We completed this year our second field trip to the Mount Lumut forests near Berong village in North Barito, Central Kalimantan. The village is home to the indigenous rooted Dayak Taboyan.
In partnership with Borneo Nature Foundation and Muhammidyah University Palangkaraya with the support of the Berong community, we were able to make two field trips in August 2024 and June 2025, during which we could collect several 24-hour-long sound recordings in different locations in the forest.
After each of our field trips, the Berong community came together to share their memories and stories in collective listening sessions. Through these moments, we learned how deeply the sounds of the forest are intertwined with the community’s ancestral knowledge and mythology.
We are now in the process of transforming our extensive film recordings into a full-length documentary. A short excerpt from last year’s trip is already available to preview on this site.
In August, we were also honored to present early excerpts of our findings at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul. The screening took place in the museum’s lobby, as part of the performative sound installation HUTAN, offering context to the ongoing activities of Points of Listening.
The field trips are part of a the research project, titled ‘Reflections on the History of Sound and Listening’, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office as part of its cultural preservation program.
