The Listening Academy Online – Poetics of Listening
Poetics of Listening with Brandon LaBelle
March 24, 31 April 7, 14 / 14:00-16:00 CET
Extending from the upcoming publication Poetics of Listening, this lecture / seminar course focuses on listening as a transformative capacity and experience. As adrienne maree brown comments, “In my experience, healing happens when a place of trauma or pain is given full attention, really listened to.” Underpinning the course is a concern to elaborate a listening knowledge, considering key questions such as: in what ways does listening influence conceptualizations of self and other, bodies and things? If listening is understood as an active work of attention, how might it positively contribute to (re)shaping attention economies? Is there a connection between listening and the project of environmental justice, and how might we elaborate this connection? Following these lines of inquiry, each session reflects upon a particular modality or figure of listening, including: Inner Listening (on self-determination and a care of the self), Social Recognition (listening as an ethics of holding difference), Somatic Listening (therapeutic arts and rewriting the story of the body), and Planetary Practices (listening as situated ecological attunement). Through theoretical reflection and the analysis of case studies, the course examines listening’s role in cultivating care for oneself and others, and in what way it may aid in intervening within dominant systems of power. While listening may appear as rather weak in the face of prevailing struggles, the course considers its profound influence, finally posing listening as a path toward fostering and maintaining authentic connections.
We welcome letters of interest from researchers, organizers and practitioners curious to deepen an understanding of listening as a critical, creative practice. The course offers an array of relevant references spanning sound studies, ethics, political theory, embodied practices, and ecological thinking, as well as a consideration of creative methodologies. Each session will be structured around a lecture presentation by Brandon LaBelle, followed by an open discussion with participants, posing questions and inquiring further into the given topics. In addition, each session will provide room for participants to encounter each other, developing conversations together as well as supporting participants’ individual research.
The course is limited to 20 participants (depending on interest, further sessions may be offered to accommodate additional participants). Participants are expected to attend the full course. We kindly request a tuition of 100 euro for attending the course. Please send letters, sharing details on your interest in the topic, along with a short CV by February 14, 2025; questions or inquiries can also be addressed to: listeningaca@gmail.com
1. March 24: Inner Listening: self-determination and a care of the self
2. March 31: Social Recognition: listening as an ethics of holding difference
3. April 7: Somatic Listening: therapeutic arts and rewriting the story of the body
4. April 14: Planetary Practices: listening as situated ecological attunement
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, 2019), and Background Noise (2006, 2015).