One-day Seminar: Deep Listening in Artistic Practice with Ximena Alarcón-Díaz and Morten Svenstrup

In this one-day seminar we will focus on getting familiar with the radical practice of Deep Listening developed by Pauline Oliveros. During the day we will also look into how deep listing can inspire and transform existing artistic practices. Workshops in deep listening will be led by artist research and PhD in Music Technology and Innovation Ximena Alarcón-Díaz and musician and psychotherapist Morten Svenstrup, both are certified Deep listening tutors. The film Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros (2023) by Daniel Weintraub will be screened. 

Title: Deep Listening in Artistic Practice
Date: 26 November 2024, at 9:30–17:30
Place: Inter Art Center (Red Room)
Sign up: tanja [dot] hylling_diers [at] thm [dot] lu [dot] se (tanja[dot]hylling_diers[at]thm[dot]lu[dot]se)

Organized by THM Research School and PhD student Tanja Hylling Diers.

Programme

9:30–10:00: Arrival and introduction   
Coffee and fruit  
By facilitator Tanja Hylling Diers.

10:00–12:00: Workshop: Playful Listening  
By Deep Listening Tutor, Morten Svenstrup.   

In this workshop we are going to explore how listening with our beautiful ears, movement with our beautiful bodies, and exploring physical space together, can be a fun and meaningful experience.      

At the heart of Deep Listening lies a big invitation to everyone to explore their own unique way of listening. And to try out new ways of listening, that might be more unknown, too! To do that in an easy-to-follow way, we will explore a few playful oriented Sonic Meditations (sound-oriented exercises) that invites the group to listen in certain ways - and to interact on the physical and sounding levels of reality. Some will have a more individual approach; others will have a group focus. In other words - you are invited to listen in certain ways for an extended period of time.    

Drawing from those sensory grounded experiences, we’ll have a treasure throve of different listening experiences, that all participants will be invited to share with each other.     

NB! Wear comfortable clothes that you can move and listen in.     

12:00–13:00: Lunch    

13:00–15:00: Film screening: DEEP LISTENING: THE STORY OF PAULINE OLIVEROS (2023)   
Director/Producer/Editor Daniel Weintraub, Executive Producer IONE.

A film about Pauline Oliveros, the iconic composer, performer, teacher, philosopher innovator and humanitarian.     

Read more about the film here - press kit

15:00–15:30: Coffee and Fika    

15:30–17:30: Workshop/lecture: Listening deeply to Sonic Migrations   
By Deep Listening Tutor, Ximena Alarcón-Díaz (online from Colombia, Universidad de Antioquia).

In this workshop/lecture, offered in a hybrid format, I will invite attendees to listen deeply to sonic migrations: the resonances left in between the borders we cross when we tune in and meet others across distant locations. This, through sonic meditations, body movement, dream awareness and vocal improvisation derived from Deep Listening® practice.    

Along with the exercises, I will reflect on how Deep Listening has informed my artistic research, leading me to compose immersive listening collective experiences for sensing place and telepresence, rooted in the context of human migration. Specifically, how listening in dreams and telematic performance, have become metaphors and vehicles to access interstitial sonic spaces, transmitting the emotional embodied experience of migration.     

Departing from questions such as how does the body becomes an interface that keeps and transforms memory of place, in the context of human migration and furthermore, how can people improvise and transmit a full emotional body experience with non-screen-based interfaces, I will share the experience of creating interfaces for relational listening - INTIMAL, the INTIMAL App©, and the surround sound installation UNRAVELLING, as listening environments for improvisers and audiences to immerse in dreamlike spaces to tune in and connect with themselves, the environment and others, across time and space.

BIOs    

Morten Svenstrup is a lifelong student of nature, relations and the sounding world. Holding multiple educations across music, therapy, listening and academia, he enjoys autonomous movement across areas of knowledge and practices. As a musician, he is known for several cinematic works encountering profound human experiences (‘War - Tonalities of Sorrow’, ‘Childhood and Revolution’), as well as his decade long work with the Danish orchestra ‘Under Byen’. He teaches the practice of Deep Listening at Rytmisk Musikkonservatorium in Copenhagen and other institutions. And he is helping people with relational issues in his private practice in Copenhagen.      

Ximena Alarcón-Díaz is a sound artist-researcher interested in listening and sounding our sonic migrations. She is a Deep Listening® certified tutor, with a PhD in Music Technology and Innovation. She has created Sounding Underground; the telematic improvisations Networked Migrations; the embodied telematic environment INTIMAL, and the surround sound installation UNRAVELLING/DESENREDANDO expanding people’s sense of place and telepresence for the emergence of aural territories of memory and emotion.      

Tanja Hylling Diers is dramaturg and PhD student at Malmö Theatre Academy and Lund University. Listening is deeply rooted in her practice as both artist and researcher. Her PhD project "Who Cares? An embodied practice of caring and listening" takes inspiration from multiple listening practice with the aim to develop a method for how to transform lived experience into artistic material. Every full moon she meets with her MOON CHOIR to do listening and voicing under the moon.

Read more about Tanja's artistic research at IAC.