Call for Participation - The Listening Academy Vienna
The Listening Academy – Vienna
June 25 - 28, 2026
Echoes, Echologies, Memory Work
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 Zuzka Ernst, Brandon LaBelle, Susana Ojeda, with additional input from Francesca Ceccherini, Mikal Maldoror, Tahereh Nourani, and others to be confirmed. In collaboration with Brunnenpassage – Art Social Space, Vienna.
Apply: We welcome letters of interest from a diversity of practitioners, researchers, educators and organizers, interested in sharing knowledge and exploring practices. Please share with us your interest in participating, along with details on your own practice and research. Please include a short CV. For participants there is a requested donation of 80 euro, which will help in providing material and technical support. In case of financial hardship, please mention this in your letter. We strive to make our program accessible to a diversity of participants. We also strive to create a safe and nurturing environment. Please share with us any particular needs you might have. Please send us your materials by May 10, 2026, to: listeningaca@gmail.com
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.
*
Zuzana Ernst is a transdisciplinary artist, researcher, and curator working with listening as a relational and political practice. Her work unfolds at the intersection of artistic research, performance, and long-term co-creative processes, with a focus on collective attunement, care, and accountability within social and ecological contexts. She is the co-founder of D—Arts and curator at D—Arts and Brunnenpassage ArtSocialSpace in Vienna. Zuzana is currently a PhD candidate in the doctoral programme 'Cultures in Transformation' at the Mozarteum University Salzburg and the University of Salzburg, where her research focuses on deep listening as an embodied, collective practice for negotiating difference, attention, and response-ability within artistic and institutional contexts.
Francesca Ceccherini is a curator and PhD candidate in Visual and Media Studies at IULM University in Milan. Her research investigates how artistic practices engage with trauma, and how listening can operate as a form of repair. She is the founder of OTO Sound Museum (Zurich), which she has led over the past six years in close attunement with fellow curators. Since 2020, she has also been a member of the curatorial collective Zaira Oram, following her graduation in Advanced Studies in Curating at ZHdK Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. Over time, she has curated exhibitions and interventions in both urban and institutional contexts, developing transdisciplinary projects with artists, curators, and researchers from different fields of study. Her projects have been presented at Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Kochi, India), MAP Museum of Art & Photography (Bengaluru), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Ars Electronica (Linz), Biennale Son (Sion), among others.
Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer, theorist and artistic director of The Listening Biennial. His work focuses on questions of agency, community, pirate culture, and poetics, which results in a range of collaborative and extra-institutional initiatives, including 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 (2013-22), 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: Poetics of Listening (2025), Dreamtime X (2022), Acoustic Justice (2021), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (2012), Acoustic Territories (2010), and Background Noise (2006).
Tahereh Nourani is a composer and sound artist in the field of experimental sound art. She explores the potential of Deep Listening through slowness and minimalism. Nourani specializes in extended and unconventional playing techniques on her instruments, the bass and the flute, and integrates objects, field recordings, and languages into her work. Nourani is a scholarship recipient of the Austrian Federal Ministry f. Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sports, she is a member of the Vienna Improvisers Orchestra as well as the artist collective QMA, SHAPE+ Artist and winner of the PhonoECHOES Award for experimental sound art. She has performed at venues and festivals such as Belvedere 21 (AT), Moers Festival (DE), UH Fest (HU), and Üle Heli Festival (EE) and has composed music for installations, film, theater, contemporary dance, and performance. She studied European classical flute at the Tehran University of Arts and at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) and was Artist in Residence at AQB (HU), Casa di Rosa (CH), and Hotel Pupik (AT).
Susana Ojeda is a filmmaker, artist, anthropologist, and activist based in Vienna. She is the co-founder of estudio elgozo, a platform dedicated to audiovisual projects grounded in decolonial, ecofeminist, and social justice perspectives. Through film, installations, workshops, and ritual practices, her work explores ways of reconnecting humans with more-than-human worlds and honoring ancestral knowledge. Since 2023, she has served as co-president of the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ). More recently, she co-founded discos elgozo, a record label that builds bridges between independent Colombian music and transnational contexts.