Ways of Listening 1

Taking the recent book “The Force of Listening” as a starting point, Lucia Farinati will facilitate a workshop exploring the role of listening in the context of dialogic practices at the intersection of art and activism. By bringing theory and practice together, this workshop explores how different kinds of power structures, both hierarchical and horizontal, might produce different kinds of listening. Resonance and recognition are terms that offer good ways of exploring certain politics of listening based on reciprocity and mutuality: Who is doing the listening and how? Recognition of and by whom? (What is recognised by whom?) Which kinds of language are deemed legitimate or illegitimate, to be listened to or not? How do top-down political structures use listening as techniques of power and control and how might other kinds of organisations enhance forms of solidarity and mutual recognition? How can listening potentially create solidarity, but also play a role within disagreement and spaces of inequality? And what might it mean to build time into this process? Working with participants, their experiences, backgrounds and opinions, the workshop will touch on the issues of solidarity and disagreement, care and conflict. All are welcome.

With

Lucia Farinati (GB)