On The Listening Biennial
What leads us to listening? And how does listening lead us? Where does it take us, and what does it enable? It is our interest to stay close to listening, and to stay close to the ways in which listening brings one within a process of discovery, negotiation, sensitivity, sharing, transformation. Listening prompts a critical and creative curiosity, a receptiveness and responsiveness, to what one may hear or encounter, see and feel, and also what such listening may give way to, from knowing and meaningful exchange, lazy thoughts and critical attention, to social debate and poetic imagination.
If listening takes us somewhere it is into the ebbing and flowing of life, the deep pulse and resonant reach of becoming-with; it is toward intimacies and a world of touch, as well as to the edges of the familiar, what is unidentifiable yet no less present, from the invisible to the less-than-linguistic, the untold and the not-yet. Listening is so fragile, so tenuous and yet so powerful; it extends and stretches, it leaves one open and it opens space for others, from friends to strangers, the earthly to the cosmic. Listening can be beautiful, and it can be painful as well, whether in relation to the noises of the world, those voices and words that may hurt, that aim at hurting, or by way of the unlistenable cries of others, where listening is strained, made unbearable, or where we may miss hearing what we so long to hear. Listening invades and it may control – it is clearly part of a greater set of techniques for monitoring the borders of states and communities, as well as what helps create a safe space for lonely feelings, for being alone, and with each other.
Listening takes us in all these different directions, and in this way it becomes important to reflect upon where one places one’s listening, and how one’s listening is placed; what am I hearing around me, and what is left unsaid, unheard? Am I heard, and in what ways? Is listening given the time and space needed for its patient work? Can I refuse to be listened to, and does my listening also demand more than others can give? The sensorial politics shaping the flows of attention is deeply at play when it comes to listening, requiring a greater engagement with what listening may mean or do, and how it may question itself at times.
Following such complexity and curiosity, The Listening Biennial opens up to thinking further about listening and how we may come to foster its political and poetic potential, its material and imaginative shaping of things. To do so, the Biennial is concerned to create experiences of listening as defined by an international group of participating artists whose works con- front us with a complex range of sonic experiences and performative expressions; through their works we encounter strategies and methods, questions and answers, localities and worlds, all of which speak toward ways of listening that are equally ways of thinking and living-with, where listening is never only about sound or the normative ear. Rather, it is made radically attentional, exuberant, tenacious and tender, inciting wayward paths and critical echoes in and around being-human.
Listening is put forward as what enables both localized, intimate, and communal relationships as well as global and planetary views, where listening may sense beyond the apparent and the legible. As Anna Tsing poignantly suggests, listening wields a power by which to attend and align with greater ecological systems of life and their polyphonies. The Biennial adopts such a transversal position in its curatorial approach. This is articulated by way of our curatorial team, whose international and regional perspectives allowed for assembling an extremely diverse group of participating artists. Including Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Brandon LaBelle, Israel Martínez, and Yang Yeung, each was tasked with inviting artists based in particular regions of the world, and whose practices engage with questions and experiences of listening in interesting, provocative, thoughtful and surprising ways. This has led to a range of conversations and collaborations, which has greatly contributed to nurturing the Biennial as a collective effort. In addition to the main curators, a number of key curatorial partners have contributed by helping us extend our knowledge, putting us in touch with other artists and institutions whose work and activities are equally involved in listening as a practice and as a proposition. Our curatorial partners include: Rayya Badran, Florencia Curci, Hardi Kurda, Gentian Meikleham, Alexandre St-Onge, Lucia Udvardyova, and James Webb.
In pursuing a transversal and polyphonic approach, the Biennial is further based on bringing together a constellation of collaborating organizations, spaces, and collectives as active partners, each of which has been invited to create and present their own version of the Biennial. Sharing the works by participating artists, each partner responds by situating them within their own environments, and in relation to the communities or audiences they serve, often nesting the Biennial within a diverse and dynamic range of existing settings, festivals, institutions and scenes.
Through such an approach, the Biennial adopts a listening attitude, creating opportunities and openings for others to join, to present and perform, to jam together, to craft localized expressions that also contribute to a greater network of exchange – a construct of rhythms and resonances passing across and between different worlds. In this sense, the Biennial poses an idea of “acoustic care,” where attention may be given not only to the listening one may individually enact, but also to facilitating the particular conditions in support of the listen- ing others may do, or that we may do together. Acoustic care cares for the timings and spacings, the social arrangements and bodily gestures, the systems or structures needed to sup- port a sensitivity for listening, and a sense for what listening may enable or do; an acoustic care that is not only bound to the audible, and the sounded, but equally concerns itself with a greater ecology of attention. From the vibrational commoning key to being-together, and becoming-with, to the reverberant circulation of views and viewpoints, to the noisy intensities of creaturely and multi-species life, acoustic care emerges as a craft, a doing, a civility, a tactic and, in our case, an invitation. It is less a performative approach, and more conductive, in terms of keeping our listening going, and keeping the diversity of our social adventure going as well.
It is these ideas and concerns that underpin The Listening Biennial, and which we offer as a proposition, a care-work, and a gesture of love. For listening is certainly there, as part of the passionate and persistent stories we may create together.
The Listening Biennial is taking place from July 15 - August 1, 2021. For more see: https://listeningbiennial.net/