Disordered Listening

‘Disordered Listening’ was a two-day workshop run by Cathy Lane at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, with PhD in Practice candidates and postgrad researchers from other European countries. ‘Disordering Listening – a practical seminar’ is a collective investigation into the role and potentials of listening, considering sound-based practice around listening in relation to social and political subjects and subjectivities. In particular exploring acts and organizations of listening that are embedded in daily life and that activate multiple responses: philosophical, psychological, phenomenological, perceptual, conceptual, political, etc. To “disorder” listening would be to embrace all of these responses transversally, rather than isolating “listening” as an autonomous category of experience. We propose to use the workshop as a platform for research into questions about how knowledge is generated around listening and how listening can constitute a critical practice. 1. What are our habits of hearing and listening? 2. What is the knowledge of listening that we are accustomed to? 3. What are the epistemic, ethical, political and cosmological modes of critical listening? Where do we locate these modes within our subjective discourses and experiences? 4. What could it mean to propose a “decolonial” mode of listening? We are particularly interested in exploring activist and feminist approaches and approaches that consider urbanist and geopolitical perspectives. Cathy Lane is Professor of Sound Arts at University of the Arts London. She established the department of Sound Arts and Design at London College of Communication and now co - directs Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice (CRiSAP). She is currently using the Her Noise Archive as a catalyst for research into gender in sound arts practice. Cathy Lane is interested how sound relates to the past, our histories, our environment and our collective and individual memories. This informs her current work as a composer, sound artist, lecturer and researcher. Aspects of her creative practice have developed out of these interests and include composition and installation-based work with spoken word, field recordings and archive material. She also writes and lectures on these and related subjects as well as collaborating with choreographers, film makers, visual artists and other musicians