Snaps

Hearing or listening is not a mere execution of the ear’s physiology. It is culturally relative. Yet, whenever hearing happens, the borderland between the audible and inaudible has already been crossed. Read an essay exploring the multiple potentials of acoustic perception.

How one measures time influences how one thinks. In his unedited essay draft, commissioned by the MaerzMusik Festival 2023, the composer Jakob Ullmann reflects on how the mechanical clock in Western Europe has influenced the composition and making of music.

With her series of word pieces «Sonic Meditations», the U.S.-composer Pauline Oliveros proposed a way to cultivate community, self-awareness and emotional health through listening and music-making. Read the first five lessons here.

While working on the collaborative publication «All In It Together», Norient’s editor Philipp Rhensius and Rewire’s context curator Katía Truijen enter into a conversation over email where they strive to learn from the various contributions.

Listen to composer, radio artist, and sound ecologist Hildegard Westerkamp’s audio piece, in which she turns to her archive of sound recordings, inviting us to listen to the environment across time and space.

For Indigenous people, listening to music can function as an act of kinship, where identities are strengthened and acknowledged through building relationships with their environment. Read an essay by Indigenous musicologist and pianist, Renata Yazzie.

Read this essay by artist, researcher, and writer Budhaditya Chattopadhyay on how a critical engagement with Global Souths, diasporic and Indigenous artists and thinkers, and their listening cultures could contribute towards equitable planetary conversations.

Read this essay by artistic researcher, and curator Heloisa Amaral, on modes of listening and the possibility of multiphonic attention.