ANNOUNCED / WORKSHOP / RESEARCH / LISTENING
Listening Collectively: Acoustic Flows
Artistic Research Lab
How do we listen together, and how does sound shape spaces, bodies and communities? Listening Collectively: Acoustic Flows is a collaborative research environment exploring listening as a bodily, material and spatial practice. Through listening sessions, conversations, somatic exercises and experimental methods, participants investigate how resonance and attention can generate shared forms of knowledge, experience and relation.
How do we listen together? How does sound shape our perception of spaces, bodies, communities and public life? And what kinds of shared environments might emerge from collective listening?
Artists, researchers, performers, sound practitioners and interdisciplinary thinkers are invited to join Listening Collectively: Acoustic Flows, a three-day Artistic Research Lab taking place at Seestadt Studios as part of Sonic Territories Festival 2026.
The lab approaches listening as a collective, bodily, material and spatial practice. It investigates how sound, resonance and attention move through bodies, environments and communities, shaping relations, perceptions and shared temporalities. Participants are invited to consider how listening can generate and connect academic, artistic and vernacular forms of knowledge.
Listening sessions, conversations, somatic exercises, experimental methods and collaborative formats create a shared framework for perception, exploration and exchange. Rather than following the structure of a conventional workshop, the lab invites everyone involved to become a co-producer of an open and evolving research process.
DAY 1 — LISTENING THROUGH THE BODY
The first day introduces the space, facilitators, participants and shared framework of the Research Lab before moving into a somatic listening practice.
Beginning with the kidneys as a point of attention, Yvo Kaufmann invites participants to explore listening through the body: within themselves, in relation to others and in response to the surrounding space. Touch may become part of the practice but is not required. Voice and sound-making are likewise offered as optional ways of deepening collective listening and sensory awareness.
DAY 2 — LANGUAGE, KNOWLEDGE AND SONIC THINKING
In her workshop, Serena Lee reflects on the technology of words and the resonances between listening, reading and writing with the whole body. By unpacking the cosmological and cultural assumptions that inform processes of meaning-making, the group will approach language as an embodied practice, creating space both for articulation and for what escapes it.
A participatory session led by Kristina Pia Hofer places these practices in dialogue with perspectives from contemporary sound studies. Participants are invited to activate and exchange academic, artistic and vernacular forms of knowledge about, with and through sonic thinking.
DAY 3 — RADIO, ECOLOGY AND SPECULATIVE RESEARCH
Kate Donovan introduces a decentralised model of radio that unsettles established distinctions between transmitter and receiver, or speaker and listener. Her session creates space for listening to intersect with ecological thought, more-than-human perspectives and relations across different scales.
Building on these ideas, Denise Helene Sumi presents a live audio performance combining sonic exploration with theoretical discourse. Her approach opens unconventional pathways between academic thinking and embodied knowledge, proposing sound and performance as methods of speculative research.
COLLABORATION
Developed in collaboration with lecturers from the University of Applied Arts Vienna and somatic practitioners from Jugend am Werk, the Research Lab brings together participants with different backgrounds and approaches to sound and listening. Its aim is to create a shared and distributed process of exploration and knowledge production.
ACCESSIBILITY & NEURODIVERSITY
Seestadt Studios is wheelchair-accessible via an elevator, and an accessible restroom is available. If you have specific access requirements or would like further information about the venue, please contact us in advance.
We welcome neurodivergent participants and invite everyone to bring whatever supports their comfort and wellbeing. Participants may leave and re-enter the space at any time. Please contact us if you would like to discuss specific requirements or receive more detailed information before the event.
ARTISTIC DIRECTION AND HOSTS
- Kristina Pia Hofer
- Yvo Kaufmann
- Denise Helene Sumi
GUESTS AND FACILITATORS
- Kate Donovan (Radio Otherwise)
- Serena Lee
IN COOPERATION WITH
- University of Applied Arts Vienna
- Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures
- Jugend am Werk am Seebogen
VISITOR INFORMATION
- Seestadt Studios, Am-Ostrom-Park 11/TOP 1, 1220 Wien.
- Participation in the Research Lab is no longer available, as registration has closed.
- The working language is English.
- Seestadt Studios is wheelchair-accessible via an elevator, and an accessible restroom is available.
- Participants may leave and re-enter the space whenever needed.
- For specific access requirements or further information, contact workshop@sonic-territories.at.