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, Tahereh Nourani, Belinda Kazeem-Kaminsky.
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 75 euro, which will help in providing material and technical support. 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.