ZOO INDEX: An Incomplete Listening Guide For Zoos

The first zoos, named menageries, were created for empires to showcase their territorial range of conquest. Following religious and ancient Western philosophical beliefs, these other-than-human (and sometimes human) animals exist to serve and are on this planet for the righteous appropriation of their body and strategically ignored souls. These types of cultures ultimately affirm that the hierarchy of species is fundamental for global domination, later developed into economic systems of oppression. 

What does it mean to be human when your humanity is confronted with the captivity of other-than-human animals being displayed as entertainment tokens within a zoo? Inside a zoo, the experience becomes a complex exercise of not only looking at animals but looking at (human) animals in how they look at animals, looking at those (human) animals being looked at back by the animals, looking at the animals that (therefore) we are when our gaze intersects with that of an animal directed at us.

The sound exchange or acoustic ecology of the zoo is an interesting focus to understand how we coexist with non-humans in Western culture. Many of the sounds emitted in this space are sounds of joy, intrigue and curiosity, but also of angst, resilience, and solitude. What can the sounds we make and the words we exchange  inside a zoo space tell us about how capitalist humans relate to other animals? This is the beginning of a longer research revolving around acoustic ecology and interspecies sonic relations. This is not a guide to inhabit the zoo in a specific way, but rather an invitation to experience the zoo through a sonic experience. What does a guide say about these tourist spaces, family entertainment, and pedagogical practices? 

Understanding radical listening as an ecological practice might uncage some contradictions inhabiting the zoo. Embodied experience might act, within such complex devices, as a counter-mediation methodology in which sound, for instance, unfolds new ways to engage with the same questions that are rationally hard to address. This incomplete guide aims to create a critical experience during your next visit to the zoo, or, if you have never thought about going, to open a space of critical imagination from which to cohabit with these uncomfortable places. It is divided into different categories with different sonic practices to help engage with its acoustic environment.