Academy – Vienna

June 25 - 28, 2026: Brunnenpassage, Vienna: 

What are our memories of sound? In what ways do sounds reverberate within ourselves, taking up residence in the body? Whose voices come to shape our own, defining the movements of an inner voice? As the artist Merete Røstad suggests, our bodies become carriers for all the sounds we hear throughout life. Such embodied archiving calls us into acts of inner listening, ways of knowing the story of oneself as well as the (acoustic) communities of which one is a part. These are archives and stories deeply embedded in the tissue, the cells, the imagination, and that travel across generations to form an “echology” of resonance, injury, myth. By listening-with the echoes that resound within, we travel in time, keeping hold of the currents, voices, and journeys of a greater experiential world. Such travels and journeys give way to an auditory, embodied knowledge, and that lends to practices of listening. We might also think in what ways such an echology demands a nuanced form of ethics, bringing sensitivity to how we relate to the inner dimensions, as a kind of auditory root system, as well as contribute to the embodied archives of others through our own soundings. 

Following this echological perspective, we’re interested to delve into forms of inner listening, to nurture ways of attuning to the archives within which, as many wisdom traditions express, form the basis for countering systems that continually obscure the “subtle languages” of the imagination. These are forms of inner listening – or ways of echolocating – that perform a care of the self, that cultivate processes of memory work, and that moreover aid in connecting to the deep earth of an ancestral commons. Through theoretical, critical reflection and material, embodied activity, we’ll explore how echologies, and echolocational practices, carry poetic power, supporting movements that work at keeping hold of broader collective stories, especially as a means for self-determination and gathering the collective energies of intergenerational knowledge. 

Participating guests and facilitators include Zuzana Ernst, Brandon LaBelle, Susana Ojeda, with additional input from Francesca Ceccherini, Mikal Maldoror, Tahereh Nourani, Belinda Kazeem-Kaminsky. With much gratitude and appreciation to all who contributed: Emily Orley, Maria Balabaș, Johanna Schindler, Kristina Pia Hofer, Manuel Lallana Babiloni, Arlo Tomecek, Şimal Zagra, Stephanie Marshall, Carina Wowerath , Mariella Greil / Werner Möbius, Linda Jiayun Gao-Lenders, Luisa Spina, Riccardo Sacco, Alejandra Macías, Alice Bazzichelli, Zeynep Sari, Clara de Asis, Ale Zapata, Yvo Kaufmann, Denise Sumi, Dina Karaman, Marija Mitic, Dominika Moravčíková, Juice Cui, Barbara Mahlknecht, Alessandro Santoni, Bergur Anderson, Toni Brell, Claire Sabel, Bassano Bonelli Bassano, Karine Blanche, Hui Ye, Ike Costa.