Is listening a performance?

Collective Ear – Episode IV

Is listening a performance?
«Think about a song you loved as a teenager. Try and remember. How it loved you back.» You can read Ronja Svaneborg’s score-based work Do I need to move my lips to be part of the choir? like a poem. Or you can perform it. With me, with yourself, with those people over there, or with a collective body stretching across time, distance, and environments. How would the voices interact, attune, resonate? And is my listening itself the performance?
Come, listen, find out.

How can we listen in a non-extractive way?

Collective Ear – Episode III

How can we listen in a non-extractive way?
We join a small gathering of friends on a balcony: Fran to your left, Sid and Moon to your right. It’s an early summer evening; the air is filled with birdsong and the sound piece Fuengu (2021) by Hong-Kai Wang. For this project, the artist explored the musical heritage of the family of Tsou Taiwanese composer Uong e Yatauyungana, using listening as a way to get to know the Psoseongana landscape. How can we listen in a non-extractive way? Can I hear without interest? Listen without taking anything away? And is there a way of hearing that is better – or worse? Who decides?

What’s the sound of climate change?

Collective Ear – Episode II

What’s the sound of climate change?
Hearing the grass grow, the drought, the flickering of a heat wave; listening to the melting of ice and the rise of sea levels. How does climate change sound? Where should I listen first, and how? Do I need suitable recording devices, or just a vivid imagination? Let us listen to a sound piece that may bring light to the dark, or rather: sound to silence – Water-Drought Patterns by Eleni-Ira Panourgia, created in 2023.

Can you listen like a beginner?

Collective Ear – Episode I

Can you listen like a beginner?
For 43 minutes, professional cellist Melody Giron plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 in G Major. Or rather – she plays parts of its prelude, over and over, searching for her tone. The ending never arrives. The beginning returns again and again, maintaining a state of perpetual preparation. Listen with us to Cally Spooner’s DEAD TIME (Melody’s Warm Up), 2022. Will you unlearn the melody? Can you listen like a beginner?