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February 27, 2025

Listening in Relation: Equinox Roundtable

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The Listening in Relation Equinox Roundtable, March 21-23, 2025 focuses on listening and material making in relation to thought and creative practices in decolonization. Coinciding with the Vernal Equinox, the Roundtable offers Earth-informed, seasonal gathering with a variety of hands-on workshops, sound walks, discussions, exhibitions, listening and making spaces. Workshop leaders and speakers include: Adrian Avendaño, Lara Felsing, Hildegard Westerkamp, Toni-Leah C. Yake.

Free and open to the Public by Registration
Location: Emily Carr University of Art & Design campus, Vancouver

Register Here

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Schedule

March 21, evening

  • 5:00 pm – Meet and Greet
  • 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Lara Felsing/Branching Songs Land-Based Workshop + Listening in Relation collaborative sound improvisation
    • For this workshop, Lara has created a series of three hand-stitched second-hand plant-dyed blankets titled Shallow Breaths. The blankets contain the 2022, 2023 and 2024 early fire season air quality data from where she lives in rural Alberta. Lara will guide a workshop on land-based material practice working with cast-offs and repurposed materials. She will collaborate with the Branching Songs Ensemble in workshopping how to create Tree Feelers (mallets and bows) made from cast-offs and found materials. Workshop participants will be invited to use their Tree Feelers for sonic interactions with trees, and explore improvisational sound making inspired by the data in the blanket trio.
  • 8:30 pm – 9:30 pm – Open discussion of workshop + Collaboration above, Leo Cabrera (moderator) on the theme of Relations and reflections with fire and wildfire.

March 22, all day

  • 9:00 am – Coffee
  • 9:30 am – 10:30 am – Soundwalk (Clare Price)
  • 11:00 am – 12:30 pm – Keynote Panel : Adrian Avendaño, Lara Felsing, Hildegard Westerkamp, Toni-Leah C. Yake, moderated by Claude Schryer
  • Lunch Break
  • 1:30 – 4:00 The Only Animal Land-based material workshop & conversations
    • 1:30 pm – 2:15 pm – Intro to material practices, cordage, bundling
    • 2:15 pm – 2:30 pm – First journaling reflection time
    • 2:30 pm – 3:00 pm – Conversation 1 – Good Fire
    • 3:00 pm – 3:30 pm – Conversation 2 – Emergent Topics 
    • 3:30 pm – 4:00 pm – Conversation 3 – Mutualistic Cities
  • 4:00 pm – 4:30 pm – Aaron Liu-Rosenbaum + Antoine Gagné Performance
    • This untitled piece was composed collaboratively by Aaron Liu-Rosenbaum and Antoine Gagné. By intertwining our compositional processes, we turn from the traditional model of a solitary composer working in isolation to a shared co-creation aligned with the spirit of the Listening in Relation project. The only guideline we gave ourselves was that with each pass of the file, only one new “idea” was added (however that was understood), keeping in mind the themes of decolonialization and non-human perspectives.
  • Dinner Break
  • 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm – Adrian Avendaño Workshop: Field Recordings as Catalyst for Improvisation
    • This experimental workshop will focus on how we can listen to field recordings to generate creative processes for sonic improvisation. How can we refine or reframe the way we listen to generate approaches for sound making? How can we tune into the effects of these recordings on our internal world (thoughts, feelings, sensations) and express them? Bring an acoustic or electronic instrument to make sound, or join with movement, text, spoken word, or visual responses. No prior artistic experience is necessary—just an open mind and willingness to listen intently and differently.
  • 8:30 pm – 9:30 pm – Open discussion of workshop + collaboration above, Leo Cabrera (moderator) on the theme of Relations and reflections with fire and wildfire.

March 23, morning

  • 9:00 am – Coffee/Tea
  • 9:30 am – 11:30 am – Final discussions wrap up

concurrent exhibition: Soundscape Listening