Why do the ducks not fly south?

BACKGROUND This work is situated in the broad field of documentary and within the narrow field of audio-documentary. This project takes Bill Nichol’s contention of documentary voice as a singular subjective position manifesting as authorship (Nichols, 1983) and complicates it through a methodology of listening which draws on Gemma Fiumara’s theory that listening is a practice to dwell within and be attentive to the rhythms, flows and resonances rather than to impose one’s will (Fiumara, 1995). The researcher explored how to make a site-specific documentary work that employed a methodology of listening to foreground a number voices rather than a singular perspective. CONTRIBUTION Why do the ducks not fly south? is a 25-minute site-specific audio documentary walk. This documentary is an embodied experience that uses interviews, songs, poetry and field recordings of the site to offer an experience of the impacts of capitalism and environmental change on this remote village. This focus on sound employs strategies that phenomenologist Don Ihde calls to make the “invisible present” (2007) and renders the experience through the recording and representing of sounds to “offer listeners a route through which to hear as others might” (2009). SIGNIFICANCE The research used formal documentary strategies such as interviews and field recordings and presented them in a way that afforded a unique engagement with the subject matter through an embodied experience. This work was made as part of a residency for international artists for Listhus in Olafsjordur in the north of Iceland. It was exhibited as part of Skammdegi mid-winter festival, which attracted around two-hundred visitors.