Transformations of the Audible

SYMPOSIUM

May 16-18, The Hague, The Netherlands

 

Transformations of the Audible aims to interrogate the factors and conditions that inform the way audibilities are constituted. Initiated by the Institute of Sonology in The Hague, on the ocassion of composer Peter Ablinger's visiting professorship and in collaboration with the Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performing Arts and West Den Haag, the symposium will gather internationally acclaimed artists, scholars and artist researchers from three domains – that of music, the arts and the scholarly field of sound studies – to address how artistic practices dealing with sound are traversed by and simultaneously operate on the ways in which listening takes place.

 

Sonorous phenomena are always on the verge of becoming something else. As it unfolds, sound constitutes spaces, mediates presence, articulates time. Furthermore, it may prompt emotions, generate awareness, organise patterns of behaviour or trigger a sense of belonging. As sound becomes audible, sound is constantly being articulated within a series of adjacent circumstances.

Although these adjacencies have traversed the history of music, the past two decades have seen an unprecedented interest in sound from a range of artistic fields outside of music, as well as from a variety of academic disciplines. While Sound Art as an autonomous field reaches back to at least the late sixties, the last decades have seen the role of sound proliferate into a ubiquitous presence in museums and galleries across the globe. At the same time, the young field of Sound Studies has raised awareness of the role of the acoustic in defining ways of knowing, sensing and engaging with our surroundings.

Composer Peter Ablinger stated in 2005 that he is “not interested in sounds, but in audibility”.[1] Coming from an artist using sound as its main material, such a statement is significant: it appeals to a practice that instead of taking sound as a given deals with the mutable nature of hearing. Ablinger poses a challenge which is not that of working merely on organising sound, but in setting up conditions for the exploration of the way audibility is constituted. 

Transformations of the Audible will gather artists and scholars from diverse origins to investigate how artistic practices dealing with sound are traversed by and simultaneously operate on the ways in which listening takes place.

The symposium will take place at WEST Den Haag, the Royal Academy of Art and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, between May 16th and 18th. It will comprise lectures, panel discussions and artistic presentations. Presenters and panel members include: 

Heloisa Amaral, Peter Ablinger, Joanna Bailie, Douglas R. Barrett, Richard Barrett, Giuliano Bracci, François Bonnet, Marcel Cobussen, Elizabeth Dobbin, Melissa van Drie, Ricarda Franzen, Raviv Ganchrow, Penelope Gouk,  Eleni Kamma, Brian Kane, Julia Kursell, Yannis Kyriakides, Catherine Lamb, Sander van Maas, Matteo Marangoni, Martina Raponi, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec, Linnea Semmerling, Suzan Tunca, Dafne Vicente-Sandoval and Jed Wentz.

As part the symposium works by Peter Ablinger, Joanna Bailie, Catherine Lamb, Jakob Ullman and Simon Steen-Andersen will be performed, by Heloisa Amaral, Dafne Vicente-Sandoval, Ensemble Modelo62 and Andreas Borregaard.

 

Transformations of the Audible is curated and chaired by Gabriel Paiuk

 

For registration at the symposium follow this link: 

Transformations of the Audible Registration