Listening at the End of (this) World – Workshop and Study Group

Workshop description

This workshop is taught by Pedro Oliveira and is a collective and speculative exercise in thinking and listening with the end of the world as we know it. While not dwelling on apocalyptic or dystopian narratives but instead staying with the tensions of the now, we ask: what forms of thinking might be possible to bring the colonial infrastructures of this world to an end, so that many worlds can be rescued?

To find out possible points of entry and return, we will engage in study through and with knowledges from those for whom the world has already ended, many times. While not always necessarily relating to sound, this engagement speaks to modes of theory, praxis and theory-as praxis as embodied, poetic gestures that include, but are never limited to, “the sonic.” By engaging with radical propositions that mobilize artistic and poetic thought as modes of being and making new worlds, this study group understands listening as generative while part of a multiplicity of praxes for all forms of life, beyond the “human“ and against the drive to “making things known.“

The workshop and study group will oscillate freely between theory and practice without necessarily tracing a limit between them. Moreover, the idea is for the study group to be centered in the personal as it relates to the contextual and contingent arrangement where and when the group meets. In practice, there will be some short non-academic readings; some writing exercises; visits; and listening sessions. Our aim will be to gather materials and rehearse some thoughts in the shape of an autoethnographic and/or autofictional radio piece.

No previous knowledge of “sound“, “listening“, or “sound studies“ is required, but an openness to engage with anticolonial knowledge and listening are desired. Technical knowledge of sound is always welcome, but not a must.

Biography

Pedro Oliveira (1985, São Paulo) is a researcher and sound artist whose work is committed to an anticolonial study of listening and its material intersections with the violences of the European border. His ongoing research concerns itself specifically with the long histories of technical listening in Germany. He has exhibited and performed work at the Akademie der Künste Berlin, European Media Art Festival, Send/Receive Festival Winnipeg, CTM Festival, Blaues Rauschen Festival, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Fondazione Merz Torino, Festival Novas Frequências, Akademie Schloss Solitude, the Max-Planck Institute, among others. In his academic practice he has held Fellowships at the Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies and the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, and taught at the Humboldt University Berlin and the Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf. Currently he is a freelance senior lecturer in Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the Universität der Künste Berlin. He holds a PhD, also from the Universität der Künste Berlin.

Support

The workshop is made in a collaboration between Aarhus Lydforening (ALF), Sound Art Lab and Spor Festival as a part of the project Sounds of the Future, which is supported by Region Midtjylland’s Cultural Development Pool. Moreover, the workshop is an initiative developed in connection with the exhibition Abandoned Future, which will be shown during Aarhus Festuge / Music Festivals in Aarhus 2024.