(…) DANCING BREATH
LISTEN
NO CHANGE
WHEN DESIRE
TO CHANGE
CHANGE WHEN
NO DESIRE
TO CHANGE
WHEN DESIRE CHANGE
CHANGE DESIRE (…)

(From «Horse sings from Cloud», Pauline Oliveros, 1984.)

In her composition «Horse Sings from the Cloud» from 1975, which is based on her own poem of the same name, the American composer Pauline Oliveros listens to long sounds of her accordion and only changes them when the desire to change changed. It’s one of her many early text-based compositions, from which she developed the concept and practice of «deep listening» in dialogue with numerous companions over the course of the 1970 and 80s. This approach focuses on expanded and embodied forms of listening through meditation, awareness and mindfulness practice – a set of methodologies that invites for lifelong practice.
In this guerillaclassics Listening Session, Aio Frei thinks through the work of Pauline Oliveros from a personal queer perspective, which draws on lived practice. Inspired by writings by and about Oliveros which contextualize and historisize her in queer and lesbian musicality and draw attention to her methodologies as deeply socio-political and structural shiftings growing from personal embodied experience and specific political questions within a western patriarchal Avantgarde of its specific time. To listen to and with Oliveros as also a practice of carefully differentiating aspects of past and present struggles, emancipation, limitations and appropriations in its times and its reverberations into the present.
After joint exercises and input blocks, accordionist Tizia Zimmermann will interpret the piece «Horse Sings from Cloud».

The event marks the start of a series of listening sessions curated by tracy september and Severin Kolb, in which a range of compositions from various musical genres will be used as a starting point for developing different approaches to listening.