The Belgian theatre director Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe will be looking for a unique match between electronic and contemporary classical music together with Icelandic producer/composer Valgeir Sigurdsson (Bedroom Community). In a world full of turbulence and (white) noise, these artists will try to reclaim and revalue the art of listening, creating space for contemplation, silence, and wondrous new compositions. These elements are all reflected in a 60-minute song cycle and interwoven soundscapes:written jointly by the artists during their stay in Reykjavik and Antwerp.
Joseph Kamaru aka KMRU, sound artist and producer from Nairobi, opens with an ambient set. 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.”
The duo will be accompanied by violinist Elisabeth Klinck, a rapidly emerging artist from Brussels, primarily known as a solo performer playing both electronics and solo violin.
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.
In collaboration with Stadsschouwburg Utrecht and De Luisterbar
A co-production with B-Classic (B), Arctic Arts Festival (N) and Northern Lights Festival (N)
“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.”
“No, on the contrary I think that the growth of “visual culture” has made sound even more important than ever.”
“By being aware of it every day and listening with our entire body. The ear is only a part of our active listening mechanism.”
“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.”
“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.”
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.
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.
Putja Patel and Jeremy Karson, editors from the Pitchfork Review team talk to contributing editor Andy Cush about the recent explosion of streaming ambient music.