Bureau for Listening / Arts Letters and Numbers
For the duration of Marts 2023 a member of Bureau for Listening will be in residency at Arts Letters and Numbers, New York. The goal are to open-ended investigate different outcomes and practices for listening. This page is conceptualized as a container for these investigations.
The House on the Hill, the 6th of Marts at 10pm.
More defined or concluded investigations/attempts/projects:
Different material in relation to the residency:
The field recording of walking from the studios to my room at the Hill on the House the 6th of Marts 2023 at 10pm:
Footprints in the snow on the way to the House on the Hill.
The field recording of walking from my room at the Hill on the House to the studios the 10th of Marts 2023 at 8:45pm:
Floor at the studios.
A street light and the moon.
My work 'station' the 6th of Marts.
Exit sign at the studios at 10pm.
In a moment of wondering what to do, a dear friend forwarded this citation from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, Sonnet I:
A tree rising. What a pure growing!
Orpheus is singing! A tree inside the ear!
Silence, silence. Yet new buildings,
signals, and changes went on in the silence.
Animals created by the silence came forward from the clear
and relaxed forest where their lairs were,
and it turned out the reason they were so full of silence
was not cunning, and not terror,
it was listening. Growling, yelping, grunting now
seemed all nonsense to them. And where before
there was hardly a shed where listening could go,
a rough shelter put up out of brushy longings,
with an entrance gate whose poles were wobbly,
you created a temple for them deep inside their ears
Snowy landscape at Art Letters and Numbers
The 11th of Marts
The 14th of Marts
A place to sit and listen:
A place to sit and listen
Snow and Trees I
Snow and Trees II
Snow and Trees III
A question arrived from the romanian based artist collective Apparatus 22:
Why do you think art / curating is work?
A possible response:
Maybe art and curating are work because it makes us tired.
Likely most artists and curators are tired workers. Working long hours and for little pay.
Likely most artists are working class artists. These are of course not the artists promoted by the so-called ‘art world’.
A point worth making would be that the ability to strike is a powerful and important solidary tool for all workers. But the ability and the right to stop working when experience injustice and exploitation (which many artist do) is also not for all. What kind of striking from work is possible for a working-class artist or curator? Alike, how can caretakers and activists strike? How can we strike from our passion from our need to create and explore?
On why art / curating is work // Speculative protest sign for possible striking artist.
An audio version send to Apparatus 22:
Speculative protest sign held up by possible striking artist:
Speculative protest sign held up by possible striking artist.
Listening as Work:
In what way is listening work?
How often (or rare) is your listening being compensated in relation to the value it contribute with?
What is lost within a listening practice if understood as ‘work’?
In what ways can we demonstrate and protest for the rights of listening-workers?
When reading Slow Spatial Reader. Chronicles of Radical Affection, 2021, edited by Carolyn F. Strauss published by Slow research Lab some interesting tools where shared.
Bronwyn Lace, director at Centre for Less Good Ideas, shares the following:
The Instrument of Instability
The Displacement Device
The Mechanism That Is Disorganization
The Implement That Is Unknown
—
How these instruments were presented will not be cited.
Rather, we may now wonder, what use listening have for such tools – and in what way listening might be integrated into these tools?
Objects for listening:
‘Objects for Listening’ was the title for a possible project in search for different objects that enabled different kinds of listening.
The idea could be to create a sticker on which the artist to fill out some ‘listening-information’ before placing the sticker unto an object and declaring it an object for listening.
One thing for the artist to answer on the sticker could be:
‘Listening-rating of the object (1-10):__’
or
‘Number for listening-dimension embodied in the object:__’
and
‘Title for object:_______________________’
The residency was made financial possible by support from: William Demant Fonden.
Thank you.