In Los Pasos de Mama Killa Amanda Gutiérrez explores the collective meaning of agency at night, presenting the nighttime as a communal and relational space grounded in mutual care.

This work is one of the shortlisted pieces for the Sound Walk September Awards 2025. 
Below, Amanda discusses her work.

Los Pasos de Mama Killa (The Steps of Mama Killa) was created during the 2024 Sur Aural Sound Festival in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Mexico City as a decolonial soundwalk exploring collective agency, nighttime, and matriarchal care. The first one, developed in collaboration with Fuga Radial, an anti-colonial feminist collective, emphasized walking as a political, embodied, and relational practice rather than a purely artistic one. Rooted in Sur Aural’s independent, self-organized ethos, the workshop invited women and gender-nonconforming participants to reclaim urban space through sound and movement, integrating Augmented Reality to reassemble territory and memory.

Emerging from feminist solidarity and “Militancia Alegre” (Joyful Militancy), the project foregrounded vulnerability, tenderness, and co-creation as forms of resistance against colonial and patriarchal spatial hierarchies. Walking became both a decolonial method of sensing and a collective act of reclaiming presence. Through intuition, affect, and listening, participants connected rationality and emotion, transforming everyday spaces into zones of mutual recognition and situated empowerment.

Walking in collaboration with Fuga Radial in Bolivia 

Fuga Radial is an anti-colonial collective of women and gender-nonconforming individuals in Bolivia who produce autonomous digital radio through the feminist server Qhaway Coop. Since 2021, they have created over 33 live programs covering ecofeminism, Indigenous women’s rights, land sovereignty, feminist media literacy, and activism against gender violence. Their broadcasts, often produced from protests or DIY studios, aim to decentralize mass media and amplify marginalized voices across Abya Yala, collaborating with collectives in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. 

The eight-member group operates through horizontal decision-making and virtual collaboration. Before meeting in person, we held online meetings via Telegram, exchanging reflections on night walks across Bolivia and Montreal. These conversations exposed contrasts in safety, freedom, and gendered experiences of public space. When we finally met in Cochabamba, we bonded over shared stories and music, and we planned a gender-inclusive, four-session workshop rooted in co-creation.

Walking in Mexico City

In Mexico City, Los Pasos de Mama Killa adapted this framework for a two-day workshop within UNAM’s Transferencias Aurales symposium. Situated in Las Águilas, an area dominated by highways and limited pedestrian access, participants explored how urban infrastructure, gender, and sound intersect, transforming collective walking into both critical inquiry and artistic expression.

Walks and workshops

The Steps of Mother Killa in Chocamamba and Mexico City incorporate diverse sonic imaginations and listening modes, drawing on space and its situated memories. Consequently, the workshops aim to develop a methodology that is nurtured and adapted to facilitate dialogues within the territory and with the local participants who inhabit it. 

Cochabamba 

During the Steps of Mama Killa workshop in Cochabamba, we engaged in a four-day exploration combining soundwalking, feminist spatial inquiry, and augmented reality (AR) design.

On Day One, as a group we gathered at the mARTadero Community Arts Center to discuss gendered experiences in public spaces and plan a collective walk. Despite warnings about nearby “dangerous” areas like La Coronilla hill, we visited it together and discovered a peaceful nature reserve, challenging classist stereotypes and reflecting on how walking as a collective fostered trust, autonomy, and safety.

On Day Two, new members joined, and through deep listening and memory mapping, participants connected personal sonic memories to urban infrastructure, analyzing how lighting, parks, and streets shape perceptions of safety. We collectively designed a walking route linking significant sites, including prisons and military institutions.

Day Three focused on the technical creation of the AR soundwalk using the Echoes platform. Participants composed and geolocated sounds, blending field recordings and live radio streaming. Their test walk revealed issues of sound balance, pedestrian safety, and urban accessibility, sparking discussions on car-centric design.

On Day Four, we refined the route, avoiding noisy avenues and considering the relationship between sound, movement, history, architecture, and environment to produce an embodied, collaborative AR experience.

Mexico City

The Steps of Mama Killa in Mexico City brought together five Latin American participants, four women and one non-binary person, to explore listening, memory, and gendered experiences in urban space.

