Rebecca Collins’s artistic and academic trajectory was characterized by a profound exploration of listening as a research methodology, the sound archive as a space of memory, and performance as a form of critical thought. Her work was situated at the intersection of sound art theory and collaborative practices that link the arts with the experimental sciences. As a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the CSIC Institute of History and a collaborator with the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Collins developed pioneering projects that explored scientific uncertainty through artistic media, particularly in works such as Listening to Dark Matter (2023), where she established a dialogue between particle physics and experimental sound practices.

At the center of her thinking lies the notion of the sound archive, understood not merely as a repository of acoustic materials but also as a critical device for the construction of alternative memories. Her project Stolen Voices, developed in collaboration with Johanna Linsley, exemplifies this approach: a sonic investigation that employs listening and amateur espionage as strategies to reveal the hidden layers of contemporary soundscapes. Her book Sonic Detection: Necessary Notes for Art and Performance (currently in press) constitutes a fundamental testimony to her methodology, in which listening becomes a tool for detecting possible futures.

Memory, understood as an active practice of reimagining the present, entirely detached from any form of nostalgia, runs through the entirety of Collins’s work. Her interest in sound archives created during the pandemic and in practices of collective mourning reveals a conception of musical time that rejects chronological linearity in favor of multiple, overlapping, and often contradictory temporalities.