The Study Group for Listening

is a transdisciplinary ‘open-ended’ and performative study group, dedicated to caring for and staying with how the practice of listening (philosophically, critically, artistically, emotionally etc.) can both embody, enhance, affect, and suggest ways for ecological thinking, artistic practices and ways of being.

Listening as a practice will inform not only the way of ‘studying’ listening, but also the organization of the study group gatherings. The group will convene monthly, and explore a predetermined theme. A protocol for the gatherings will be discussed at the first convening. All are welcome, and no prepared readings are necessary.

The Study Group for Listening is hosted by Bureau for Listening and co-organized with Sound Studies Lab (SSL) and The Student Core Group of Center for Applied Ecological Thinking (CApE). And initiated as part of Bureau for Listening’s Testing Ground residency exploring listening as an artistic and critical practice at Art Hub Copenhagen.

A little note:

It is a study group ‘for’ listening – whereby we seek to be supportive and curious about listening, rather than  ‘knowing and authoritarian’.

Join the study group gatherings by write bureauforlistening@gmail.com, we will then confirm, add you to our study group member list, and send you further info/material on the predetermined theme before the gatherings.

“To listen is continually to be reminded that we are not just possessors of the world in which we move around and find our being, but possessed by it.”

 

(Tim Ingold: Sound Walks, In: Going Out. Walking, Listening, Soundmaking. Ed.: Elena Biserna. 2022. pp. 253.).

Study Group Calendar:

1. Gathering – Monday the 22nd of January, 16.00-17.30

(At Art Hub Copenhagen, Halmtorvet 27. 1700 Copenhagen V)

 

2. Gathering – Monday the 26st of February, 16.00-17.30

(At Art Hub Copenhagen, Halmtorvet 27. 1700 Copenhagen V)

 

3. Gathering – Monday the 18th of Marts, 16.00-17.30

(At Art Hub Copenhagen, Halmtorvet 27. 1700 Copenhagen V)

 

4. Gathering – Monday the 15th of April, 16.00-17.30

(At Art Hub Copenhagen, Halmtorvet 27. 1700 Copenhagen V)

As a Study Group for Listening are we concerned with questions such as: 

What does it mean to study in a time of environmental catastrophe and political polarization? In what ways can we rethink and re-practice ‘studying’, as an artistic, critical and ecological response?

 

In what way do we conceptualize and practice what it means to be a group? What assumptions do we need to face, and what affectation consequences does it have to be together? 

 

What is attempted when saying ‘for’ rather than ‘of’? 

 

In what ways can we share, learn and relearn practices of listening? 

 

 

In what ways can we as a study group give space for extra-learning situations and foster new modes of knowledge production/finding/searching and staying-with different knowledge(s)?

Protocol:

As a tool and supporting framework we will organize the study group sessions following this protocol #1 (thought to change over time):

Phase 1: Before anything else, we choose to listen

– A chance to calibrate our bodies, our presence and being a group together

 

Phase 2: Being together by offering our listening

– A chance to share individual experiences, ideas, questions, concerns etc. from the opening exercise – simply offer listening to each other’s experiences

 

Phase 3: ‘Voicing’ the unsaid, non-sayable and assumed

– A chance to speculative and discuss together

 

Phase 4: We give as we travels on

– A chance to craft a gift; generating writing, questions, proposals, dreams and wonderings to be saved/shared/given to each other