Situated Listening Attending to the Unheard

Introduction

Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Janna Holmstedt, Stephanie Loveless, Louise Mackenzie, Tullis Rennie, Morten Søndergaard, and Freya Zinovieff

Part 1 - Methodologies of Listening

Introduction

Stephanie Loveless and Freya Zinovieff

Chapter 1 - Listening to Noise: Lines of Affinity and Feminist Sono-Techno-Political artivisms from the South

Ana Alfonsina Mora Flores, Amanda Gutiérrez, Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Laura Balboa, and Victoria Polti

Chapter 2 - Listening to our Listening: Deep Listening in Critical Sites

Stephanie Loveless and Freya Zinovieff

Chapter 3 - Unlistening

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay and Elen Flügge

Chapter 4 - Listening With, or the Impossibility of Inhabiting Another’s Ears

Janna Holmstedt and Louise Mackenzie

Chapter 5 - The weak power of listening: a conversation between Ayreen Anastas, Rene Gabri and Rolando Vázquez

Ayreen Anastas, Rene Gabri, and Rolando Vázquez

Part 2 - Apparatuses of Listening

Introduction

Tullis Rennie

Chapter 6 - Audible Ghosts

Laura Wagner and Alejandra Bronfman

Chapter 7 - Technologies, Precariousness and Coloniality

Jose. Claudio S. Castanheira and Melina Santos Silva

Chapter 8 - Addressing Deep Code Problems: Listening to Opera Through the World’s Liveness

Nina Sun Eidsheim and Juliana Snapper 

Chapter 9 - Endarkened Listening

Liz Gre, Matilde Meireles, and Tullis Rennie

Chapter 10 - Amplified States: Listening as Coming to Know

jake moore and Mark Peter Wright

Part 3 - Cultures of Situated Listening

Introduction

Morten Søndergaard

Chapter 11 - The Sound of Hate: White Nationalist Epistemology and Neo Nazi Nation Building on Telegram

Helena Krobath and Freya Zinovieff

Chapter 12 - Mythic Sonic Beings: A Multitrack Conversation

Alex E. Chávez, Cog•nate Collective, Sandra de la Loza, and Monica De La Torre, and Josh Rios (facilitator)

Chapter 13 - The Sonic Sensorium. Listening with the un(der)heard

Morten Søndergaard and Marie Højlund

Chapter 14 - Transperceptive Listening: Sonic Meditations for a Pluriverse

Anna Nacher and Victoria Vesna

Chapter 15 - Collaborative composition: An exchange of sounding

Spy Dénommé-Welch and Catherine Magowan

Afterword/Invitation

Stephanie Loveless, Tullis Rennie, Morten Søndergaard, and Freya Zinovieff

Biography

Stephanie Loveless is a media artist whose research centres on practices of listening. She is senior lecturer in Arts, Director of the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and editor of A Year of Deep Listening: 365 Text Scores for Pauline Oliveros.

Tullis Rennie is a composer, improviser, recordist, and researcher in socially engaged sound practices. His creative work encompasses audio composition, installation, participative community projects, and live/improvised performances presented in over 20 countries. He is senior lecturer in Music at City St George’s, University of London.

Morten Søndergaard is an internationally acclaimed curator and Associate Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is the head curator at Momentum Biennial 2025 and founder of the conference series POM – Politics of the Machines. He has published on sound- and media art and curated exhibitions including ZKM, Eyebeam, and Roskilde.

Freya Zinovieff is a sound artist, researcher, and curator. Freya's research covers the intersections of sound, violence, ethics, and activism. Freya holds a PhD from Simon Fraser University, a First-Class Honours degree from Cambridge School of Art at Anglia Ruskin University, and an MFA from the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

‘Situated Listening is a robust theoretical and methodological guide for building situated sonic knowledges. Through diverse and collaborative conversations and co-narratives, the volume offers new insights on the listening body, the sonic politics of place, space, and culture, and how human and technological biases inform what is heard and unheard.’

Milena Droumeva, Glenfraser Endowed Professor in Sound Studies, SFU

‘This book writes listening in collective but myriad lines that challenge us not to hear but to imagine within its plural and collaborative approach a future of infinite voices, in contradictory co-presence, without chapter breaks, making the indivisible simultaneity of sound heard.’

Salomé Voegelin, Professor of Sound, University of the Arts London

‘Spanning a range of cultural contexts and epistemic concerns, Situated Listening convincingly argues for greater critical engagement with listening. This includes an examination of the structural inequalities often impacting aurality as well as how listening itself may impose forms of harm. Through an emphasis on collaborative writing from a diversity of contributors, Situated Listening raises the volume on the importance of listening studies.’

Brandon LaBelle, Artistic Director, The Listening Biennial