On Listening

From September 2023, the municipal art space Lothringer 13 Halle presents the project "On Listening,“ which brings together international artistic positions, theorists, writers, activists, archives, and community radio stations to question the dynamics of spoken and auditory narratives. Together, the contributions allow us to experience the relevance and complexity of listening from many perspectives and open up the exhibition space for exchange. To whom do we listen and what do we pass on to whom? What references to social structures are preserved and can be discovered in spoken accounts and sound recordings? What can be read from music, sampling, recordings, and music collections that we encounter every day? What does the narrated tell us about its time, its place and how do we deal with it in the present—especially when we encounter narrations that are detached from their geographical, temporal and cultural contexts? How relevant are oral history, remembrance and multifaceted perspective for alternative knowledge production and for understanding social structures and development? Listening—in the sense of conscious and considerate, but also physical attentiveness—is an essential step towards mutual understanding and social participation as well as development. Listening means stepping beyond the familiar and the known and turning to other perspectives. Listening has the potential to identify exclusionary systems through emphatic and attentive orientations by listening beyond our own experiences. Particularly in relation to privilege and power structures, where certain voices dominate and marginalized, discriminated and/or structurally excluded groups remain little heard and/or they have to make themselves heard, active listening can be a tool to confront these structures and create space for relevant but often unheard accounts and experiences. The exhibition aims to make listening perceptible as an essential agency for the reflection on social structures, knowledge production as well as social processes, taking also into account narratives that, contrary to chronological representations, think along non-linear and fragmented narratives.