Viki Zioga
ΦΑΝΤΟΜ Power: Developing a Collective Listening Consciousness through Artistic and Pedagogical Strategies
The unfair conditions of audibility in our society, which consequently affect individual and collective agency, point towards the urgency of a listening literacy on a macro- and micro-political level. Hence, we need to begin in our immediate environments and transform them into communities of conscious listeners. This research project investigates ideas for the transformation of listening. How can we weave artistic strategies and pedagogical methods into a learning structure that facilitates the development of a collective listening consciousness on a micro-political scale?
My study of practices that move between art, activism and education, along with experimentation within the social contexts that I relate to in everyday life, led to the formulation of a workshop. This workshop, called a small listening gesture, invited different communities to listen, perform and reflect together. In that way, we started building a network of small listening gestures.
Reflecting on this network through my theoretical framework, I identify the ways by which such a learning structure can facilitate the transformation of a social context into a community of conscious listeners. It is imperative to question the relationship between facilitator and participant, seek ways to reduce hierarchies and subvert the traditional roles. By fostering intimacy and by engaging the ear, the voice, the body and the brain, we embody how we come together, how we listen and are listened to within our small communities. The network remains open and proposes a toolkit for future listening gestures. Envisioning these gestures multiplying and generating collective power, I propose these acts as a way to move towards equal audibility.
External critic: Janna Graham (writer, organiser, educator and curator, London)
Thesis: