Poetics of Listening

Abstract

It has already ... begun ... the time ... the time-space ... of ... speaking .... a speaking that ... moves itself toward ... knowing nothing ... something ... you, the yous that arrive from ... the particularities ... as the basis for a giving ... enacting ... a rhythming of ... breath ... breathing toward ... away ... As a field of artistic research and practices, sound art brings focus to listening as a particular sensory, perceptual experience and capacity. Through a range of methods and approaches, including spatial and installational to performative and relational work, sound art positions the public as listeners. In doing so, listening is never only figured or conceived as a passive, receptive position; rather, sound art intensifies listening as an experience, inviting or demanding a shift toward more active forms and understandings. By way of sound art, listening is constituted as an experimental practice, one that involves itself in the world in such ways as to foster multiple or polyphonic conceptualizations of life and manners of existence. I focus on sound art in order to highlight its place within a broader framework of artistic practice and to underscore how it dynamically introduces listening as a particular sensory, perceptual capacity and practice Poetics of Listening