Conferences - ERIC LEONARDSON

Which Elephant Is in This Room? Strategies for Safe Spaces and Collective Listening in Ecological Crisis

Ex \\ Immersio VI - Soundscapes in Change. On Listening and Sustainability

Synopsis: I am invited to give a talk titled “Which Elephant is in This Room? Strategies for safe spaces and collective listening in ecological crisis,” for Ex \\ Immersio VI – Soundscapes in Change. On Listening and Sustainability, a 2-day symposium in Dieburg, Germany.

What: Among the positive outcomes of the 2023 ‘Listening Pasts – Listening Futures’ conference is the ‘Survey on Global Perspectives in Acoustic Ecology’. My presentation addresses ways that its five broad themes enable deeper understanding and strategic planning for not only artists but researchers and educators of all disciplines on much needed work involving Community Engagement, Environmental Interactions and Soundscapes, Technological Advancement in Research, Interdisciplinary and Future-Oriented Vision, and Inclusive and Global Perspectives.

Ex\\Immersio is a series of international symposia launched in 2019 under the scientific and artistic direction of Prof. Sabine Breitsameter. Its aim is a critical discourse on the concept of immersion. This year’s focus is on the emergence of a new listening culture in the changing soundscape of the present, combined with the question of how listening can productively contribute to ecological change. The conference language is English.

When: Friday, July 12, 1:30 p.m., until Saturday, July 13, 2024, 3:30 p.m.
Location: Museum Schloss Fechenbach, Eulengasse 8, 64807 Dieburg

See full schedule

Who: Among others, Eric Leonardson (Chicago), Klaus Schüller (Groß-Umstadt), Claudia Tittel (Gera/ Valencia), Sabine Breitsameter (Dieburg/Berlin), and Lasse-Marc Riek (Hanau).

Presentation in Budapest on Organizing & Listening Beyond

Reflections & Documentation from 2023 Beyond Listening Symposium on Art, Agency, and the Environment

The Beyond Listening symposium on art, agency, and the environment was a wonderful and moving opportunity to connect with well-known sound scholars, artists in Europe, South America and India. Thanks to the SAIC Dean of Faculty’s travel support, I enjoyed reconnecting with Sam Auinger, Peter Cusack, Jacek Smolicki, Robin Parmar, Miloš Vojtěchovský, Csaba Hajnowy, Liz Miller, and many others. I finally met artists and researchers whom I’ve followed for many years, Hannah Kemp-Welch, Gascia Ouzounian, and Budhaditya Chattopadhyay. Plus, my new friends Kristine Diekman, Ben Pagac, and Mary Edwards from the Listening Pasts – Listening Futures conference last March, at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (ACA).

I came to the beautiful city of Budapest to share my organizing experiences, upon the 30th anniversary of the founding of the WFAE, with the organizers of Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies (CENSE), and this symposium.

On the closing day, November 25, I delivered my “Summary of 2023 WFAE Conference at Atlantic Center for the Arts.” I’m sharing the presentation slides and link to the 30-minute talk on the updated Beyond Listening site.

You may watch for more recordings from the conference to be posted on Vimeo soon, hopefully.

The summary segued into the closing round table discussion on the future of the CENSE. Beginning with a long moment of silence, we openly verbalized our concerns and hopes. So many challenges are the same as faced 30 years ago. What has changed is the speed of technological change—neither a benefit nor a loss perhaps—while the dire conditions of climate heating and genocidal wars in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, and elsewhere around the globe proliferate, outpacing human ingenuity and political capacities for action. I think the roundtable raised similarly difficult questions as we have been asking over the past 30 years ago or longer. One difference may be that our planet’s total ecological collapse is more imminent, with the legacies of imperialism and colonialism presenting in much starker relief.

The symposium offered me an audience for a new creative soundwork made at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. On November 22, for the opening reception I was honored to premiere, “Auditory Respiration.” Although it felt very unfinished when I arrived, my new 8-channel work, played as a stereo reduction, was very well received.

Launch of Acoustic Ecology Review (Vol. 1 – WFAE 2023 Conference Proceedings)

I’m deeply pleased to inform you of the publication of proceedings of ‘Listening Pasts – Listening Futures’, the 2023 World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Conference. This is the first publication of Acoustic Ecology Review, an international journal and publishing platform for the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and the international sound studies community.

This open access online platform extends and enhances the work of Soundscape: The Journal for Acoustic Ecology, started in 2001. I hope this new platform will support a broad range of voices through their own platforming of sonic ecologies, especially ones in which the cost of access poses an obstacle. The recent Beyond Listening symposium in Budapest would, I believe, exemplify one of the latest cases for the need for such support.

I’m also pleased to note that the proceedings of ‘Listening Pasts – Listening Futures’ conference includes my paper describing my piece, “The Frequent Listener,” performed by Alex Braidwood and Lisa Schonberg at the Atlantic Center for the Arts.