Art of Listening Artist Room

Valgeir Sigurdsson: 5 questions about The art of listening

1. Now that many silences have been broken with the help of online platforms and social media – for better and for worse – we can ask ourselves how we can revalue and reclaim the art of listening. What does an ideal environment for active and empathetic listening look like to you?
   

   Valgeir Sigurdsson:

   “I think everything is about listening. Not only in music terms. Just, in life. The art is in hearing the silence through all the noise. Silence is the precious commodity, it’s the space in which you can discover and create.”

2. Looking has been dominant in our Western world for centuries. Not only since the advent of the web, the cinema or the advertising industry. We are so immersed in visual culture that we sometimes hardly notice sound anymore. In recent years, the appreciation of sound has slowly changed, with the growing popularity of sound-based social media, streaming services and, of course, podcasts. In your opinion, is there a shift towards listening that can be seen as a reaction to the dominance of visual culture?
   

   Valgeir Sigurdsson:

   “No, on the contrary I think that the growth of “visual culture” has made sound even more important than ever.”

    

3. How do you think we can train our ears and our hearts to be more receptive to (listening to) our fellow human beings, to plants and animals, to nature?
   

   Valgeir Sigurdsson:

   “By being aware of it every day and listening with our entire body. The ear is only a part of our active listening mechanism.”

    

4. In certain religious and non-western philosophical traditions, sound, voice and their vibrations in the body are important. Do you think there are certain ways to learn to listen to our own body and our own intuition?
   

   Valgeir Sigurdsson:

   “I think that is the lifelong training that everyone needs to figure out for themselves. Find whatever works for you and don’t expect it to be the same for everyone else.”

    

5. Computers and machines are fervent listeners these days. They track our voices, record our conversations and allow artificial intelligence – or humans – to listen to us for information. In other words. there are rather far-reaching political dimensions to sound, silence and listening. Is it still possible to reverse this development of mechanical listening or to use it for the better?
   

   Valgeir Sigurdsson:

   “I think we are just at the start of these developments and they won’t be reversed, but learning how to use the technology is both exciting and scary at the same time. Humans are prone to errors, and we’ll make many mistakes, always. We just have to hope that they don’t cause (too much) damage and suffering.”

Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe: 5 questions about The Art of Listening

1. Now that many silences have been broken with the help of online platforms and social media – for better and for worse – we can ask ourselves how we can revalue and reclaim the art of listening. What does an ideal environment for active and empathetic listening look like to you?
   Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe:
   “A place where conflict and friction exists in many ways and many intensities, where there’s time for reflection and echo, where sound can be a calm dialogue, a disturbing monologue, a comforting, artificial and pure vibrating landscape, where it rains, where there is photosynthesis, where tectonic plates create new sounds and waves.”
2. Looking has been dominant in our Western world for centuries. Not only since the advent of the web, the cinema or the advertising industry. We are so immersed in visual culture that we sometimes hardly notice sound anymore. In recent years, the appreciation of sound has slowly changed, with the growing popularity of sound-based social media, streaming services and, of course, podcasts. In your opinion, is there a shift towards listening that can be seen as a reaction to the dominance of visual culture?Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe:
   “As a director of theater and opera-minded performances the visual aspect is highly important for me, both image and music serve each other. I’m not too concerned with which sense wins, but I think music is more dominant and makes a direct connection to my feelings, much faster than an image.”
3. How do you think we can train our ears and our hearts to be more receptive to (listening to) our fellow human beings, to plants and animals, to nature?
   Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe:
   “I have no idea. I’m not a guru. I think people should look more into each other’s eyes and therefore maybe also into each other’s ears. Taking time.”
4. In certain religious and non-western philosophical traditions, sound, voice and their vibrations in the body are important. Do you think there are certain ways to learn to listen to our own body and our own intuition?
   Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe:
   I certainly think so. Intuition is one’s biggest tool.”
5. Computers and machines are fervent listeners these days. They track our voices, record our conversations and allow artificial intelligence – or humans – to listen to us for information. In other words, there are rather far-reaching political dimensions to sound, silence and listening. Is it still possible to reverse this development of mechanical listening or to use it for the better?
   Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe:
   “I try to oversee it, but I must admit that I have lost the countless possibilities and therefore the amount of influence it has on our daily existence. I believe that technology can make us calm down and take over certain tasks that are directly related to the system we live in now, I believe that besides the many conspiracies about becoming humanoids, we just get more time and become more human, after all that’s what I dream about.”

