listening composing workshop
relational listening composing workshop
with A Frei
and Sakina Aliakbar, Suza Husse, Veenadara
Lakshika Jayakody, Hema Shironi Joseph,
Sophia-Layla Afsar, Alishba Memon, Ayesha Tariq,
Basil Andrews, Betül Merve Tekoglu, Rheremita
Cera, Sumugan Sivanesan, Seba Ali
and Special Guest Izidora L LETHE
within the «kal – a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word» workshop series
house of kal karachi, pakistan
house of kal colombo, sri lanka
house of kal berlin, district berlin
3.8., 4.8. & 5.8.2021
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Kal – a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word
A trans*oceanic platform for slow approaches, performative interventions and poetic strategies in visual and literary forms, kal traces decolonial and feminist futures and pasts that are connected through bodies of water lapping at different shorelines.
Gathering artists and writers from South Asia, the South Asian diaspora and post-migrant Europe, kal unfolds in multiple strands including a series of publications, a DIY radio channel called radio kal, and the three Houses of Kal – a constellation of feminist infrastructures for transdiciplinary and collaborative art practices & alternative pedagogies in Karachi, Colombo and Berlin.
The title takes inspiration from Fatimah Asghar’s poetic invocation of the Hindi-Urdu word ‘kal’. Expressing a time beyond the here and now, the meaning of ‘kal’ moves fluidly and shifts its meaning based on who speaks, from where and when. Passing between inside and outside along the movement of tongues, ‘kal’ is a queer word that cannot be fully explained, denoting ephemerality and transience.
Thinking of the body as a site of memory and of speculation, kal looks towards forgotten and imagined radical futures of yesterday and tomorrow, disrupting binary contours of time or being. Thematic strands of kal focuse on the fabulation of ecologies after patriarchy and colonialism, capitalism and gender, and on decolonial feminist imaginaries and their ancient and futurist ways to interrogate and counter racism, Islamophobia and fascism.
As kal unfolds in current pandemic time and amidst deep ecological and social transformations, so does our shared language and programming. kal is a platform for learning/imagining and practicing vocabularies at the crossings of art, feminisms and eco-politics that articulate radically different ways of being alive together in entangled futures, pasts and present.
a language where yesterday and tomorrow are the same word. kal is co-initiated by Aziz Sohail and The Many Headed Hydra. The Houses of Kal are curated and cared for collectively by Aziz Sohail, Fiza Khatri, Sandev Handy and The Many Headed Hydra with curatorial support from Sakina Aliakbar and Zahabia Khozema.
This trans*oceanic platform is a collaboration with Archive Books, COCA Collective Colombo, District*School Without Center, Goethe Institut Sri Lanka, Goethe Institut Pakistan, IVS Gallery Karachi and Zubaan Books supported by the Department for Culture and Europe in the Berlin Senate, Goethe Institut South Asia, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and ifa.
yesterdaytomorrow
district berlin
relational listening composing workshop – houses of kal – colombo/karachi/berlin – 2020
«From where do i listen? How do i listen? To what do i attend? What do i hear? Are necessary to thinking about environments and ecosystems. These questions show us that we are always working across difference. Which is in itself always in becoming an unknown. The simplicity in such questions belie a profound and critical recognition and responsibility essential to any movement toward abolishing a world built on white supremacist violence and dispossession.» AM Kanngieser, Environmental Listening: Being with/in Place, 2021.
«Collaboration as an insisting practice on a continuous circulation of power between listening and sounding.» Pauline Oliveros
«(…) If it is a past thought for example reverse it so that you now see it as in front of you. If it is a future memory reverse it so that you now see it as behind you. Now, take one of the future thoughts you have reversed and build up a memory out of it. (…)» Black Quantum Futurism, Time Travel Experiment Number 2.
«When do you stop hearing the sound? When does memory begin? (…) How we listen depends on our consciousness. Are we creating the sound that we hear by listening or is sound creating our listening? Is it co-creation between consciousnesses? Is the sound disappearing or am I disappearing?» Pauline Oliveros, Quantum Listening: From Practice to Theory (to Practice Practice).
The 3-day «Relational Listening Composing Workshop» focused on collaborative practices of listening-composing and situated, embodied and queer modes of listening and sounding. The workshop led by A Frei aimed to experiment with relationality beyond linear notions of time, attunement toward difference and simultaneity of place and shared sonic fields as a proposition for conviviality beyond language. Accompanied by Pauline Oliveros’ thoughts on Quantum Listening, Black Quantum Futurism’s Time Travel Experiments and AM Kanngieser’s thoughts on Environmental Listening, the group was attuning with the support of different listening exercises and meditations and practiced relational DIY real time composing online and simultaneous phone recordings. Part and heart of the workshop were joint relational listening compositions spanning over the course of three days. Each day focussed on specific/interconnected modes of listening and sounding and utilized these as scores for composing together.
