As a close friend of LaBelle shared the other day: “We use poetry in these times when we are being silenced.” Considering the implications of this statement, LaBelle’s presentation will deepen a view onto poetics as a particular strategy of empowerment, one that may sound against given systems of oppression. This includes reflecting upon selected examples of what he terms “negative listening”, which is posited as a means of negotiating the hidden dimensions of power, often shaping the possibility of contact and conversation, and how crucial partnerships may be found with the missing, the withdrawn, the silenced. These are gestures and strategies that draw upon listening as a poetic power through which to affirm a language, a politics, a culture of life.
key data
- Venue
- Stadtgalerie Zwergelgarten
- Date
- 20. 8. 24, 7 p.m. – 10 p.m.
Brandon LaBelle
Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist living in Berlin. His work focuses on questions of agency, community, pirate culture, and poetics, which results in a range of collaborative and extra-institutional initiatives, including: The Listening Biennial and Academy (2021-), 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 (2013-21), 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: Dreamtime X (2022), Acoustic Justice (2021), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Acoustic Territories (2010, 2019), and Background Noise (2006, 2015).
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