How does listening change us? In what ways do the sounds we hear alter us and our bodies? Do we not listen in order to be moved, affected, touched? Is not listening a form of interruption, where noises and vibrations, silences and the words of others inhabit the body, figuring one as in touch with a multiplicity of forces and meanings, subjects and objects? »The Open Body« captures listening as an experience of transformation. Through improvisation and expanded sensing, the performance gives body to listening as an experimental movement. This extends toward a deeper relational perspective in which performers listen across bodies and environments, as an imaginative form of live research. Throughout the long-durational work, performers learn from what they see and hear, incorporating this into ways of being in the body. What emerges is a meditative work of affective attunement, where the body opens itself to its surroundings, to itself and others, bringing audiences into a scene of slow attention and radical sympathy.
Labor Sonor – the series for experimental music, film and performance – presents the spectrum of current experimental forms beyond genre-specific determinability – from echtzeitmusik to electronics, performance, audiovisual formats, conceptual music, composed/notated new music and experimental pop. »The Open Body« is developed and presented as a collaboration between Labor Sonor and The Listening Biennial, on the occasion of the opening of the second edition of the Biennial.
Audiences can enter and exit at anytime during the time of the performance.