Study Day: Listening to Live Art Archives

What does listening sound like? Who listens and who gets listened to? Does live art demand a different kind of listening?

Johanna Linsley will share Noises for Listening, a new performance work made in collaboration with sound artist Nicol Parkinson. Noises for Listening uses the sounds people make when listening (shuffling, laughing, coughing, clapping) as compositional material. The work is a response to the archives of Deveron Projects, a socially engaged arts organisation that has worked for thirty years with communities in Huntly, in rural Aberdeenshire.  The performance will open up to a conversation about what it means to listen to and in live work, and how the role of the listener is complicated in community-based art. It puts the Deveron Projects archives in conversation with the Live Art Research Collection and asks how sonic attention can shift perspectives on both.

Noises for Listening is a 30-minute performance lecture with presentation slides and recorded sound. It will be followed by a 10-minute talk by Nicol Parkinson and a 30-minute open conversation with Linsley, Parkinson, LADA staff members, Deveron Projects staff members, and the audience. There will be time for informal conversation at the end.