In the UNTRAINING THE EAR DAYS we focus our listening on the multi-modality of voice. We venture to listen to voice beyond privileging tone, frequency, or pitch, complexifying words, morphology, and language through vocality of sounds or non-verbal utterances. A series of performances, lectures, workshops, and free-form contributions respond to our endeavor of challenging what it is we call listening. 

Together with the artists, audiences, listeners we search for different modes of listening—crossing between the public and the private spheres of hearing voices. Who is a voice? What is a voice and (who) owns our voice(s)? How is the idea of a voice often commodified? What other modes can we employ in listening to voice? And why don't all voices have equal access to the process of voicing? We propose to think together about how listening could open up new ways of hearing a voice.

During this encounter, we give ears to Ain Bailey’s electroacoustic compositions that are inspired by ideas and reflections on silence and absence, architectural urban spaces, and feminist activism. We listen to Alessandra Eramo's hypnotic voice and to her electronics, moving beyond sound into more visceral layers of poetic expressions. Rehab Hazgui lets herself be guided by the voice of her machines, pushing the listener into a symbiotic dimension of performer-performance. Christina Wheeler’s Emerge from the Totality of Blackness takes us into a full vocality of the body, engendering a space that reframes our experience of corporeality. Brandon LaBelle’s seminar will focus on listening and sound, voice and speech magnetizing the two key themes of “poetic knowledge” and “acoustic justice.” With Ute Wassermann, we lose ourselves to many voices, those emitted by the human mouth becoming non-human and otherworldly sonic expressions and embodied gestures.

These Listening Session Days are a part of a new cycle of UNTRAINING THE EAR – a month long program of performances, installations, workshops, symposia, talks, and more magic.

Credits

CURATION Kamila Metwaly
CO-CURATION Marcus Gammel, Jan Rohlf
ARTISTIC DIRECTION Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Antonia Alampi, Elena Agudio
PRODUCTION Beya Othmani, Ola Zielińska
COMMUNICATION Jasmina Al-Qaisi, Anna Jäger
VISUALS Elsa Westreicher, Ahmed Isamaldin
MANAGEMENT Lema Sikod, Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock

ON AIR Klangkunst by Deutschlandfunk Kultur, presented by Esther Schelander
SUPPORT Musicboard Berlin

All events are accessible by wheelchair.

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Presented by SAVVY Contemporary, Deutschlandfunk Kultur and CTM Festival