“What is heard is changed by listening and changes the listener. I call this the listening effect,” wrote Pauline Oliveros. Through the practice of Deep Listening, the American experimental composer has developed a singular conception of listening and its effects. Drawing on her research and following on from the “Un·Tuning Together” exhibition at Bétonsalon, we want to explore the transformative and emancipatory dimension of listening. How can such a practice foster relationships of mutual transformation ? What effects can it have on our relationship with ourselves, with others and with the environment ?
Conceived as a triptych, this “station” approaches the practice of listening as conceived by Oliveros through three complementary modalities : those of an embodied, ecocentric and collective experience.
In the work of the feminist composer, listening is an embodied experience that mobilizes the whole body and transcends the limits of the subject. It can be the basis of an ethical relationship with others, provided we recognize our vulnerabilities and interdependence.
When practiced in relation to the environment, listening makes us feel a form of material continuity, a sense of belonging to the living world that prevents us from considering it as a mere resource. Listening places us in the middle of the world, rather than above it.
In her compositions, Pauline Oliveros situates improvisation at the center of a collective dynamic as an “attentional strategy” that places us at the center of listening to ourselves and to others. This form of attention allows us to experience a social model in which each person’s voice is heard and the individual’s place in the group is constantly negotiated.
Following on from the Laboratory’s work on the “How to inhabit cosmomorphic worlds ?” cycle, Station 24, The Listening Effect, sketches out the possibility of deep listening as a tool for transformation, capable of building a shared world made of interdependencies and resonances.