The Listening Academy Online – On Poetic Knowledge
On Poetic Knowledge – Toward Cosmopoetic Listening
The Listening Academy - Online course with Brandon LaBelle
Dates: January 16, 23, 30 February 6, 2026: 14:00 - 16:00 CET
Considering questions of epistemic agency, poetic knowledge is posed as a unique intervention, one that explicitly works at reclaiming a relation to knowing grounded in the fullness of the senses. In contrast to traditional ideas of scientific objectivity, and the imperative to analyze, dissect, categorize and instrumentalize, poetic knowledge is profoundly sympathetic, subjective, and defined by love, lending to knowing by way of the inside. As the capacity to “see the life within the object” (echoing Robin Wall Kimmerer), a poetic way of knowing is supportive of planetary ethics. Moreover, poetic knowledge follows from the distinction Hannah Arendt makes between “knowing” and “thinking,” where knowing is aligned with the search for truth and thinking instead with poetic wisdom. For Arendt, the "will to know” has become a dominant force within human society, undermining our ability to think freely. As Arendt argues, thinking equates with contemplation and the “uselessness” of art, whereas knowing is utilitarian and directed toward scientific capture as well as ideologies of progress. As James S. Taylor further summarizes, “poetry discovers, science proves,” situating poetic agency as a con-natural force of imaginary power.
Following these views, the online course is devoted to exploring understandings of poetic knowledge as well as poetic agency, and what will be highlighted as the "will to listen”. This includes the presentation of particular theoretical views and creative, relational practices through prepared lectures as well as invitations to think freely together about the potentiality of a poetic practice. Given the establishment of the knowledge economy as a prevailing system, and the ways in which information and data function as forms of power and currency, it becomes important to question the dynamics of what we understand as “knowledge production”. As Achille Mbembe suggests, it’s imperative to recover a form of “reason” against the logic of computation today. What kind of reason might this be? We’ll consider poetic reasoning as what may contribute to challenging dominant systems with their related forms of colonial-capitalist enclosure – finding in poetics a means for reclaiming a material-spiritual logic of connection and correspondence. To act poetically, as Fred Moten highlights, is to refuse to be settled, giving way to the invention of common worlds – a cosmopoetic form of listening.
We welcome letters of interest from researchers, organizers, practitioners and educators curious to unfold the topics of poetic knowledge and poetic agency. Each session will be structured around an explorative lecture by Brandon LaBelle, as well as readings into selected texts, followed by an open discussion with participants on poetic methodologies and how listening contributes.
The course is limited to 30 participants (additional sessions will be offered depending on interest). We kindly request a fee of 100 euro for attending the course, with a reduced rate of 80 euro for students. Please send letters sharing details on your interest in the topic, along with a short CV by December 12, 2025; questions or inquiries can also be addressed to: listeningaca@gmail.com
Schedule:
1. January 16, 14:00 - 16:00 CET: On Poetic Knowledge: attention economies, radical sympathy, and the loving ear
2. January 23, 14:00 - 16:00 CET: Grammar of Animacy: elemental collaboration, planetary ethics, and biopoetics
3. January 30, 14:00 - 16:00 CET: Sacred Medicine: incantation, poetic healing, and crazy wisdom
4. February 6, 14:00 - 16:00 CET: Poetic Justice: cosmopoetic listening and performing the good
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).