Listening to the In-Between Part III

Thinking with our Ears

Listening to the In-Between we highlight different aspects of Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening® practice. We do so by providing backgrounds, practical listening exercises, and by exploring theoretical notions connected to Deep Listening.


In part I researcher and music journalist Joep Christenhusz explored Deep Listening®, together with Ed McKeon and Ximena Alarcón, who are well-experienced deep listeners. Alarcón described the INTIMAL App© that she has developed over the last years.

In the second episode, Deep Listener® Sharon Stewart invited us to participate in embodied rituals of attention, a practice of listening to or sensing aspects of power and powerlessness in the world that surrounds us. This reconnected her to the ground-breaking work of Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”.

In this third and final instalment, ‘Thinking with our Ears’, Joep Christenhusz returns to Ed McKeon and Ximena Alarcón, featuring Sharon Stewart as well.
They consider Oliveros’s Deep Listening practice from several theoretical perspectives, thereby taking into account that theory and practice are always closely intertwined in Oliveros’s work.

Starting from the Extreme Slow Walk, an exercise in sonic awareness, they navigate a fluid in-between space, where conventional binaries like theory-practice, self-other, active-passive and subject-environment start to dissolve. This outward and inward journey results in embodied knowledge about, among other things, the nature of attention and concentration, our relation to our environment and our experience of self.

The second part of this episode consists of a conversation with Ximena Alarcón on the notions of the in-between, sonic migrations, and the migratory experience, and reflections on the role of language in the presence and experience of self.

 

Show Notes

In the podcast you hear the following audio fragments:

  • Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Panaiotis, Album Deep Listening, track 1, ‘Lear’, reproduced by permission of PoP and MoM Publications. (Pauline Oliveros Publications & Ministry of Maåt). All Rights Reserved. Members ASCAP

References

  • Meditation number 5, ‘Native’, from: Pauline Oliveros (1971). Sonic Meditations. PoP and MoM Publications (Pauline Oliveros Publications & Ministry of Maåt).
  • Commentary Oliveros on the Extreme Slow Walk, from: Pauline Oliveros (1971), Sonic Meditations. PoP and MoM Publications. (Pauline Oliveros Publications & Ministry of Maåt).
  • Francois Bonnet (2016). The Order of Sounds, A Sonorous Archipelago, Urbanomic.
  • Pauline Oliveros (2005), Deep Listening, a Composer’s Sound Practice, iUniverse
  • Pauline Oliveros (1984/2015). Software for People, Smith Publications/CreateSpace
  • Ximena Alarcón (2014). Networked Migrations: Listening to and Performing the In-Between Space. (99+) Networked Migrations: listening to and performing the in-between space | ximena alarcon – Academia.edu
  • Marianna Ortega (2008). Multiplicity, Inbetweeness, and the Question of Assimilation Multiplicity, Inbetweeness, and the Question of Assimilation (researchgate.net)
  • Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza,

Previous episodes and related materials

Listening to the In-Between Part 1: Introducing Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening
Listening to the In-Between Part 2: Sensing Traces of Power(lessness)
Ed McKeon,“Moving Through Time,” published on APRIA in September.

5 Oct. 2022, ArtEZ Zwolle, Sophiagebouw and Conservatory: Extreme Slow Walk – Listening to the In-Between.

Studium Generale

ArtEZ Studium Generale curates and organises gatherings, talks, training courses, podcasts and publications about the state of the arts and its relation to today’s challenges, ranging from immediate societal issues to bold abstract concepts, from climate crisis to identity issues. Our aim is relatively modest. We are not trying to change the world (but if that happens, cool!). Our wish is to create a space to ask probing questions, steer discussions and empower each other to face the future and our (artistic) role in it. Or to put it a bit less boldly, we invite you to get out of your bubble, engage in the debate, meet new people, discover new perspectives, and have a drink.