Call for participation – The Listening Academy Delhi
The Listening Academy Delhi
Dates: December 9 - 14, 2024
Location: Sarai-CSDS, Delhi (and other venues TBA)
Organised and facilitated by Brandon LaBelle, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay and Suvani Suri.
In her publication Resonant Alterities, literary and cultural theorist Sylvia Mieszkowski explores the literary articulations of aural phenomena and processes of hearing, which have been transported by (written) words. Through a study of specific fictional texts, she proposes a way of reading and writing sound as a site of meaning-making, knowledge production and subjectivation. Drawing from the histories and ideas of the acoustic turn, she unpacks certain literary moments in which new languages are conceived to carry the questions, tensions and desires laden within the field of listening and sounding for individual protagonists, societies and collective milieus. Taking off from her analysis and propositions, this edition of The Listening Academy aims to think around relations between sound, voice, writing and language, and in what ways listening contributes to meaning-making. While writing is mostly understood as an act of inscription, one that gestures toward leaving a mark to be read, in what ways can we think of listening as writing? If voice is fundamental to the crafting and archiving of stories, how does listening participate?
As Krista Ratcliffe argues, listening is essential for navigating “rhetorical situations” by enabling a deeper sensitivity for communicative acts, empathetic exchange and the holding of difference. This entails attuning to the “unstated hauntings” that always inform articulation and the exchange of words, where the unheard and inaudible participate in shaping the limits of language and meaning-making.
Following these perspectives, we’ll open a creative and critical framework for focusing on listening as a form of “writing” – where listening is positioned as a shared gesture towards authoring the world. Through critical discussions, lectures and creative explorations, the Academy will inquire into pronounced forms of listening, including reflecting upon “critical listening positionalities” and in what ways listening wields an effect on cultural identity, mediatic environments, social history, political struggle, and their significations.
Additionally, we’re interested to follow the trails of listening into the grey zones of meaning, framing listening itself as what connects us to the unnamable.
Furthermore, we’ll delve into the spectral and phantasmatic qualities of sound, listening toward sonic edges as a way to tune into the limits of existing structures and atmospheres , from daily environments and homes to larger social, political arrangements. Readings, prompts and dialogues will also delve into the relational fields of mediatisation of sound and the formation, destabilisation, dissolution or restructuring of listening publics and collective movements. The attempt is to reflect on and arrive at collaborative vocabularies and articulations of listening that are unique to one’s own practices and inquiries. This will translate to fictioning individual and collective worlds, situations and paradigms envisioning or enhearing new forms of connection.
Apply:
We invite letters of interest from a broad range of researchers and practitioners. Please share with us your interest in participating, along with what interests you about sound and listening, what is the practice of listening for you, and how does it relate to your research and work? Along with a letter of interest, please include a short CV. Please send us your materials by October 9, 2024, to: listeningaca@gmail.com
The Listening Academy Delhi is facilitated by Brandon LaBelle, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay and Suvani Suri.
There is no participation fee but participants are responsible for their travel and accommodations. We also strive to create a safe and enriching environment for all. Please share with us any particular needs you might have.
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The Listening Academy is an independent research academy focusing on listening as a philosophical, artistic, social and somatic issue. This entails a relation to sonic, performative and ecological practices, sound studies research, community work and experimental pedagogy. The Academy offers a generative and nurturing framework for researchers and practitioners to engage in collaborative exchange and the sharing of knowledge, as well as workshopping new directions. This includes bringing together individual approaches and work, and creating opportunities for material exploration and building new collaborations.
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 extra-institutional initiatives, including: The Listening Biennial and Academy (2021-), Communities in Movement (2019-23), Oficina de Autonomia (2017), The Living School (with South London Gallery, 2014-16), The Imaginary Republic (2014-19), Dirty Ear Forum (2013-21), Surface Tension (2003-2008), 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: Dreamtime X (2022), Acoustic Justice (2021), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Acoustic Territories (2010, 2019), and Background Noise (2006, 2015).
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay is a media artist, researcher, and writer. Chattopadhyay produces works for large-scale installation and live performance addressing issues of environment and ecology, migration, and decoloniality. His works have been widely exhibited, performed, and presented across the globe. Chattopadhyay has an expansive body of scholarly publications in media arts history, artistic research, media theory and aesthetics in leading peer-reviewed journals. He is the author of five books, including The Nomadic Listener (2020), The Auditory Setting (2021), Between the Headphones (2021), Sound Practices in the Global South (2022), and Sound in Indian Film and Audiovisual Media (2024). Chattopadhyay holds a PhD in Artistic Research and Sound Studies from the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM), Basel, Switzerland, and a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design (KMD), University of Bergen, Norway.
Suvani Suri is an artist based in New Delhi, India. She works with sound, text and intermedia assemblages that think through modes of listening and voicing. Her artistic, research and curatorial inquiries plumb the gaps, cracks, and leaks embedded within the technological processes of production, mediation and perception of sound. As a protagonist/ component of diverse spaces and collaborative practices, she alternates between a multitude of roles. Her works have been exhibited at Serendipity Arts Festival (2023), Kunsthalle Bern (2022), Five Million Incidents (2020), Khoj Curatorial Intensive South Asia (2019), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018), Mumbai Art Room (2018), Sound Reasons Festival VI (2018) amongst others.