Listening is Love (2022)
Listening is Love is a re-adaptation of the performance Les vainqueurs l'écrivent, les vaincu·x·es racontent l'histoire, which I presented to the CCC Masters juries. After writing my Master's thesis over a period of several months, I decided to make it sound by composing a twenty-minute live piece that would take the highlights of my text and set them to music.
At the same time, I sought to inject emotion into my research work, so as to blur the boundary between my textual and sonic practice. For me, it was a question of navigating the position of listener, rather than that of reader, or critic. Indeed, having a sound practice as part of a visual arts school, I often came up against the lack of sound analysis and development tools in the structure.
I tried to make the most of personal experience as essential knowledge, as legitimate knowledge. In my opinion, the listening position includes an intrinsic dimension of questioning; this position makes it possible to review the hierarchy of knowledge, to include sensory, emotional, traumatic, carnal and intimate experiences in a constellation of knowledge that is too often oriented towards a vision of the intellect devoid of emotionality.
© Pauline Humbert "LISTENING AS LOVE" - Introduction of my Master's Thesis
A scientific study conducted within the psychology field by Robert Zajonc has shown that the more a person listens to a given song, whether they are familiar with it at the beginning of the experiment or not, the more the person will be prone to enjoy this song; this phenomenon is called the mere repeated exposure effect. It is through repetitive listening that a person grows love towards a song, and as a matter of fact, towards almost every possible stimulus.
Listening is love, and the more one listens, the more one loves. During the research process, which has led me to write this thesis, I have sought ways to create a relationship between my sonic practice and my writing practice. As a dj and producer, my thinking is musical. It is about listening. My ears are trained to listening, to hearing. I have developed an ethic of listening through which I navigate, which is utterly important for me to share, to reflect upon and to mobilize within a written discourse. Indeed sound, to me, is a tool to build alternatives to the immutable, and as I find one of my methodologies to be that of listening, I am able to state that listening can be an act of resistance, an act of humility and a powerful position.
Listening has an autonomous discursive functioning, I learned this within the activist environment. It is an unspoken position, and simultaneously, one that is much discussed. Take the example of the subject-position of the ally; namely when a person seeks to stand for or fight for a struggle they support, but whose oppressions they do not experience. Listening is key when it comes to learn, to respect, to organize, when it comes to understand the politics of voices, the politics of bodies, the politics of sounds, the politics of emotions, the politics of links.
Read my full Master's thesis here
© Pauline Humbert Listening is Love (2022)
Listening is Love is a re-adaptation of the performance Les vainqueurs l'écrivent, les vaincu·x·es racontent l'histoire, which I presented to the CCC Masters juries. After writing my Master's thesis over a period of several months, I decided to make it sound by composing a twenty-minute live piece that would take the highlights of my text and set them to music.
At the same time, I sought to inject emotion into my research work, so as to blur the boundary between my textual and sonic practice. For me, it was a question of navigating the position of listener, rather than that of reader, or critic. Indeed, having a sound practice as part of a visual arts school, I often came up against the lack of sound analysis and development tools in the structure.
I tried to make the most of personal experience as essential knowledge, as legitimate knowledge. In my opinion, the listening position includes an intrinsic dimension of questioning; this position makes it possible to review the hierarchy of knowledge, to include sensory, emotional, traumatic, carnal and intimate experiences in a constellation of knowledge that is too often oriented towards a vision of the intellect devoid of emotionality.
"LISTENING AS LOVE" - Introduction of my Master's Thesis
A scientific study conducted within the psychology field by Robert Zajonc has shown that the more a person listens to a given song, whether they are familiar with it at the beginning of the experiment or not, the more the person will be prone to enjoy this song; this phenomenon is called the mere repeated exposure effect. It is through repetitive listening that a person grows love towards a song, and as a matter of fact, towards almost every possible stimulus.
Listening is love, and the more one listens, the more one loves. During the research process, which has led me to write this thesis, I have sought ways to create a relationship between my sonic practice and my writing practice. As a dj and producer, my thinking is musical. It is about listening. My ears are trained to listening, to hearing. I have developed an ethic of listening through which I navigate, which is utterly important for me to share, to reflect upon and to mobilize within a written discourse. Indeed sound, to me, is a tool to build alternatives to the immutable, and as I find one of my methodologies to be that of listening, I am able to state that listening can be an act of resistance, an act of humility and a powerful position.
Listening has an autonomous discursive functioning, I learned this within the activist environment. It is an unspoken position, and simultaneously, one that is much discussed. Take the example of the subject-position of the ally; namely when a person seeks to stand for or fight for a struggle they support, but whose oppressions they do not experience. Listening is key when it comes to learn, to respect, to organize, when it comes to understand the politics of voices, the politics of bodies, the politics of sounds, the politics of emotions, the politics of links.
Read my full Master's thesis here