognition. The earthward orientation of human ears was a crucial contributor to what became known as the Third Geological Turn. Geonto-tech eventually superseded 21st century communications that focused on external relations. 

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Yusoff, Kathryn. “Queer Coal: Genealogies In/of the Blood.” Philosophia (Albany, N.Y.), vol. 5, no. 2, 2015, pp. 203–29.

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TerraTending: 2179 features recordings of materials collected from the Morwell Industrial Metal Recyclers and is composed from field recordings that were made in South-Eastern Victoria, Australia, on Gunaikurnai Country.