On Day One, the group began with deep listening exercises in Las Águilas Park, tuning our senses to the contrast between the noisy, car-dominated streets and the park’s calmness. Through Aural Border Thinking, participants and I connected sonic memories of feeling safe or vulnerable in public spaces to their identities shaped by gender, race, and migration histories. Discussions revealed how patriarchal norms and urban violence leave embodied fears that persist across geographies. We reflected on how sound in public spaces can create “sonic landscapes of unwelcome,” particularly for racialized women.

On Day Two, as a group designed and tested a sound walk inspired by feminist collectives like Dodecafónicas from Brazil, using playful randomness to decide our route. Walking together, we discussed safety, surveillance, and urban noise, concluding that collective walking fosters empowerment and challenges fear.

Augmented Reality Sound Design for the walk in Cochabamba

In Cochabamba, Los Pasos de Mama Killa used sound design as a decolonial and political strategy, transforming the city into a living archive of resistance and memory. Beginning at mARTadero, the walk opened with a quote from anarchist Buenaventura Durruti, setting a tone of collective futurity. Subsequent tracks layered testimonies of homelessness, feminist chants from 8M marches, and environmental sounds, intertwining personal and political struggles. Collaborators such as Fuga Radial geolocated recordings that addressed Bolivia’s colonial and military histories, including sonic references to the 2019 massacres and political speeches, producing what Goodman terms “sonic warfare.”

Moments of silence and natural soundscapes offered healing pauses, reorienting attention toward the more-than-human and somatic experiences. Tracks like Ritualizing to Heal Our Connection with the Night and Nosotras la Noche embodied ecofeminist and anti-colonial sensibilities. The walk culminated with punk and Andean music, symbolizing resilience and joy, asserting sound walking as a collective, insurgent reimagining of public space and agency.

Mexico City

In Mexico City, during the second workshop day, participants mapped a route and designed an AR soundwalk using a shared sound database from previous workshops in Bogotá and Cochabamba. This collective archive recontextualizes soundtracks across territories, creating transnational sonic dialogues and decolonial collaborations. By situating listening, participants reflected on how sonic meanings shift within Mexico City’s urban landscape. Although a server malfunction on the Echoes platform prevented playback of geolocated sounds, the setback transformed the experience: instead of relying on technology, the group focused on collective reflection, deep listening, and the walkers conversation, emphasizing embodied awareness and shared aural perception within public space at nighttime.

The Night Sound walks as culminating events

Los Pasos de Mama Killa in Cochabamba and Mexico City explored listening as a decolonial, feminist, and embodied practice through sound walks that transformed public space into a collective archive of memory, resistance, and care. Rooted in cartografías sensibles (Cao, 2018), the methodology centered escucha sensible, a sensitive listening practice that connects bodily intuition and sonic perception. Beginning at mARTadero Cultural Center, participants activated ten Bluetooth speakers and phones running the Echoes app, streaming live through Sur Aural, Tsonami Radio, and Fuga Radial. This process revealed technological inequalities, as mobile data access became a reflection of privilege and digital exclusion across Latin America. Since some participants had issues accessing the walk due to the lack of mobile data.

During the Cochabamba walk, the AR sound design consisted of recordings of 8M marches, laughter, ritual bells, and whale songs blended with the city’s nocturnal soundscape. A voice letter from an incarcerated activist, played outside the women’s jail, resonated across its walls, connecting sonic art with political solidarity. In contrast, the military academy segment layered gunfire and protest recordings, exposing Bolivia’s violent history and sonic trauma. These juxtapositions re-signified walking as feminist militancy, embodied and affective. The walk ended with Quechua folk music, mezcal offerings to the Aymara goodnesses Pachamama, and a reflective circle of shared emotions and sonic experiences.

In Mexico City, the second Mama Killa walk expanded the project’s translocal dimension. Technical failures in the AR app led participants to focus on deep listening and dialogue instead. Crossing bridges, parks, and surveillance-marked streets, the group reflected on fear, vulnerability, and the politics of visibility in urban nightscapes. Encounters with sleeping bodies on a bridge raised questions about public space and belonging, while group humming exercises revealed the body’s resonance amid urban noise. The walk concluded in Parque Águilas, where silence became both unsettling and empowering. Across territories, Los Pasos de Mama Killa reaffirmed walking together as a decolonial gesture of care, sonic solidarity, and collective reimagining of the night.

Reproduced with permission. Originally published on Amanda’s website. © Pedestrian essay.

The winner and honourable mention of the SWS Awards 2025 will be announced around the start of 2026.