Listening is often understood as the basis for fostering dialogue, enabling the sharing of viewpoints, feeling, and the work of disagreement. From scenes of intimacy to that of global diplomacy, listening is key to facilitating and enriching social bonds. Through a range of cultural arenas, listening is also often mobilized as a metaphor, a figurative or lyrical motif by which to relate beyond the human – to hear beyond language, the signifying force of voice, and toward the polyphony of planetary life as well as other worlds. Listening is an affective, embodied, and imaginative faculty for journeying otherwise. Taking stock of listening in all its breadth, I'll map out a number of key perspectives which can assist in reflecting upon questions of subjectivity, the more-than-human, and law.
Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist living in Berlin. His work focuses on questions of agency, community, pirate culture, and poetics, which results in a range of collaborative and para-institutional initiatives, including: The Listening Biennial and Academy (2021-), Communities in Movement (2019-), The Imaginary Republic (2014-19), Dirty Ear Forum (2013), and Beyond Music Sound Festival (1998-2002). In 1995 he founded Errant Bodies Press, an independent publishing project supporting work in sound art and studies, performance and poetics, artistic research and contemporary political thought. His publications include: The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Acoustic Territories (2010, 2019), and Background Noise (2006, 2015). His latest book, Acoustic Justice (2021), argues for an acoustic model by which to engage questions of social equality. Since 2011 he works as Professor at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, Univ. of Bergen.
