Listening to Disappearing

A Social Choreography for the Ears

Two people lying in the gutter of a street, their arms cross across their chests.

How might listening prosthetically choreograph acts of recovery? This question is brought to the site of the disappearing St James Theatre and its civic surrounds.

A headphonic sound score mobilises a collective body of participants, effecting and politicising the way they activate this urban site. Listening becomes an action that recodes the civic space in covert performance strategies. Engaging in the unspectacular, the practice treads lightly, unsettling social, cultural and architectural codes of place. The audience tune into the poetics of place, sound, the voice, and the collective body through participation.

This choreoauratic score is one of a series of test-events that work towards a recovery of the imperceptible and the disappearing. Performing in the margins the practice orchestrates coming together in a fleeting public activism.

Participants will need to use their own MP3 players and headphones. The sound file will be online to download from the following link from the 12th September and will also contain instructions for meeting.

https://soundcloud.com/liverecording/ada2014

If you don’t have access to your own headphones or MP3 Player please email becca@beccawood.co.nz to book a set (limited number available).