All Ears, WALKER Design Triennial, Minneapolis

All Ears is a site-specific sound installation developed by Lucas Muñoz Muñoz for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as one of two special commissions for a new triennial inaugurated October 2026. Approximately two months after the collaboration began, Minneapolis became the site of renewed social and political unrest following a series of shootings involving civilians and ICE agents under Donald Trump’s administration. These events unfolded in a city already marked by the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the global protests against racial injustice and police brutality that followed. These circumstances changed Lucas’ understanding of the commission. Alongside the sound system originally requested by the Walker Art Center, he proposed introducing a series of microphones: if the project was going to produce sound for Minneapolis, it also needed to create a structure through which Minneapolis itself could be heard.

The project consequently shifted from sound reproduction towards listening. Lucas understood the political atmosphere of the city not as a subject to illustrate directly, but as a condition that demanded attention, patience and dialogue. In a moment characterised by confrontation and polarisation, the microphones became symbolic and practical instruments for giving voice to the city while asking what it means to listen to it.

Lucas created and carried four strange, almost alien-looking latex microphones through the city and used them to build a sonic portrait of Minneapolis. One was placed in a lake to register aquatic sound, connecting the installation to a defining characteristic of Minnesota and its approximately 11 000 lakes. Another listened to trees, plants and other forms of vegetation. A third was taken to a skatepark, recording the repeated impacts, rolling wheels, surfaces and movements specific to that environment. A fourth concentrated on living beings, recording human voices and stories alongside non-human inhabitants of the city, including ducks and other animals. Across the four channels, the archive moves continuously between human and non-human, organic and inorganic, intentional speech and incidental noise.

Walking through Minneapolis with the microphones also transformed the recording process into a social device. Their unfamiliar appearance repeatedly attracted the curiosity of strangers, generating spontaneous conversations around what Lucas was carrying and why he was listening. These encounters led to a further layer of the project: Lucas began asking people whether they could share a personal sonic memory — a memory anchored not primarily in an image, but in a sound.

All Ears ultimately attempts to give physical form to an invisible action. Listening leaves no obvious material trace, yet it requires time, vulnerability, concentration, and a willingness to receive something outside oneself. Against the speed, distraction and polarisation of contemporary public life, the project proposes listening as both a social and environmental practice.

The work does not attempt to speak on behalf of Minneapolis. Instead, it constructs the conditions for the city — its people, animals, water, vegetation, machines, infrastructures, memories and conflicts — to make noise and be heard.