Brandon LaBelle
Poetics of Listening
— Presentation
Sunday, 27 Sept 16:00 / MX
In what ways can listening move us, and how can it support our relationships with others? As many scholars and practitioners have shown, listening has a transformative capacity, shaping experiences of social recognition as well as embodied wellbeing. At the same time, it also shapes our political worlds, influencing cultures of conflict and the ways in which we might work through disagreement, tension, and processes of repair. From this perspective, the presentation explores listening as a practice that can expand our capacity to relate to others and to act. This also includes the possibility of forming connections that extend beyond the human world.
Reflecting on the effects of listening, Brandon LaBelle will introduce a number of theoretical perspectives and curatorial examples, including The Listening Biennial, which he founded in 2021 and which developed around the idea of “curatorial affection.” The concept will be discussed as a practice or sensibility of creating and holding space for others, grounded in poetic power as a possible form of radical hospitality. This perspective proposes a shift from a system dominated by production toward receptivity, and from a logic of separation toward an experience of interdependence. Within this framework, the presentation asks: what does it mean to listen with affection?
Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer, theorist, and artistic director of The Listening Biennial. His work focuses on questions of agency, community, pirate culture, and poetics, which results in a range of collaborative and extra-institutional initiatives, including Communities in Movement (2019–23), Oficina de Autonomia (2017–), The Living School (2014–16), The Imaginary Republic (2014–19), Dirty Ear Forum (2013–22), Surface Tension (2003–08), and Beyond Music Sound Festival (1998–2002).
In 1995, he founded Errant Bodies Press, an independent publishing project supporting work in sound art and studies, performance and poetics, artistic research and contemporary political thought. His publications include Poetics of Listening (2025), Dreamtime X (2022), Acoustic Justice (2021), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (2012), Acoustic Territories (2010), and Background Noise (2006).