»Stories Are Things That We Carry With Us«

What motivated you to create the Listening Biennial?

Brandon LaBelle (LB): The Biennial emerged from our experiences during the COVID pandemic and lockdown. During that time in my own very personal way, I had been doing a lot of listening in new ways. I started to feel that it was important to create a way of reconnecting with people around the world that might also be wishing to listen to others, and that this could include creating a structure in which many people could get involved.

The first edition was presented in the summer of 2021. The idea was that the Listening Biennial could travel to you rather than being a central point which audiences visit. In this moment of being unable to move, I wanted to build a network of partners in different locations, each of whom would host the Biennial in their own way and in ways that could be meaningful for their local communities.

Does the concept of the Listening Biennial usually live on in the places that have been part of it?

LB: I couldn't speak in too much detail about every place, but my sense is that it has been quite meaningful for those who have been involved. Through its different programs and activities it has fostered a lot of collaborations amongst individuals as well as generating institutional exchanges across its many locations. I do feel that it has sparked a lot of positive energy and engagement around the topic of listening and contributed to enriching the work of those who have been involved. Many previous participants often become ongoing partners in the Biennial as well. We do much to maintain relationships and to keep open to new collaborations. The Listening Academy, which we run as well and that takes place throughout the year in different cities, is an essential space in which new conversations and cooperations emerge and that contribute greatly to the Biennial as a project. For the upcoming edition we have around 30 partners across 25 locations, from Berlin to Santiago to Delhi and Singapore for instance.

You always have co-curators. How do you put together the group and how are the places taking part in the Listening Biennial being selected?

LB: I start with thinking about a group of curators that I'd like to work with and that I feel would work well together, especially in terms of bringing their expertise and knowledge together. I’m also often developing a certain theme or concept beforehand, thinking around relevant issues and how to bring a certain imagination forward in terms of expanding our understanding and experiences of listening. Particularly for this year’s Biennial, I conceptualized the idea of Third Listening and which I proposed to three curators who I thought would be responsive to the topic. From there we start a research process, exploring Third Listening in our own individual ways. The curators bring a lot of their own input into how the Biennial will take shape, what might be its overall approach.

The idea is to have a global perspective on listening as a topic within the arts, within culture and across society in general. We're interested to learn from different cultures, contexts and communities what listening means for them. It's quite an open approach and we're not necessarily discriminating too much about who may participate or contribute. In fact, we’re more like a network of friends than an institutional project. The Listening Biennial comes from a more self-organized DIY attitude about curating from below, curating together. In addition to the three main curators, we have around 15 other associated curators who work on creating programs in different cities. I like very much that the institutional partners involved are quite varied in their scale as well.

That sounds a bit utopian. Aren't there barriers in funding if there are places with such different conditions and backgrounds involved?

LB: The economy of the project is an ongoing challenge because of its transnational nature. I have found it difficult to locate sources of funding that support such far-reaching cooperative initiatives as well as sources that do not over-instrumentalize the arts in the service of social, political or environmental change. We’ve been fortunate to find support through our different partners, and their local funding structures, as well as through a lot of volunteer work on the part of so many amazing and supportive people. 

The number of countries the Listening Biennial is taking place in is a little lower than in the last editions. Was that a curatorial decision?

LB: It wasn't a decision necessarily. Every edition, depending on the curators involved, does vary. For the last edition we had one curator from the Philippines, and she was quite active in developing a program across Southeast Asia and activating various partnerships to make that happen. That's perhaps something we don't have this year. We're okay with that. There's still a lot going on. It feels full and extremely dynamic.

The Listening Biennial is hosted in a remarkable variety of places which are far apart from each other. Is there a thought carrying on throughout one edition from one to the next of these places?

LB: We do provide a conceptual framework. For this year, it's on the idea of »Third Listening«. Mostly artists and institutions respond to the framework we propose. But at the same time, I'm interested if somebody comes to us and feels there's a meaningfulness for them in what we're doing in general. Then I'm always open to at least having a conversation and seeing if there's an interesting fit there. These days listening seems to be touching people in ways that feels quite urgent. It seems to be circulating across a range of cultural and social contexts, so I’m also aware that the Biennial can act as a transcultural home. I’m also very moved by how people do reach out because they find there's something to connect with.

What is this third kind of listening? And how does it relate to listening to the »humming of the twinkling stars« you refer to in the introduction to this year’s edition?

LB: The idea of Third Listening was developed through research we were doing into a number of fields. One was coming out of some theoretical as well as clinical work in the context of psychoanalysis, in which a number of writers, particularly Jessica Benjamin, elaborates ideas about the Third as a relational model of intersubjectivity and how we can partner in working through conflict, through trauma and finding ways of repairing, recovering and restoring. It's very much about a mutual recognition in which we acknowledge each other as partners in a process rather than understanding that one holds knowledge more than the other or has authority over the other. Benjamin’s writings were quite influential in terms of conceiving a sense of we-ness and how it can transform individual lives in profound ways.

From there we moved to looking into environmental and ecological projects and works which attempt to bring together human and more-than-human worlds to create what Gilles Clément calls a third landscape, which is more conducive to biodiversity and a certain flourishing of human to more-than-human connection. 

