Workshop on Third Listening

January 27, 2024, Art Hub Copenhagen: In her book, The Way of Love, Luce Irigaray emphasizes dialogue as fundamental to an ethics of difference, as what gives room to emergent forms of relation and co-creation. Such an ethic is elaborated through the notion of speaking-with, or what Irigaray calls “the sharing of speech”. For Irigaray, the sharing of speech allows for working against systems that exclude, extract and enclose, requesting instead a third space of intersubjective sensitivity and cooperative engagement. This finds echo in what Jessica Benjamin highlights as thirdness which, in the context of psychological and emotional repair, supports restorative forms of social justice.

Following these perspectives, we’re interested to pose the concept of Third Listening as a research framework, which can nurture new thinking and creative work on listening practices. In what ways does the sharing of speech demand an equally sensitive form of listening, one that may work against systems of abuse? Third Listening is offered as a framework for speculative, explorative research onto questions of relationality and intersubjectivity within today’s complex environments, in which social circles are stretched across multiple media platforms and communities. What becomes of thirdness in the context of digital culture and data power? In addition, Third Listening opens onto questions of health, repair, social care and injury. If thirdness is supportive of working at recovery, and the maintenance of communal partnerships, in what ways might Third Listening contribute?

Please join us for this day-long workshop where we’ll open a collaborative space for exploring creative and critical modes of listening. The day will include a morning presentation by Brandon LaBelle (artistic director, The Listening Biennial), who will map key references and offer insight into Third Listening as a propositional concept. This will be followed by an afternoon workshop focusing on group discussions and reflections on the creative potentiality of listening, and in what ways thirdness is suggestive for particular methodologies and ways of practicing. We will also spend time listening and engaging with specific creative examples, and sharing individual concerns and questions that we might also pursue through future gatherings. We strive to invite you into a respectful, caring and creative space, and will attempt to shape the process of the day through different listening gestures.

The workshop is organized and facilitated by Arendse Krabbe, Brandon LaBelle and Lukas Lund, and developed in the context of The Listening Biennial, and its current research into Third Listening as the basis for the next edition of the Biennial scheduled for 2025. Including the participation of Jenny Gräf Sheppard, Maria Karlsson, Cecilia Wendt, Morten Søndegaard, Anna Nacher, Lucy Cathcart Fröden, Ania Mauruschat, Kara Oehler, Marie Koldkjær Højlund, Nana Francisca Schottländer, Amalie Sejersdahl, Randi Lindholm Hansen, Lukas Lund, Arendse Krabbe, Freja Kreutzfeldt, Yi Ten Lai and Brandon LaBelle.

Furthermore, the workshop is presented in collaboration with the Bureau for Listening and their Testing Ground residency exploring listening as an artistic and critical practice at Art Hub Copenhagen.