THE ART OF LISTENING: (Beyond) The Here and Now ‍

2024 IC GALLUZZO, Firenze

SOUND STORIES

2025 IC PUCCINI, Firenze

Murate Art District, The Artist-in-Residence in The Schools

For The M.A.D. The Artist-in-Residence in The Schools, THE ART OF LISTENING: (Beyond) The Here and Now in 2024 and SOUND STORIES (Storie Sonore) in 2025, focused on listening in relation to place, exploring its limits and what it means to reveal what is heard and what is not heard. We explored how to actively engage with place through creative listening and sound practices. Approaches included sound walks, sound journaling, and sound drawing. Additionally, students created an ‘Imaginary Audio Guide’ for their school, researching and weaving together stories about their school, their memories, and their imaginings, which they then recorded and edited. These recordings are accessible via labels with QR codes throughout the school for others to listen to.

The project emphasized listening as a relational capacity and creative practice. Taking time to explore listening practices involved not only refining hearing perceptions, but also developing new capacities to become more acutely aware of the world(s) and the places we inhabit, and how we can form/un-form/re-form relations with them. 

Because sight is often considered the dominant sense in contemporary society, this project offered students a unique opportunity to explore an alternative way of sensing and being in the world. During this project, students refined their listening skills, developed a deeper understanding of the sounds around them, and had opportunities to share and express their experiences through listening and sound practices, allowing for new possibilities and relationships to emerge.