«from deep to critical listening: acts of presence as social and environmental practices»

«from deep to critical listening: acts of presence as social and environmental practices» 

a two-day seminar for listening together                                          

Diane Barbé and Pablo Diserens hosted by Raphaël Cuomo and Maria Iorio 

This two-day seminar proposes to explore the artistic, ecological, political, and social dimensions of listening by engaging with sound as a gateway to presence, more-than-human kinship, self/planetary-reflection, and radical change. By situating listening within our contemporary existences, the seminar will examine the possibilities opened by this practice, and the role played by human, social, and capitalist conditions in influencing our perception of sound and the world around us. The seminar will weave a transdisciplinary assemblage of artistic, somatic, and discursive forms, tuning into recorded works, field recording methodologies, on-site practices, and collective embodiment exercises that acknowledge our diverse ways of connecting, experiencing, and being. In particular, we will explore listening as a shape-shifting conduit to sense interspecies togetherness, deep time, chronobiology, and geological scales; listening as a relationship between the political, the intimate and the social, attempting to discern normative discourses of listening positionality; and finally, listening as an embodied practice with affective and material “force” for transformation (Farinati & Firth, 2017). 

Embedded in oral transmission with artists Diane Barbé, Pablo Diserens, Maria Iorio, Raphaël Cuomo, and the participating artists/students, the seminar minimises visual and textual content to center our attention on acoustic memory, intimate and nonverbal knowledges, and our sensory experiences of the aural realm. We will practice listening together, asking how we can develop tools for planetary interconnections and an awareness of ecological relations, while coping with the reductionist nature/culture divide and moving beyond the Western-centric canon of sound studies. We will remain attentive to our listening positionalities, focusing on each other’s embodied experiences, affects, and perspectives by attuning to the particular filters of species, gender, class, race, and ability that shape the moment of contact between our listening bodies and the sounds around us. What are possible forms that help us shift from listening to/for toward listening as/with?

Bios 

Diane Barbé explores the intersections of queer ecology, storytelling, artisanal lutherie and collective music to defy patterns of sonic standardisation and anthropocentrism embedded in contemporary capitalist systems. Her works grow from found materials, invasive plants, human-animal relations and repetitive gestures to develop immersive experiences that oscillate between performance formats, sound installations, and ephemeral gatherings. In her artistic practices, Diane listens, records, fabricates and manipulates field recordings as well as synthetic sounds, curiously touching the borders between certitude and the invisible, between nonverbal human knowledges and nonhuman knowings. Her latest album, musiques tourbes, came out on the phonography label forms of minutiae in 2024, preceded by a conference of critters in 2022. Diane is currently developing an ensemble of selfbuilt wind instruments, bird calls and whistles, the alien kin, used for collective musicking and mimicking with and beyond human audiences. 

Diane has performed solo or in ensembles in well-known institutions such as INA-GRM (FR), Documenta15 (DE), DAAD Gallerie (DE), NBK Berlin (DE), Maerz Musik (DE), Drama Tbilisi (GE), NOPA Yerevan Biennale for Sound Art (AM), Bangkok Art Biennale (TH), festival Sur-Aural (CL), Struer Tracks (DK) and ROTA festival (ES). Her search for sonic traces of the Anthropocene have led her to explore the northern plateaus of the Atacama in Chile, the bogs of the Spreewald in central Germany, the thawing permafrost of Kilpisjärvi in the Finnish Arctic, and the fragile tropical depths of the Bolivian Amazon, always focusing on listening as a primordial practice of sounding. Engaged in an anti-exclusive practice of music, Diane maintains deep ties with DIY, feminist and rural scenes, feeding vitality and energy from and back into popular culture, and she gives open open workshops for groups ranging from children to users of psychiatry. She was co-curator of Heroines’Wave, an itinerant research and art laboratory that gathers female-identifying artists for intensive polyvalent residencies and exhibitions engaging with political activism, erasure and oppression, with editions in Georgia (2019) and Thailand (2021). Diane also co-curated Simulizi Mijini (2015-2018), a German-Tanzanian exchange research project which organised residencies, summer schools, conferences and exhibitions between Berlin and Dar es Salaam, focusing on the conundrums of postcolonial urban heritage. 

Diane is based between Spain, Germany and France and graduated from the MA Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the UdK Berlin after a diploma in political science (Sciences Po Paris). 

Pablo ‘Rana’ Diserens (b. 1994, they/them) is a field recordist, musician, filmmaker, and artist devoted to attentive listening, non-human realities, and possible forms of interspecies coexistence. Rooted in ecological engagement and site-specificity, they investigate gestures of presence and permeation through a weaving of sound, images and texts. These bring to the foreground the acoustic, bio- and geological features of explored environments with the intention of fostering earthly connections. Works materialize in various forms that emphasize listening as a radical, political practice, and flirt with a myriad of (sur)realities, found hummings, and ecoacoustic phenomena. These propositions operate within hydrofeminist and polymorphic ways of inhabiting and shapeshifting among non-human bodies. In solidarity with a wounded planet, Diserens’ practice invites people to attune to the present in an attempt at rethinking caring strategies and our relationship with the world and its biotic communities.

Pablo has published works with TBA21-Academy, forms of minutiae, Audio Visuals Atmosphere, Presque Tout, and Hard Return; was nominated for the Phonurgia Nova and Sound of the Year awards; and has been featured in The Wire Magazine, A Closer Listen, Bandcamp Best of Field Recordings, and BBC Radio 3. They have performed or exhibited their work in Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (ES); Espacio Vilaseco (ES); Bridderhaus (LUX); IGLOO sound gallery, Jihlava (CZ); TBA21-Academy’s Ocean-Archive; and in Berlin’s spaces such as MONOM; Morphine Raum; Haus am Kleitspark; Hošek Contemporary; and arkaoda.

Pablo Diserens is the co-founder and curator of forms of minutiae, a publishing house for sonic ecologies, field recordings, experimental music, and visual art.

Pablo is a glacier and frog enthusiast, and also works as a sound and environmental educator, and as a location/field/wildlife sound recordist, sound designer, and score composer for films, installations, artworks, radio plays, etc.

www.pablodiserens.studio