Collective Ear – Four Radio Plays for Deep Listeners

Is listening a performance?

«Think about a song you loved as a teenager. Try and remember. How it loved you back.» You can read Ronja Svaneborg’s score-based work Do I need to move my lips to be part of the choir? like a poem. Or you can perform it. With me, with yourself, with those people over there, or with a collective body stretching across time, distance, and environments. How would the voices interact, attune, resonate? And is my listening itself the performance? Come, listen, find out. Collective Ear is a collaboration between Brand-New-Life Magazine and Zurich University of the Arts. Sound piece: Do I need to move my lips to be part of the choir?, 2024, by Ronja Svaneborg. Performed together with the audience at The Poly Listening Club on April 18, 2024, at Zurich University of the Arts. Texts: Ronja Svaneborg and Barbara Preisig Sound design and edit: Pascal Lund-Jensen Proofreading: Bram Opstelten Speakers: Emma Murray, Maria Rebecca Sautter Special thanks to: The speakers, Marcel Bleuler, Minda Deol, Laura von Niederhäusern, Kris Deker, Felix Friedrich, and the participating audience

How can we listen in a non-extractive way?

We join a small gathering of friends on a balcony: Fran to your left, Sid and Moon to your right. It’s an early summer evening; the air is filled with birdsong and the sound piece Fuengu (2021) by Hong-Kai Wang. For this project, the artist explored the musical heritage of the family of Tsou Taiwanese composer Uong e Yatauyungana, using listening as a way to get to know the Psoseongana landscape. How can we listen in a non-extractive way? Can I hear without interest? Listen without taking anything away? And is there a way of hearing that is better – or worse? Who decides? Collective Ear is a collaboration between Brand-New-Life Magazine and Zurich University of the Arts. Sound piece: Do I need to move my lips to be part of the choir?, 2024, by Ronja Svaneborg. Performed together with the audience at The Poly Listening Club on April 18, 2024, at Zurich University of the Arts. Texts: Ronja Svaneborg and Barbara Preisig Sound design and edit: Pascal Lund-Jensen Proofreading: Bram Opstelten Speakers: Emma Murray, Maria Rebecca Sautter Special thanks to: The speakers, Marcel Bleuler, Minda Deol, Laura von Niederhäusern, Kris Deker, Felix Friedrich, and the participating audience

What’s the sound of climate change?

Hearing the grass grow, the drought, the flickering of a heat wave; listening to the melting of ice and the rise of sea levels. How does climate change sound? Where should I listen first, and how? Do I need suitable recording devices, or just a vivid imagination? Let us listen to a sound piece that may bring light to the dark, or rather: sound to silence – Water-Drought Patterns by Eleni-Ira Panourgia, created in 2023. Collective Ear is a collaboration between Brand-New-Life Magazine and Zurich University of the Arts. Sound piece: Do I need to move my lips to be part of the choir?, 2024, by Ronja Svaneborg. Performed together with the audience at The Poly Listening Club on April 18, 2024, at Zurich University of the Arts. Texts: Ronja Svaneborg and Barbara Preisig Sound design and edit: Pascal Lund-Jensen Proofreading: Bram Opstelten Speakers: Emma Murray, Maria Rebecca Sautter Special thanks to: The speakers, Marcel Bleuler, Minda Deol, Laura von Niederhäusern, Kris Deker, Felix Friedrich, and the participating audience

Can you listen like a beginner?

For 43 minutes, professional cellist Melody Giron plays Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite No.1 in G Major. Or rather – she plays parts of its prelude, over and over, searching for her tone. The ending never arrives. The beginning returns again and again, maintaining a state of perpetual preparation. Listen with us to Cally Spooner’s DEAD TIME (Melody’s Warm Up), 2022. Will you unlearn the melody? Can you listen like a beginner? Collective Ear is a collaboration between Brand-New-Life Magazine and Zurich University of the Arts. Sound piece: Do I need to move my lips to be part of the choir?, 2024, by Ronja Svaneborg. Performed together with the audience at The Poly Listening Club on April 18, 2024, at Zurich University of the Arts. Texts: Ronja Svaneborg and Barbara Preisig Sound design and edit: Pascal Lund-Jensen Proofreading: Bram Opstelten Speakers: Emma Murray, Maria Rebecca Sautter Special thanks to: The speakers, Marcel Bleuler, Minda Deol, Laura von Niederhäusern, Kris Deker, Felix Friedrich, and the participating audience