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Invitations from the Land: the Zena Highwoods
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About the project
Invitations from the Land: the Zena Highwoods
is a year-long album of environmental seasonal soundscapes recorded in the Zena Highwoods in the Eastern Catskills.
Accompanying the album, is a book of listening practices, ecological prompts, species illustrations and identification, stories of the forest, paintings, and forest transmissions, to invite listeners to explore their personal relationship with local ecology and climate care.
Created in partnership with the Woodstock Land Conservancy, the album and book will be released in a live premiere in Woodstock, NY September 2026.
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At the heart of this project is the Zena Highwoods, a vital wildlife corridor of pristine wetlands and deep woods that connects thousands of acres of forest in the Eastern Catskills and is home to over 270 species of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, insects, and plants.
Despite being designated as a Critical Environmental Area by the NYSDEC, this land is in critical danger of destruction. In 2026, private developers are attempting to build luxury vacation homes, a helipad, pickleball courts, and private roads through some of the last undeveloped, connecting lands in the Eastern Catskills. Community connection to this forest is crucial this year.
Sound, in particular, is a powerful medium of empathy and connection. There is no turning off our ears or stopping the flow of the voice to the heart. Permeating our bodies and braiding us into close connection, it is through this relational power of sound that Invitations from the Land: the Zena Highwoods directly amplifies an endangered forest and deepens relations between local land and community.
To learn more about environmental protection efforts, visit Stop Zena Development .
About the Artist
Zaneta is a Filipinx interdisciplinary sound artist and nature recordist, whose work brings communities into close and loving relationship with their local wilderness through listening, sound, and community art, as sacred expressions of ecological stewardship and care.
Drawing from the work of their lola sa tuhód (great-grandmother) as a hilot healer in Iloilo, Philippines, and her multi-modal ways of communing with the land, Zaneta weaves local field recordings, environmental studies, activism, sound art, community art and story gathering, painting, ritual, and vocal channeling, to create experiences of deep communion with the more-than-human world. Experiences that build conscious connection to local lands and wildlife, and support personal stewardship through ongoing community exchanges between land and people.
Their work also examines how listening and sounding, as inherently relational and reciprocal experiences, are essential eco-social practices that not only raise awareness of our close connections to non-human kin, but cultivate a unique sense of empathy and interconnectedness that is foundational to stewardship, and ultimately plays a vital role in environmental futures.
Zaneta’s work has been presented in spaces such as the Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles Natural History Museum, the Climate Imaginarium on Governor’s Island, and featured on WKNY Radio Kingston, and Wave Farm Radio.
Their past projects Sacred Seasons (2020) and Where Land Meets Sky: Geophonic Transmissions for the Body (2022), were awarded the Brooklyn Arts Council grants, and they were a 2025 Strange Foundation Resident Artist.
Zaneta currently serves as the environmental artist-in-residence at Marydell Faith and Life Center at Hook Mountain in Nyack, NY. They also teach field recording, listening, and land communing workshops in the Hudson Valley.
Their upcoming project, Invitations from the Land: the Zena Highwoods (2025), was created in partnership with the Woodstock Land Conservancy and in collaboration with the Zena Highwoods, and will be premiering on WGXC Wave Farm Radio December 21, 2025, with the album and book released with a live premiere in Woodstock, September 2026.
To learn more about follow them on IG @soundartmagic, or listen to their sound Substack, Moon Pool.
