From rhythms of improvised embodiments to ways of listening in broken times, the two seminars are offered as a framework for thinking around practices that help “grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for” (adrienne maree brown). This includes mapping multiple “emergent strategies” that work at negotiating the hidden dimensions of power often shaping the dynamics of contact and conversation, and how it is that new forms of partnership may be found. At times, especially in these times marked by political violence, such strategies necessitate ways of listening into the gaps, the erasures, the ruins, so as to draw out acoustic forms of knowing. These are gestures and strategies by which to affirm a language, a politics, and a culture of life.

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer, and artistic director of The Listening Biennial and Academy. His work focuses on questions of agency, community, collectivity, and poetics, and results in a range of collaborative initiatives and activities. His publications include: Dreamtime X (2022), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Acoustic Territories (2010, 2019), and Background Noise (2006, 2015). His most recent book in sound studies, Acoustic Justice (2021), argues for an acoustic model by which to engage questions of social equality.