Acoustic Care and the Right to Listen

In the organizer's words:

Come join us for a talk with the artist Brandon LaBelle on Acoustic Care and the Right to Listen followed by informal exchange, drinks and soup made by the Playgorund team.

Putting into question normative constructs of sensing and embodiment, the presentation poses acoustics as a critical and creative support that assists in contending with dominant regimes of aurality. Acoustics is highlighted as a social, political issue that impacts on what counts as hearing and being heard, and around which particular listening positionalities are formed. In this way, acoustics is a performative process or practice that shapes articulations and gestures of self-determination and community building, affecting ways of synchronizing with others. From shared rhythms to noise-making, tensions around belonging are negotiated through forms of acoustic performativity. Following performative approaches to acoustics further allows for caring for diverse abilities and how we may create conditions that enable different capacities and ways of living. This includes considering how acts that shift volumes, that rework rhythms, and that retune or detune dominant tonalities of particular contexts greatly assist in nurturing one's right to listen.

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist living in Berlin. He is also the artistic director of The Listening Biennial and related Listening Academy. His work focuses on questions of agency, community, and poetics, resulting in a range of collaborative and extra-institutional initiatives, including Communities in Movement (2019-2023), The Living School (with South London Gallery, 2014-16), Oficina de Autonomia (2017-), 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), Acoustic Justice (2021), Dreamtime X (2022), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Acoustic Territories (2010, 2019), and Background Noise (2006, 2015).

FREE EVENT in ENGLISH. Register at info@playground-nomadicground.com

More info at https://www.playground-nomadicground.com/gathering-about1