In 1951, German philosopher and musicologist Theodor W. Adorno penned his seminal essay “Cultural Criticism and Society,” which opened with a curious callout: “To anyone in the habit of thinking with their ears …” On Friday, Jan. 24 and Saturday, Jan. 25, listeners are invited to ponder Adorno’s notion of “thinking with one’s ears” at the collaborative conference Experiments in Listening, hosted by the MA Aesthetics and Politics program and The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts with the USC Dornsife Experimental Humanities Lab, the Division of Cinema and Media Studies at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, and boundary 2 journal.
Organized by Critical Studies faculty Arne De Boever, Kara Keeling, Erin Graff Zivin, and Music faculty Michael Pisaro-Liu, Experiments in Listening features approximately 20 speakers from the Institute, USC, and elsewhere. More about the conference from boundary 2:
[W]hat does it mean to think with one’s ears? How does one get into the habit of it? And what are the critical and societal (ethical and political) benefits of thinking with one’s ears?
Experiments in Listening proposes to address these questions starting from the experimental performing arts. Conceived between an arts institute, a university, and a contrarian international journal of literature and culture, the conference seeks to “emancipate the listener” (to riff on Jacques Rancière) into considering their ears as not only aesthetic but also political instruments that are as central to how we think, make, and live as our speech.
The two-day event features lectures and listening sessions, film screenings, performances, and workshops. Among the speakers are De Boever, Pisaro-Liu, Aesthetics and Politics MA candidate Reina Akkoush, Critical Studies faculty Gabrielle Civil, and Associate Dean of the School of Art Michael Ned Holte.
Friday programming will take place throughout the USC campus, closing out with an 8 pm reception at the CalArts DTLA Building. Because of the recent Hughes Fire, the Saturday program has been moved from CalArts’ Valencia campus to The REEF in downtown Los Angeles.
Find the full conference schedule on the boundary 2 website.