lectures and peripatetic lectures, 90 min
Thursday, 26 Sep, 10:00
Cukrarna and surroundings

Maja Bjelica: Poslušanje ritmov, poslušanje tišin
peripatetic lecture

The TO)potic presentation will focus on listening as an activity that resonates deeply in the field of ethics. We will not only ask about listening as a fundamentally ethical activity that enables the establishment of ethical interhuman or intersubjective relationships, but also about listening as a deeply connecting activity allowing for emerging ties with more-than-human beings and elements, which enables spreading of intersubjectivity far beyond the human.

An attempt to wording the described conceptual resonance of listening will be implemented through contemplative walks around the sound concepts or phenomena of rhythms and silences. Striving towards a horizon of posthuman ethics, the rhythms and silences will be explored in terms of their presence and absence, namely of their pulse, frequencies, vibrations. We will be asking about: how rhythms sound, how do silences? How are we listening to them? How are we experiencing them, how are we being-with them? Answering such questions will be attempted through contemplating (inter)subjective experience combined with a philosophical polylogue of thinkers of silence, rhythm and listening. Thinking about listening t(hr)o(ugh) silences and rhythms might allow the emergence of enriching reverberations for environmental (post)humanities as well, presented with the case study of salt-working at the Sečovlje saltern in Slovenia.

Photo: Matej Tomažin, Cona.

This research and paper presentation is funded by ARIS through the research programme “Liminal Spaces” (P6-0279) and the research project “Grain of Salt, Crystallising Cohabitation” (J6-50196).

Maja Bjelica, PhD, is a Research Associate at the Science and Research Centre Koper’s Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies. Currently, she is working on a research programme on liminal spaces and is the principal investigator for a transdisciplinary research project in environmental humanities, with a case study of salt-working as experiential environmental wisdom.

Raziskavo in predstavitev financira ARIS v okviru raziskovalnega projekta Mejna področja (P6-0279) in raziskovalnega projekta Zrno soli, kristalizacija sobivanja (J6-50196).

Miloš Vojtěchovský: About the Field (listening to the sounds we dismiss)
lecture

What are the animals that we are recording getting back from being in the piece that we exhibit for fee or recognition? How would we proceed when, instead of animals, we would be recording the sounds of humans? What else does the recordist or the listener learn about them besides that their sonic behaviour sounds “good” or “musically interesting”?

As a field recording practitioner, the author suggests discussing the potential impact of such activity on the objects or subjects interacted with, the so-called effect on the “fields.”

We are currently facing these issues in various aspects of human interaction with the environment. They include the ethical and ecological consequences of our “right” to mobility or our pursuit of “well-being” amidst environmental degradation. Musicians, not just them, often treat their gear and other organisms as instruments rather than recognizing them as collaborators with the agency.

If we aspire to be an integral part of ‘The Field,’ should we not approach it in a less extractive and colonialist way? This means we should (also) listen to the sounds that we do not want to hear.

Photo: Matej Tomažin, Cona.

Miloš Vojtěchovský is a curator, art historian, and audiovisual artist living in Prague. In 1992 he co-founded the Hermit Foundation, later the Center for metamedia Plasy. Together with Peter Cusack he started the ongoing project Favourite Sounds of Prague (sonicity.cz) and lately with others the CENSE project. He curated the Czech section in the international networking project Soundexchange and co-curated the symposium and festival vs. Interpretation organised in Prague in 2016 by the Agosto Foundation and the Frontiers of Solitude project.

Jacek Smolicki: Between Planetary and Situated Modes of Listening
peripatetic lecture

In this talk, the author proposes that in becoming more careful and caring sound makers, more emphasis must be placed on how we listen and are listened to. The talk will introduce several approaches to listening, technologically supported and unaided, each helping to reveal a different dimension of our shared environments.

Photo: Matej Tomažin, Cona.

Jacek Smolicki is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher, designer and educator. His work explores temporal, existential and technological dimensions of listening, recording and archiving practices in human and more-than-human realms. His work is manifested through soundwalks, soundscape compositions, experimental archives, installations and diverse forms of writing. He holds a PhD from Malmö University. He was a researcher at Linköping University at Simon Fraser University, and 2022/2023 Fulbright visiting scholar at Harvard. In 2019, he co-founded the Walking Festival of Sound.

Miloš Vojtěchovský’s lecture is supported by The Arts Institute (AI).