Ears (Attica, 100 BC–400 AD), marble, 10 × 15.8 cm., Courtesy Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, photo: Ute Brunzel
Listening Space is a program of events that attempts to explore and understand sound outside established hierarchies of music production and performance. In the project’s diverse concerts, lectures, and performances, forms of sonic expression take cues from architectural modifications, visual barriers, speaker configurations, natural-sound environments, listening instructions, and spatial choreographies. In this way, the program seeks sonic conditions that go beyond sound’s aural signification, instead illuminating how its physical, social, and political dimensions can be performed and heard. Listening Space is curated by Paolo Thorsen-Nagel, documenta 14’s Sound and Music Advisor. The Athens club and studio complex Romantso serves as the program’s home base, with the project extending to other locations including Megaron, The Athens Concert Hall, the Athens Conservatoire (Odeion), and the Church of Agios Dimitrios Loumbardiaris. All Listening Space events are free of charge.
Program, Romantso:
April 12, 9:30 and 10:30 pm: Philipp Gropper, Liz Kosack, Dan Peter Sundland, and Paolo Thorsen-Nagel, concert with architectural modifications and visual obstructions
May 11, 9:30 pm: Christos Chondropoulos, Sébastien Marteau, Stratos Bichakis, improvised acoustic-electronic set with percussion, reeds, and electronics
10:30 pm: Stratos Bichakis plays selections from his personal archive of Greek ethnographical music
May 25, 10:30 am and 12, 4:30, and 6 pm: Christina Kubisch, Electrical Walks in and around Romantso (each walk is limited to nine people; reservations can be made at: electricalwalks [at] documenta.de)
9:30 pm: Keith Fullerton Whitman, concert with live electronics
June 15, 8 pm: All-Pakistan Music Conference archive presentation and listening session with Lala Rukh and Qasim Ahmed
June 22, 9:30 pm: Charles Curtis / Alvin Lucier, featuring Anthony Burr / David Grubbs, an evening devoted to the distinct relationship among performer, audience, and space within a musical performance
June 29, 7:30 pm: Brandon LaBelle, lecture and performance in response to the spatial qualities of Romantso
July 6, 9:30 pm: Jan St. Werner with the Dessner brothers, eight-channel performance of Glottal Wolpertinger (previously broadcast as eight separate pieces on documenta 14 radio)
July 13, 7:30 pm: Ed McKeon with IONE, an otobiographical reflection on a future for Pauline Oliveros’ work
8:30 pm: Sam Auinger and Bruce Odland, presentation of a filtered and tuned city ambience
Program, Athens Conservatoire (Odeion):
Listening Space events at Odeion take place in the venue’s downstairs theater, unless stated otherwise.
April 13, 7:30 pm: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, audio essay on the acoustic investigation of the Saydnaya prison in Syria
April 18, 7 pm: Akio Suzuki and Aki Onda, concert with tapes and self-built instruments that respond to the architecture of Odeion
June 1, 9 pm: Peter Zinovieff premieres a composition, conceived by Andrew Spyrou, based on blue whale song
10 pm: Seth Parker Woods, solo cello performance of George Lewis’s Not Alone and Alexander Tremblay’s asinglewordisnotenough3 (invariant)
June 21, 7 pm: Athina Katsanevaki sings Byzantine and Northern Greek songs in the Jakob Ullmann exhibit: Dafne Vicente Sandoval plays Jakob Ullmann’s Solo II (1992)
Performances by Akio Suzuki and Aki Onda and Dafne Vicente Sandoval are organized in collaboration with the Onassis Cultural Center.
Program, Church of Agios Dimitrios Loumbardiaris:
July 14, 8 pm: Giorgos Axiotis and Efthimis Theodossis, concert with self-built electro-acoustical instruments in correspondence with the natural surroundings
Program, Megaron, The Athens Concert Hall:
May 9, 8:30 pm: All the in-between spaces: performances in the interstitial spaces of Megaron by Pina Bounce / Panos Charalambous / Mette Henriette / Katalin Ladik
