The river ______ attempts to name itself explores how rivers are shaped not only by physical boundaries but by the limits of language used to describe them. Rather than treating the river as a feature to be defined, measured, or divided, the project considers how naming itself can impose human frameworks onto something that exceeds linguistic scale. It asks what might be heard if the river were approached not as an object of description but as a sounding presence.

On 23 November, recordings will be taken at five points along the river’s course—from source to mouth—using a dictaphone-style tape recorder. The imperfect audio capture is intentional: distortion, interference, and uneven clarity highlight the gap between human recording technologies and the complexity of nonhuman sound. These recordings will be cut into cassette loops, a medium whose continuous flow and gradual degradation parallels the river’s own shifting movement.

In installation, multiple tape loops from different locations will play simultaneously across several cassette players, producing changing combinations of sound. Each listener encounters only fragments at a time, suggesting that no single recording can contain the river in full. By allowing the river’s “name” to emerge through overlapping, unstable playback, the work reflects on listening as an interpretive act shaped by scale, technology, and perception.