Poetics of Listening, with Brandon Labelle

In what ways does listening move us, supporting connections with others? As many scholars and practitioners argue, listening is a transformative power that impacts onto social recognition and embodied mutuality. Following this perspective, the lecture reflects upon listening as a portal to an expanded state of relationality. This includes posing listening as a conduit for broader connections that move beyond human worlds. Taking stock of listening’s power, we’ll consider listening as a special form of dreaming, as what delivers messages from other worlds, that acts as a type of possession transforming what we know of ourselves, and that affords greater planetary attunement. Through listening-dreaming, connections are made across bodies and worlds, things and others, lending to feelings of interdependency.

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer, theorist, and artistic director of The Listening Biennial and Academy. His work focuses on questions of agency, community, pirate culture, and poetics, which results in a range of collaborative and extra-institutional initiatives, including Communities in Movement (2019-23), Oficina de Autonomia (2017-), The Living School (with South London Gallery, 2014-16), The Imaginary Republic (2014-19), Dirty Ear Forum (2013-22), Surface Tension (2003-2008), and Beyond Music Sound Festival (1998-2002). In 1995 he founded Errant Bodies Press, an independent publishing project supporting work in sound art and studies, performance and poetics, artistic research and contemporary political thought. His publications include: Poetics of Listening (2025), Dreamtime X (2022), Acoustic Justice (2021), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (2012), Acoustic Territories (2010, 2019), and Background Noise (2006, 2015).