Listening Choir
Performance
Audio walk (participatory)
~40 minutes
A group of people walk without speaking for an hour. Together they form a kind of silent choir, listening as they walk, their movements becoming songs. They hear loud things, and unheard things, what’s been drowned out or quieted; the endless refrain of a city.
Listening Choir is a project that takes participants on walks through public spaces. Throughout the walk each participant carries a cardboard loudspeaker that records and plays sounds along the way. These sounds are choreographed in various ways, evoking the immediate past, the sonic dislocation of objects and voices onto others, and the folding of histories and places on top of one another. Agreeing to drift without speaking, audiences are invited into an encounter with a continually fractured soundscape that reflects on notions of public space, participation, and how a city changes.
Developed through a residency at Videofag in Kensington Market.
Photography: Claire Harvie, Emma Jones, and Dahlia Katz
More information on this project can be viewed here
Presentations
- Fierce Festival, Birmingham UK 2017
- West Don Lands, Waterfront Toronto, Toronto, 2017
- Open Ears Festival, Kitchener 2016
- Art of the Danforth, Toronto 2016
- The New Gallery, Intersite Visual Arts Festival, Calgary 2015
- Stride, Intersite Visual Arts Festival, Calgary 2015
- Untitled Arts Society, Intersite Visual Arts Festival, Calgary 2015
- Summerworks Performance Festival, Toronto 2015
Credits
Project by Christopher Willes and Adam Kinner.
Print designed with Jeremy McCormick.
Developed with the support of the Canada Arts Council, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and Waterfront Toronto in developing this project.
