Listening Borders Project

The Listening Borders Project is a collection of field recordings made between October 2023 and January 2024 along the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, produced while researching border violence with the grassroots no-borders group No Name Kitchen.

The audio files were distributed across three headsets, each presenting a different set of field recordings from the border zones.

Headphone One: sounds of the border environment.

Headphone Two: sounds from People On the Move.

Headphone Three: Sounds of a Borderless World.

Together, these soundscapes reveal layered lives, experiences, and dreams that emerge within communities formed along arbitrary nation-state lines.

The audio piece was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, alongside personal belongings burned by Croatian border police and recovered near the Croatian–Bosnian border by no-border activists. These items belonged to people seeking asylum who, instead of receiving protection, reported beatings, confiscation, and forced pushbacks to Bosnia. For years, this border has been systematically closed to many people on the move (particularly racialized communities from the Middle East, East, and North Africa) through violent and illegal practices carried out with the support and funding of the European Union.