February 7 - 11, 2022 / Errant Bodies studio, Berlin

Kat Austen
Miguel Buenrostro
Kate Donovan
Florence Freitag
Brandon LaBelle
Michelle-Marie Letelier

For this edition of the Dirty Ear Forum, questions of the more-than-human are brought forward. This includes reflecting upon experiences of planetary entanglement, and how we might reimagine human community making from an ecological perspective. Through such reflection, issues around extractivism, the rights of nature, wild law, acoustic ecology and ecofeminism can be considered, allowing for a broad base of knowledge sharing. Central to the Forum is a focus on sound and listening, and in what ways sonic practices and auditory thinking can contribute to ecological and planetary practices. What does it mean to listen beyond the human? Is it possible to reorient understandings of voice to extend toward other life forms? Can sonic materiality open pathways of co-existence, and even trans-species collaboration so as to nurture biodiverse worlding? What potentialities as well as pitfalls do we encounter within models of human and more-than-human connectedness? We’ll follow these questions and concerns through the sharing of practices and knowledges, as well as open discussions so as to foster meeting points and synergies. This will lead to mapping key perspectives as well as potential future directions, so as to deepen processes and methods of planetary engagement.

Dirty Ear Forum is an experimental forum for sonic research. Occurring in different locations and settings, it is based on the coming together of a selected group of practitioners to share and exchange research on sound and listening, and to collectively work through a range of sonic concepts. At the center of the Forum is a desire to bring together individual viewpoints and practices into a shared activity, embracing sound as a conceptual and material platform that may provide creative opportunities for collaborative and pluralistic expressions.