Slow Listening

Abstract

Lots has been written about the need for and value of listening in this era of networked communication and constant feedback loops. But what is listening, really? This paper proposes that the act of slow listening is an ethical and political act. One that can be facilitated by and in response to performance. Further, it proposes that such an act is imperative if we are to have any chance to move beyond, or offer resistance to, the current status quo where the loudest and quickest voices (who are often the least interesting) tend to dominate in all spheres of contemporary life.

Keywords:

• listening
• ethics
• politics
• technology
• Shilpa Gupta
• Back to Back Theatre

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Trish Harris, Susan Bennett and Peter Eckersall for generously providing feedback on this essay as it developed. This work was supported by the Australia Research Council under the Discovery Project Scheme Grant id: DP160100272 and by Murdoch University.

Notes

1 Examining listening, hearing and refusing to hear in the political realm is something I wrote about recently in another paper. See Grehan (2018) for more information.

2 The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes premiered at Carriageworks, Sydney, on 25 September 2019.

3 This text is drawn from a draft script. In the premiere season of the work there were five performers instead of four.