Makis SOLOMOS | FR |

 

Paper

 

(Re)politiser l'écoute (musicale)

 

Abstract

 

The Idealist musical tradition associates listening with an immersion into the singular universe of musical works, each conceived as a monad in which every element of reality has its own representation: listening means diving in a form of interiority that forms a world in itself. The consequence of such a listening habit is relative deafness to one’s immediate environment. Certain actual forms of auditive addiction, drawing on consumerist productivity, push this deafness to the point of caricature. This might explain why so many present artists, especially those working on acoustic ecology, tend to reverse perspectives and to think of the act of listening as a way to interact with the world. This often involves a relative disappearance of the work (in favor of the process) and a refocusing on the very act of listening. This reversal is not only an æsthetic choice, it also is a political one: it puts forth the idea that listening is a construction of the commons. It is this (re)politicization of listening, in particular through the work of the commons, that this communication proposes to discuss because it can enable us, listeners, who are subjected to the deafening noise of neo-liberalism, to react and perhaps to find the strength to resist.

 

 

About


Professor of musicology at the University Paris 8 and director of the research team MUSIDANSE, Makis Solomos has published many works about new music. His main fields of research are the focus on sound, the notion of musical space, new musical techniques, the mutations of listening… He is also one of the main international Xenakis’ specialists, to whom he devoted many publications and symposiums. He is co-founder of the review Filigrane. Musique, esthétique, sciences, société. His book From Music to Sound. The Emergence of Sound in 20th- and 21st-Century Music (Presses Universitaires de Rennes in French; English translation: Routledge, 2020) deals with an important mutation of today’s music. His recent research focuses on sound ecology. He is preparing a book on the subject and co-directs the project Arts, ecologies, transitions. Building a common reference.