In this lecture, Brandon LaBelle talks about the potential of sound and listening. In his latest books Sonic Agency and Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life, LaBelle investigates the potential of sound and listening as a performance and means for emancipation and political change. While the public sphere is usually understood in relation to what is visible, he is interested in sound as a form of communication that can provide a meaningful alternative. Sound highlights the unseen, the overheard, the itinerate and the intricate, as it is both physical and intangible. Listening is a way of getting involved and appreciating our entanglement with the world.

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist working with questions of social life and cultural agency, using sound, performance, text and sited constructions. He develops and presents artistic projects and performances within a range of international contexts, often working in public and with others. This leads to interventions and performative installations, archival work, and micro-actions aimed at the sphere of the (un)common and the unlikely. He is also an active lecturer working with institutions around the world addressing questions of auditory culture, sonic and spatial practices, the voice and the politics of listening. Since 2011 he works as a Professor at The Art Academy – Department of Contemporary Art, University of Bergen, Norway.