Joseph Kamaru aka KMRU, sound artist and producer from Nairobi, performs in support of The Art of Listening. About Epoch, his latest album (2022) that he made inbetween tours with Fennesz and Big Thief, he says: “I hope the album brings some desire to slow things down.”

KMRU explores the influence our surroundings can have on hearing and composing.

Input for writing an essay

Now that many silences have been broken with the help of platforms and media – for the good and for the bad – we wonder how we can revalue and reclaim the art of listening. What would an environment for active and empathic listening look like? How can we train our ears and hearts to be more receptive to our fellow human beings, to plants and animals, to nature.
Also, how can we learn to listen more carefully to our own bodies and intuition?

The turn towards listening can be seen as a response to the dominance of visual culture. Sight and seeing have been predominant for ages, not just since the advent of the web, cinema, or the advertising industry. Western philosophy has always given preference to that which can be seen over that which must be heard. We are so immersed in visual culture that we hardly notice sound anymore. Over the past years the appreciation of sound has slowly changed, with the growing popularity of sound-based social media, streaming services, and of course podcasts.

Next to seeing, we prefer speaking over listening. Self-expression is what drives thinking, science, and our social media worth. Since social media have become the megaphone for the masses, where everyone can speak their mind anytime, the question who is there to listen takes on a new dimension. Attentive listening has evolved into a skill, a most useful tool for winning an argument or reaching another (professional) goal. Pop-psychology tells us that learning how to listen closely will sharpen our thinking skills, improve our leadership and power, and make us a better friend or partner. Or is the goal of such listening in the end to make people hear you?

Behind rules and tips for learning how to listen, lie thorough methodologies like deep listening. Time, ecological awareness, embodiment, and togetherness are important aspects of deep listening that oftentimes get lost in popular adaptations.[1] At the same time, these aspects show the potential for deep listening in rethinking our relationship with the world. Other roots of listening dig deep into religious and non-western philosophical traditions, where sound, voice, and their vibrations in the body are important. What can we learn from such practices for the future?

Listening can be a way to give room to that which is suppressed. It means being quiet if just for a little while, withholding your biases and prejudice, and letting that which has been silenced or ignored speak out. The question ‘Who speaks?’, is inevitably linked to the question: ‘Who listens?’[2] The turn towards listening, as a practice, method, and theory, must question power relations and existing hierarchies. It calls for a dialogue in the true sense of the word. Listening to the other means to stop filling in the blanks for the other without asking them what they want, think, or feel themselves.[3]

Such a careful and critical understanding of the ethics of listening seems even more important when we consider that we are not the only ones trying to listen. Machines are becoming avid listeners, especially now that voice recognition devices enter our houses and (home) workplaces. They track our voices, record our conversations, and have artificial intelligence – or humans – listen to us in the search for information. In that sense they resemble an updated version of the man upstairs in the film about East-German espionage Das Leben der Anderen. We shouldn’t forget there are far-reaching political dimensions to sound, silence, and the act of listening.[4] Can we turn the tables on machinic listening and use it for the good?

Listening as a counter-act is not about searching and finding useful or valuable information, it is about opening ourselves to the other and to the world around. What unexpected and unpredictable things may happen once we start to really listen? Listen up, not just with your ears, but with your whole body. What you hear might be painful – stories of oppression, extinction, oblivion, and trauma – but it will just as well be rich, musical, alive, and exhilarating.

[1] Pauline Oliveros
[2] Gayatri Spivak
[3] Rolando Vázquez
[4] Lawrence Abu Hamdan.

Often we listen without hearing, we think we already know what something sounds like and lose interest. However, when we listen carefully, there often turns out to be much more than initially expected. Inspired by Japanese listening bars, Birds of Paradise presents an in-depth listening experience in collaboration with De Luisterbar, in which we leave our fast-paced world for what it is.

Host Milan van Keulen talks with Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe and Valgeir Sigurdsson about The art of listening. They take you into their musical world with stories and contexts. What fascinates them? What influenced them? What makes that one record so special? You don’t have to understand anything, see anything, search for anything. All you have to do is just listen, with an open mind.