Sound can be listened to, but what do you hear when the sound listens back? This collage essay weaves together responses from sound artists and theorists, exploring the reciprocity of listening and the agency of sound itself.

«An object exists with relation to the sound that it permeates in the space that it was created or destroyed in. To no avail, the snail is still stuck imagining what it might have sounded like when his brother was stepped on.»
Zeynep Burça Oral

«When I first listened to beluga whales in Svalbard, I expected silence – having read so much eco-fiction, I somehow foolishly thought the oceans might already be empty. But their voices filled the water, and in that moment, I felt not just like a listener, but like I was being listened to, part of a world that wasn't gone but still speaking.»
Mark IJzerman

«Right now, it hears me thinking and murmuring names of people I need to respond to, or want to ask how they are. And now that the sun suddenly breaks through, it also hears a few things I look forward to, such as lying down in the grass in a park, listening to sounds of others moving around, blending with echoes of stories, sounds, and rhythms that entered my ears during the upcoming festival.»
Katía Truijen

«It hears my silly thoughts. They sound like fast trap hi-hats circling one's head like wasps around a glass of lemonade. It hears the noise of the sum of all my contradictory feelings, the embarrassing longing for making sense in a blissful ocean of undefined potential, and the fleeting breakbeats that emerge when everything collides into moments of joyful madness.»
Philipp Rhensius

«To hear what sounds back demands unlearning. Action or speaking without regular practice of active listening recedes radically into internal focus, becoming mere projection that, regardless of good intentions, risks ignoring what speaks softly in today's white noise of monological signals. Our social media information guerrilla draws hateful lines in the nuanced spectrum of reality and of being: between rightful and shameful, between citizens of repressive countries and repressed ones, sometimes forgetting our fundamental shared humanity. As Ripatti reminds us, «By practicing listening you teach an essential skill: you embody sensitivity, build sensibility towards your environment, and eventually instill the ability to care.» What we hear when sound listens back is the possibility of reciprocal care, a radical proposition in our disconnected world. When sound listens back, we hear not just its response but the transformation of space into place, of information into knowledge, of isolation into solidarity – the audible evidence that we are never alone in our witnessing of the world.»
Giada Dalla Bontà