What Now? 2015 is a two-day annual symposium, organized by Art in General in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, which investigates critical and timely issues in contemporary art. Dedicated to the topic of The Politics of Listening, the 2015 symposium comprises four panel discussions spanning Friday and Saturday, a keynote delivered by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, and a program of sound installations, audio works, film screenings, and performances.

What Now? 2015 examines the idea of political listening as a long-term investigation, a pedagogical process, and an activity that can lead to the development of an organized protocol for political engagement. Opening with an analysis of listening, the symposium considers the scientific definition of the term alongside perspectives on listening that are shaped and informed by diverse social, cultural, technological, and spatial considerations. As keynote speaker Lawrence Abu Hamdan has noted, “Listening is not a natural process inherent to our perception of the world but rather constructed by the conditions of the spaces and times that engulf us.”

In a world in which the production and reception of information encompasses print and digital media, spoken narratives, and the ever-expanding space of social media, the symposium considers how one can listen with agency and intent in an environment characterized by such an onslaught of data. It also explores the often complex relationship between truth and fiction in relation to interpretative listening, media communication, and acts of testimony, translation, or redaction. To what degree are we able to listen to different kinds of ‘intelligences’, and how can we incite receptivity? How do we address the fact that the ‘right to listen’ is relative, and that the right not to listen, or to remain silent, is also a genuine stance? Can we press on and position listening as a political act? And how do we further develop our ability ‘to “listen for what is left out, and why”‘?

Highlighting the work of artists and other practitioners interested in expanding dialogue beyond the confines of the art world, What Now? 2015 ultimately considers the notion of ‘listening with intent,’ and imagines new possibilities that might arise when listening involves a more expansive state of activity. How can we take the procedures of listening—which involve disciplined attentiveness and an active questioning—as a means to assist a constituency find its own power and solutions to diverse sets of problems? How can working across disciplines, or rethinking the processes of how we learn, expand on and deepen our understanding of an issue—ultimately enabling us to ‘listen’, and act, with a more informed mind?

This is the second of the annual symposium What Now, presented in a partnership between Art in General and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. Art in General would like to extend special thanks to the key funders of What Now? 2015, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Lambent Foundation, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding. The Vera List Center would like to also thank the center’s Advisory Committee.

Presented as part of Alignment, the Vera List Center’s 2013-2015 curatorial focus theme.

See more HERE.