Following these references, we thought that perhaps it’s important to conceive a third form of listening that is particularly generative and supportive or that helps foster these meeting points, these ways of moving toward others and finding a shared space between. 

Can you give an example of how this Third Listening approach will be reflected in the events in Berlin?

LB: We commissioned audio works by artists from around the world over the last year to respond to this theme. There are different ways in which artists have been taking that on. Some artists who are very much involved with environmental practices or field recording and soundscape work, search for new ways of positioning themselves in relationship to what they record. Rather than being the invisible recordist who is capturing a field or sounds of an environment, they instead search for ways to interact, to participate, to be present in some form of dialogue or conversation with environments. This kind of relational approach echoes with notions of thirdness we’re exploring and results in an exciting range of sonic work.

Elena Lucca, an artist and environmentalist from Argentina, contributed a work in this direction. She has been quite instrumental in developing poetic research into voice and movement techniques in collaboration with her sister Kozana Lucca, that try to feel the body as being part of nature. Even though traditionally she doesn't necessarily work with sound she made a beautiful, very informal audio piece in which she's vocalizing or poeticizing with her surroundings.

Others are working with sociopolitical issues in different contexts. For example, we have quite a number of artists from the Indian subcontinent who are giving narrative to struggles in their personal lives or in larger historical contexts, working at questions of colonialism, questions of social discrimination and trying to open a more affirmative possibility to overcome this sense of opposition between an us and a them, to get away from this binary or this constant tension or inability to overcome certain polarities. This is also exemplary perhaps of a third form of listening, which is about shifting from an oppositional to a reparative politics.

One part of the Listening Biennial, which takes place at the daadgalerie in October, is called »Cacophony Stories«. This will be a four-day workshop and performance format at the same time. At the core of it there will be a sharing and collective reflecting of stories. Who will be telling those stories?

LB: We’ve invited a number of guests or storytellers, such as Masimba Hwati, Ebru Yetiskin and Alexandra Toland, who will offer a prepared story to help guide a collective daily workshop as a way of opening different perspectives on the question of cacophony. This can be something that's quite performative or something more informal. It's a way of offering a story that others can respond to through sharing their own stories. People don't necessarily need to prepare beforehand. But stories are things that we carry with us and which we invite them to share. Our interest is to reflect upon how we inhabit the »disturbed ecologies« and »troubled realities« today, by explicitly listening to the related cacophony: what does it tell us? And are there ways of listening that need to be fostered? And this is very much about finding ways of speaking to each other as well. We definitely aim to create a welcoming space where people can share however they'd like to – to dwell with our cacophonous surroundings.

In your teaching and research, you seem to follow unique formats or open up certain structures, taking them to unusual contexts and giving them unusual time framings. Does this relate to the way you're running the Listening Biennial? Do you find openness in the institutions for this kind of restructuring or un-structuring?

LB: The Listening Biennial is reflective of my own personal approach and attitude about being an artist or cultural worker and being involved in different social and educational initiatives. I’m generally focused on creating more horizontal structures and community-oriented projects. That's been something very central to my work, and part of that is certainly teaching. I really enjoy that space or framework of educational, pedagogical learning processes especially as an experience of co-creation. I have tried to bring that into the space of the Listening Academy and different educational situations where I propose a rather poetic form of study. This is about creating a holistic approach, where discursive and somatic activities are brought together, or where a more affectionate and emergent process unfolds. I have found increasingly that institutions are responsive to these approaches with the emergence of, for example, more research-oriented practices in the arts. There is this increasing mix between something academic and something more artistic, which I feel quite at home with.

It seems like there is a lot of knowledge continuously being gathered through the Listening Biennial. At the same time, it's being collected in a lot of different places at once. Do you have any means to make this knowledge accessible to those who can't attend the events?

LB: That is something I’m working on. We publish materials on our website, essays and articles or small documents, particularly from the Listening Academy sessions. We're also publishing some printed volumes. We produced a volume called »The Listening Biennial Reader« two years ago. Now we have a second volume coming out in September, which is a collection of essays and articles with some artistic documents from contributors who have been part of the Biennial and the Academy in different moments over the years. In January we're going to launch a new journal as well, focusing on listening and collaborative living. This will be a regular publication that will feature research and work emerging from the different activities of the Biennial and Academy, but will also be open to contributions from others who are working in similar ways and on similar issues.

One last thing, because I haven't quite gotten it before: the humming of the twinkling stars… Beautiful words from a quote by Nona Fernández: »So many stars are twinkling above me that I can hear them. I listen to their hum, countless voices whispering in my ear. I can imagine what they’re saying to me. I’m carrying the whole universe on my shoulders. We all do, all of us.«

LB: Oh, the stars… yes. We like to tell different stories and to have a poetic touch in how we orate and how we describe the Biennial. Nona Fernández and her wonderful book »Voyager« did provide inspiration — for me, it is just a very beautiful thought. And a very interesting story. Even though we have other ideas around Third Listening and all of these different theoretical positions, somehow this poetic image of listening to the stars as what speak to us in enduring ways felt very resonant. I wanted to put this quote there as a poetic path for how we enter the Biennial, as a way of opening our imagination and ears.

3 to 7 September – The Listening Biennial 2025 at Ballhaus Ost

1 to 4 October – Cacophony Stories at daadgalerie