Time to Listen 2026 (June)

Amid planetary crisis, there are communities worldwide committed to nourishing and co-creating relational forms of life that foreground reciprocity, care, and respect—drawing on longstanding Indigenous practices and experimenting with multispecies justice and more‑than‑human governance. 

Time to Listen (26–27 June 2026) asks what sound can do within this turn. We invite participants to expand listening and music‑making to include more‑than‑human actors—attuning to animals, plants, rivers, ecosystems, and technologies as sonic partners—and to decentre anthropocentric listening by situating sound within ecologically interconnected worlds. At stake is creativity itself: when relation becomes the site of creative action, what new forms of shared agency, reciprocity, and co‑making emerge? And methodologically: how might the arts, listening/attending, practice, ritual, emotions, stories, humour, and ‘productive weirdness’ catalyse the disruptions needed for transformative openings?

The conference is part of the SPREEKLÄNGE project, a festival of contemporary music along the Spree River in Charlottenburg organised by the Academy of Arts (25–28 June 2026). The conference will take place in the Academy’s venue at Hanseatenweg. It is jointly organised by field notes / inm and the Academy of Arts and developed in collaboration with composer and researcher Liza Lim, who leads the music-based, multi-year research project Multispecies Creativity and Climate Communication (2025–2029) at the University of Sydney.

26–27 June 2026
Academy of Arts, Hanseatenweg

General Information

Registration: Register here for free.

Language: The conference will be held in English.

Cost: Participation is free.

Directions: Academy of Arts (Hanseatenweg 10)
S-Bahn: S3, S5, S7, S9 to Bellevue (approx. 3 min walk)
U-Bahn: U9 to Hansaplatz (approx. 5 min walk)
Bus: Lines 106 or N26 to Hansaplatz (approx. 5 min walk)

Accessibility:
The Academy of Arts at Hanseatenweg is fully accessible. The venue features a ground-level entrance, lifts, and accessible toilets. For further questions regarding accessibility or individual support, visitors can contact info@field-notes.berlin in advance.

Save the Date:

With a second edition of Time to Listen taking place this year on 5 October, we continue our engagement with transnational collaboration and networks.

Last year’s conference brought together numerous European initiatives that, in the face of ecological, political, and financial challenges, connect with one another to share knowledge, resources, and responsibility. Building on this, the focus in October will be specifically on independent ensembles: their central role in contemporary music production, their intermediary position between composers and festivals, their often informal yet resilient networks, and the conditions that shape their work and collaborations.

The conference is jointly organised by inm / field notes and the Academy of Arts Berlin, in collaboration with Musikfonds e.V. and Impuls neue Musik.