Relational Listening Composition Day 1 – Listening Place/Place as score
Relational Listening Composition Day 2 – Peri-acoustic Bowls/Relationality as score
Relational Listening Composition Day 3 – Singing tension/Placing tension (with Special Guest Izidora L LETHE)
Two of the three recordings are published as part of the radio kal series. Listen here
For the recording of the compositions we used the open source software «Soundtrap», which was introduced in the radio kal Tooling #2 Workshop earlier this year.
Relational Listening Composition Day 3 – Singing tension/Placing tension
Relational Listening Composition Day 2 – Peri-acoustic Bowls/Relationality as score
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Relational Listening Compositions Score:
Relational Listening Composition Day 1: Listening Place/Place as score
– Open a new project in an open source audio sharing/recording app* and share it with the group on your phone. Add a track for your recording and name it. Check if all the participants are visible in the project.
– Place your computer and phone close to a window. Make yourself comfortable.
– Use an online video conferencing software on your computer with your headphones on, in order to hear the rest oft he group.
– Use your window as an instrument. Play it with your hands, your fingers, your nails, your arms. Look outside of the window. Play the rhythms and the movements of your environment. Start to invent your own parameters on how to play what you sense and see. (eg. raise the volume of your play when something/someone moves towards you, lower it again when it/they move/s away from you …)
– The group decides when to start recording.
– Press «record» in the audion sharing app on your phone at the same time like everyone else in the group.
– Start playing, while listening to the other participants and be aware of to leave enough space in your playing for the upcoming compositions on the following two days. Leave space for all participants and the future soundings.
– The group decides when to stop.
– Save and export all the tracks via browser on your computer.
– Import all the layers to an audio software, equalize the single layers, so that every track is «equally» audible, pan the tracks if you like.
– Export the composition as a stereomix.
– Listen to the composition with the group.
Relational Listening Composition Day 2: Peri-acoustic Bowls/Relationality as score:
– Fill up a big (ceramic) bowl with water. Add a small (ceramic) bowl into the bigger bowl. Get one or two sticks with a soft end. Place the bowls on a soft towel.
– Open a new project in an open source audio sharing/recording app* and share it with the group on your phone. Add a track for your recording and name it. Check if all the participants are visible in the project.
– Use an online video conferencing software on your computer with your headphones on, in order to hear the rest oft he group.
– Start playing the bowls with the soft sticks, while listening to the play of the other participants.
– The group decides when to start the recording.
– Press «record» simultaneously with the group in the open source audio sharing/recording app* on your phone.
– Try to focus on the groups play, try to attune your playing according to the dynamic of the group.
– Start playing, while listening to the other participants and being aware of the composition you did yesterday and the day to come. Leave enough space in your play for the other participants, the past composition and the future composition.
– The group decides when to stop.
– Save and export all the tracks via browser on your computer.
– Import all the layers to an audio software, equalize the single layers, so that every track is equally audible, pan the tracks if you like.
– Export the composition as a stereomix.
– Layer the mix with the composition of the day before.
– Export the 2-day composition as a stereomix.
– Listen to the compositions with the group.
Relational Listening Composition Day 3: Singing Tension/Placing Tension:
– Open a new project in an open source audio sharing/recording app* and share it with the group on your phone. Add a track for your recording and name it. Check if all the participants are visible in the project.
Singing into Tension:
– Focus on your breath for a while.
– Try to slowly scan your body for tensions.
– Locate a specific tension, focus on it, breathe into that tension for a while.
– Press «record» simultaneously with the group in the open source audio sharing/recording app* on your phone. You won’t wear headphones – so you won’t be hearing the others, but will imagine them.
– Breathe in. While breathing out, sound, sing or speak into one specific tension in your body. Sound, sing or speak into the tension as long as your breath can hold it. Breathe in, repeat. Adjust the volume and intensity of your voice according to the location and intensity of the tension in your body.
– Continue scanning your body and sounding into each tension that you can locate.
Placing Tension:
– Feel into where, what or whom each tension might be related to.
– Breathe in. While breathing out, sound, sing or speak towards the place to which the tension is related to. Adjust the volume and intensity of your voice according to the distance and intensity the tension needs to be placed in and where it belongs.
– While sounding, be aware of the simultaneity of the group, yesterday’s composition and the composition of the day before yesterday. Leave enough space in your singing for the other participants and keep in mind the past compositions.
– Stop when you feel that you have placed your tensions.
– Save and export all the tracks via browser on your computer.
– Import all the layers to an audio software, equalize the single layers, so that every track is equally audible, pan the tracks if you like.
– Export the composition as a stereomix.
– Layer the stereomix with the two compositions from the days before.
– Export the 3-day composition as a stereomix.
– Listen to the compositions with the group.
* use for example the open source app «soundtrap»