Radical Listening: A Tech-Critical Time Hacking
In an era of algorithmic acceleration and optimized attention, this presentation proposes Deep Listening as a subversive tool for hacking dominant temporal technologies. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros’s concept of radical receptivity, the work challenges the logics of efficiency, instantaneity, and signal extraction that underpin today’s techno-cultural infrastructures. The proposed presentation and indoor + outdoor practice explores Deep Listening as a form of temporal subversion within the techno-cultural apparatus, offering a subversive strategy for reclaiming time, perception, and presence. Rather than rejecting technology, this practice misuses it: stretching time, amplifying silence, disrupting feedback loops, and attending to the inaudible.
We begin indoors with digital disconnection and a theoretical examination of technologies that manipulate temporal perception, attention mechanisms, fragmented consciousness, and acceleration. Moving outdoors, we engage in a short somatic warm-up before undertaking a collective slow walk — a sculptural intervention in public time. Through dual sonic meditations, participants experience listening both unmediated and through ambisonic microphones and headsets, exploring how technology can impact - both estrange and enhance - perception.
At its heart, this presentation is about building temporary autonomous zones of shared attention — creating community spaces where listening becomes a political act, opening spaces for collective temporalities, embodied resistance, and the slow construction of listening-based solidarity.
