As part of the exhibition État Bruit, Konschthal Esch presents Sound Matters, a series of Sunday afternoon gatherings dedicated to the significance of sound and listening. Each session combines a public conversation with invited guests and a shared listening experience.
Together, we reflect on what we hear, what we ignore, and how listening shapes the way we perceive space, society, and one another.Through focused conversations and collective listening moments, the series explores how sound surrounds us, influences us, and at times overwhelms us – revealing that sound is not merely background, but a powerful force in how we experience and understand the world.
Session 2 – When Does Sound Become Too Much?
What happens when sound has no external source? How do past listening experiences shape the way we hear the present? And what can listening reveal about experiences that are highly subjective, embodied and difficult to share?
Marie Thompson addresses the interior (non)sound of tinnitus: a listening encounter involving the conscious perception of sound for which there is no external source. Sharing words, sounds and auditory environments from her ongoing project, she asks how the sonic might give insight into this highly subjective, variable and varied aural phenomenon, beyond simply replicating the unshared (non)sound that is often “too much”.
Brandon LaBelle explores our bodies as acoustic environments, where memory and history continuously resound. What past listening experiences have shaped how we hear the present? Are there stories that echo across generations, carrying cultural heritage and feelings of home? And how can we listen out for the futures we long for, bringing creative and critical attention to shaping change? He considers the importance and challenges of inner listening, and how it can ground us in relation to place and people. Returning to ourselves, as Patty Krawec poignantly suggests, can form the basis for fostering planetary futures.
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Together, their contributions explore the importance and challenges of inner listening, the sounds, silences, memories and experiences that shape how we hear ourselves, others and the world around us.
Biography
Marie Thompson is a Senior Lecturer of Popular Music at The Open University, UK. She is the author of Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism (Bloomsbury, 2017), The Sonic Surrogate: Music, Technology and the Crisis of Reproduction (UC Press, 2026) and, with Annie Goh, Sonic Cyberfeminisms (Goldsmiths Press, forthcoming). From 2020-2024, Marie led Tinnitus, Auditory Knowledge and the Arts: a research project exploring how the arts can enrich understandings of tinnitus and the diverse ways it affects people’s lives.
Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer, theorist, and artistic director of The Listening Biennial. His work focuses on questions of agency, community, pirate culture, and poetics, which results in a range of collaborative and extra-institutional initiatives, including Communities in Movement (2019-23), Oficina de Autonomia (2017-), The Living School (2014-16), The Imaginary Republic (2014-19), Dirty Ear Forum (2013-22), Surface Tension (2003-2008), and Beyond Music Sound Festival (1998-2002). In 1995 he founded Errant Bodies Press, an independent publishing project supporting work in sound art and studies, performance and poetics, artistic research and contemporary political thought. His publications include: Poetics of Listening (2025), Dreamtime X (2022), Acoustic Justice (2021), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth (2014), Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (2012), Acoustic Territories (2010), and Background Noise (2006).
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Langues : EN (translation into FR)
Tout public
Free of charge | No booking required.
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