As part of the our collective journey at the Institute for Postnatural Studies, we moved through a soundscape woven from breaths, silences, and the emotional textures of rest. Rest as resistance. Rest as space, body, and environment. For two years, the world has ended and cruelly continued. Julian explores rest not as escape, but as political refusal – walking, mourning, and pausing as acts of presence. Vika invited people to share sounds that feel like rest: not narrative stories, but ambient, intimate fragments – personal, political, embodied. Together they form a collective sonic pause. Meanwhile, Yoojin tends to a compost heap in northeast London, where stillness meets movement in layers of decay and renewal. Across these practices, rest is not an end – it’s a becoming. A slow revolution. A lingering. A refusal to vanish.

Listen here: https://radiorelativa.eu/episode/rest-as-return

With deep gratitude to all who have walked, wondered, and worked alongside:
Salma Al ayoubi, Olfa Arfaoui, Hailey Basiouny, Mahmoud Darwish, Tamara Kalo, Bakr Khleifi, Yoojin Lee, Haytham El Wardany, Uwe Rieken, Raja Shehadeh

Thank you to everyone who shared their sounds of rest:
Teona from Kyrgyzstan, Diana from Germany, Nastya from Ukraine, Yuriy from Brazil, Evgeniy from Ukraine, Alla from Siberia (my mom), Lelya from France, Said from Iran, Jonathan from England, Maria from Switzerland, Dima from Spain, Evelina from Mexico, and the anonymous contributors.