Bardala (2026)
Bardala weaves together field recordings and visuals gathered by artist Rose Bell while accompanying Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability on a July 2024 field trip to monitor wildlife in the Jordan Valley. The composition layers recordings of footsteps, frogs, birds, geophone vibrations, ants, and conversations with Dr. Qumsiyeh in the car, interlaced with Bardala’s environments. Artist Hattie Ball weaves this material with responsive 3D map data, creating visuals that live-react to the soundscape, creating an immersive experience of a changing landscape.
Today, the landscape in and around Bardala is under threat. Israeli settler violence - particularly the theft and restriction of water - jeopardises daily life and the valley’s ecological balance. Despite ongoing restrictions and attacks, the Institute continues to document and monitor native Palestinian wildlife and landscapes, preserving a record of enduring connection to the natural world and our entanglement with the non-human.
Engaging the senses, Bardala invites deep listening to the voices of the landscape and its creatures. Through shifting constellations of sound and image, the work expands perception, urging us to attend to the land and ecosystems as archive, witness, and site of resistance. More than a record of humans listening to nature, Bardala imagines a reversal of perspective - asking how non-human life perceives our presence, how creatures persist, and how ecologies register human interaction. In these interwoven acts of listening and witnessing, a shared sensorial archive emerges: one that binds land, life, and memory into an ongoing story of relation and resistance.
Exhibited in group show SenseScapes and performed live by Hattie Ball and Rose Bell at SenseScapes Listening Session - Listening to Landscapes as part of London Design Festival, September 2025.
