sucking~sensing~feeling ~phantasying : Sonic Gut Meditations for Conference Call

workshop, 90mins

Sonic Gut Meditations for Conference Call, is a workshop in which participants come together to try out eight group listening exercises that are loosely based on composer Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations (1974), and adapted for video call at a time when it’s not safe to meet together in a room.

The exercises attempt to expand what is allowed to be heard on a group call and proposes the idea of listening with the whole body, especially with the gut as a psychic organ. A politics of listening with the gut bloats what is hearable within the sonic architectures of headphones, throats, zoom calls, bedrooms, rectums, Vimeo, fantasies and the hiss of recordings.

The exercises are non-verbal and are followed by participants on printed ‘scores.’

sonic gut meditations was originally organised in August 2020 for a remote residency centering the gut with artists Rebecca Jagoe, Anna Zett, Rosa-Johan Uddoh and Maija Timonen at Wysing Arts Centre.

As part of a collaboration with Jude Browning on her three-part performance and publication project At Practise, Yellow Back Books (Cardiff) invited me to hold this workshop online, Saturday, 29 May 2021. Jude facilitated a second workshop, Wednesday 2 June, as an experiment to see if the workshop format can be used as a toolkit.

The toolkit, an invitation for groups to use the material to self-organise future listening events, is published by HOAX, June 2021.